Speaker 1: I mean I had two calls from the White House
Speaker 1: where they wanted to come take pictures there over the
Speaker 1: course of the projects and take credit for it. And
Speaker 1: I may or may not have ended up on a
Speaker 1: watch list because of some language that I use.
Speaker 2: Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney,
Speaker 2: I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
Speaker 2: I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in
Speaker 2: inner City Memphis. And the last part unintentionally led to
Speaker 2: an oscar for the film about our team. It's called Undefeated.
Speaker 2: I believe our country's problems will never be solved by
Speaker 2: a bunch of fancy people and ice suits talking big
Speaker 2: words that nobody understands or ever uses. Not seeing it
Speaker 2: in Fox, but rather an army of normal folks, US
Speaker 2: just you and me deciding, Hey, I can help. That's
Speaker 2: what John Currents, the voice we just heard, has done.
Speaker 2: The project that John mentioned was saving a restaurant and
Speaker 2: the home of an eighty nine year old New Orleans
Speaker 2: woman named Willie May after Hurricane Katrina. Willie May's Scotch
Speaker 2: House makes what's been called the best fried chicken in
Speaker 2: the world, and it wouldn't be here today if not
Speaker 2: for John and an army of normal folks who spent
Speaker 2: sixteen months volunteering to rebuild her restaurant. And John was
Speaker 2: going back and forth almost every week between his adopted
Speaker 2: home of Oxford, Mississippi, and his native New Orleans that
Speaker 2: was five hours away, and he had three of his
Speaker 2: own restaurants to run in Oxford. John's love for Willie
Speaker 2: May and New Orleans is extraordinary. And we'll continue with
Speaker 2: the story right after these brief messages from our general sponsors.
Speaker 2: You're twenty six when you show up in Oxford having
Speaker 2: no business opening a restaurant, but do any way and
Speaker 2: start down your road to restaurant tour success. What year
Speaker 2: was that? And home is still New Orleans? I mean
Speaker 2: it's where you came from. You're making home here.
Speaker 1: But current leadership is making it very easy for me
Speaker 1: to divorce myself from the romance of the city. I
Speaker 1: mean it's a you know, it's a it's a mess
Speaker 1: like so many other cities in the South.
Speaker 2: Right now, I get it, But you still have a
Speaker 2: heart for your home under presently it right, And this
Speaker 2: little storm comes through called Katrina. What year was that?
Speaker 1: Two thousand and five.
Speaker 2: Two thousand and five, and I'm sure all of us
Speaker 2: watched that whole scene in horror. I'll never forget the
Speaker 2: pictures of all the people on the There was an
Speaker 2: overpass right near the Superdome that's elevated that people kind
Speaker 2: of had to get to the I'm in the heartwood
Speaker 2: lumber business. I sold a customer in New Orleans at
Speaker 2: the time. It was called Hogan Hardwoods, and there was
Speaker 2: actually a picture on the news. They delivered all their lumber.
Speaker 2: They made, you know, ten to fifteen stops a day,
Speaker 2: and they would deliver on eighteen wheelers that had curtain sides.
Speaker 2: And I will never forget watching one of those eighteen
Speaker 2: wheelers going down a road on the news, and it
Speaker 2: was a Hogan Hardwood's curtain side truck, and there must
Speaker 2: have been thirty people sitting on the bed of the
Speaker 2: truck and it was, you know, going through three feet
Speaker 2: deep of water to get them out, and another couple
Speaker 2: of guys and a john boat paddling out, and they
Speaker 2: were paddling with six inch wide pieces of red oat
Speaker 2: that they'd taken from the lumber company just to get
Speaker 2: out the death the people in the in the Dome.
Speaker 2: It was tragic. For anybody to watch it was it
Speaker 2: was significant. I mean, anybody alive at that time remembers it.
Speaker 2: But for somebody from there, whose friends were from there,
Speaker 2: who grew up there, it had to have and even
Speaker 2: more poignant significance to you as you watched.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there's it's I still, you know, almost
Speaker 1: twenty years later, find it difficult trying to explain it
Speaker 1: to people, you know, to sit there and watch in
Speaker 1: real time as the place that you you know and
Speaker 1: love more dearly than than anywhere else in the entire
Speaker 1: world get swallowed up and you know, to not have
Speaker 1: any idea whether it's going to continue to exist, you know,
Speaker 1: in the.
Speaker 2: And we're talking one of the world class cities in
Speaker 2: the world, one of the most amazing places with its
Speaker 2: culture and its architecture, it's food and the trolleys and
Speaker 2: uptown in Tulane and the French Quarter and all of
Speaker 2: what New Orleans is is sunk, and the people are sunk.
Speaker 2: And people are going to Memphis, people are going to Houston,
Speaker 2: people are fleeing to Shreveport, people are fleeing to cities
Speaker 2: I mean literally all over the southeast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, We were packed here. I mean there was there
Speaker 1: were several Yeah, several gyms were used as overflow for
Speaker 1: the hotels. My whole family was was was was here,
Speaker 1: and so it was I really I remember cooking on
Speaker 1: that that Monday night after you know, we had been
Speaker 1: watching this this all day long and all of a
Speaker 1: huge number of family, friends and acquaintances were in town
Speaker 1: and just sort of how quiet the dining room was
Speaker 1: at the at the grocery was it was like a
Speaker 1: wake almost that you know, folks were drinking hard, but
Speaker 1: it was it was very quiet, almost like a church service.
Speaker 1: And so there was you know that there was something
Speaker 1: you know, akin to a you know, a family member
Speaker 1: being lost or potentially lost or in the ICU that
Speaker 1: you know, it was just really challenging to explain the
Speaker 1: breadth of emotion. And in that afternoon before that service,
Speaker 1: I I called my whole management team together and and
Speaker 1: I told him, I said, I don't I don't know
Speaker 1: where I'm going, because I mean, God bless him. In
Speaker 1: the in the early part of the coverage of the storm,
Speaker 1: the Gulf Coast, that the Mississippi Gulf Coast, which was
Speaker 1: largely forgotten because the pictures of New Orleans. You know,
Speaker 1: underwater was much sexier than just the Gulf Coast that
Speaker 1: had been wiped out and all of the detritus being
Speaker 1: sucked out to the golf And so I sat down
Speaker 1: with all these guys and I said, look, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know where I'm going to go or or
Speaker 1: how long I'm uh, you know, I'm going to be gone,
Speaker 1: but I've got to go do something. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is this is my home. There's got to be something
Speaker 1: that we can do. And uh so my my dad
Speaker 1: and I loaded up and we rode down to New
Speaker 1: Orleans on on about day four.
Speaker 2: And this was before.
Speaker 1: The National Guard had moved in you know, local parish deputies.
Speaker 2: Which meant it was not largely safe either.
Speaker 1: Well, we just didn't know, right, That's what nobody knew
Speaker 1: anything about that.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: The concern was that with all these folks that were
Speaker 1: moving about the city, we didn't know what was underwater
Speaker 1: and what wasn't underwater. You know, that if folks were
Speaker 1: going to loot, that the entire area that had the
Speaker 1: most affluent homes in the city, you know, was wide
Speaker 1: open to to burglary. But I think in retrospect that
Speaker 1: you know, even folks in the city had no idea
Speaker 1: you know, what was underwater and what wasn't And.
Speaker 2: Because there was no electricity anywhere, right, No, I mean
Speaker 2: the whole city.
Speaker 1: No, it was the the craziest thing, uh, that I
Speaker 1: experienced through it all. Was our first morning in the city.
Speaker 1: As the sun came up and I walked out into
Speaker 1: the middle of the street. It was it was so
Speaker 1: dark you could not see your hand in front of
Speaker 1: your face, no light, there was no light. But walking out,
Speaker 1: you know, into the street as sun was beginning to break,
Speaker 1: and there was no noise. It was so quiet. It
Speaker 1: was definitely definitely loud. I mean there was no bugs,
Speaker 1: there was no cars, There were no air conditioner compression
Speaker 1: compressors running, there was no street cars. Uh. All the
Speaker 1: the you know, the bugs and birds had been blown
Speaker 1: out or had you know, had flown out, you know,
Speaker 1: in in front of the storm, and so there wasn't
Speaker 1: a single sound. And so to stand there, you know,
Speaker 1: several days after the storm, there was there was more
Speaker 1: organic matter on the ground than I had ever seen anywhere,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was just beginning to decompose, and
Speaker 1: so there was this smell of sort of organic decay
Speaker 1: and then this deafening silence, and that was it. I mean,
Speaker 1: it just so too.
Speaker 2: And for a notoriously noisy place, there's always.
Speaker 1: Well and it was, Yeah, And it was the moment
Speaker 1: where I realized, you know, it didn't smell like I
Speaker 1: was accustomed to it smelling. I couldn't describe what New
Speaker 1: Orleans smelled like before. I mean I could certainly describe
Speaker 1: with Bourbon Street.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: You know, but what my home smells like something that
Speaker 1: you become that it just becomes that much of your being.
Speaker 1: There's no way to describe how in an instant when
Speaker 1: that changes, how prof only moving it is. It's very surreal.
Speaker 1: And so you know, that was that was really what
Speaker 1: was the most a sort of recognizable experience day one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: being there on day one it was crazy.
Speaker 2: So I, starting as a freshman, would gather up money
Speaker 2: and run down to New Orleans two or three times
Speaker 2: a year. Like I said, it's one of Lisa in
Speaker 2: my favorite cities. But it's long been one of my
Speaker 2: favorite places, you know, as a college kid and an
Speaker 2: young adult. And you know, I found places to eat
Speaker 2: that I thought were cool, and one was Mother's. I
Speaker 2: love the roast beef with all that gravy over the bread.
Speaker 1: I mean debris. What's that the debris?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it. And I love Mothers. Another place I
Speaker 2: like to go late night if I was hungry and
Speaker 2: had had too much with Portocol. Huh. They used to
Speaker 2: have a big fat file at I bet they still do.
Speaker 2: But I know you know what portocol is.
Speaker 1: Well, no, I just for the sake of experimented, I
Speaker 1: have had a month sooner two in there. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that that burger was was was what it was all about.
Speaker 2: They're still around. Oh yeah, okay. Well, and believe it
Speaker 2: or not, fried chicken at a place that you are
Speaker 2: all too familiar with now And there's a place that
Speaker 2: I'm gonna let them tell you about, widely known for
Speaker 2: her fried chicken. And I've had it before. I haven't
Speaker 2: had it since it's uh, since it's reopened, but I've
Speaker 2: had it before. And why don't you tell us about
Speaker 2: Willie may Scotch House.
Speaker 1: Well, I think it has to start a block away
Speaker 1: at Dookie Chase.
Speaker 2: And Dookie Chase I don't even know what that is.
Speaker 1: So Doukie Chase is one of the most historic restaurants
Speaker 1: in the city. Really, the only way that I can
Speaker 1: can really couch it effectively is that it is the
Speaker 1: black part of the population's commander's palace.
Speaker 2: Was Wow, I bet it's amazing.
Speaker 1: Well it is. And Leah Chase, who was the grand
Speaker 1: dame of the restaurant for years. It was originally her husband,
Speaker 1: originally her husband's family's restaurant. Her husband was the heir
Speaker 1: apparent to the restaurant, was more interested in being a
Speaker 1: musician than he was being a restaurant tour and Leah
Speaker 1: took up the mantle of running the restaurant and gave
Speaker 1: it that's new life in the in the forties and fifties,
Speaker 1: and that restaurant entertained from the forties and until Barack
Speaker 1: Obama was president. You name any black celebrity in movie, sports, television, politics,
Speaker 1: if they came to New Orleans, they came and they
Speaker 1: ate it too. Get Chase, and they sat, you know,
Speaker 1: on bended knee, you know, next to Leah, just because
Speaker 1: she was a woman to be reckoned with and respected.
Speaker 2: Wow. And that's very And that's a block away.
Speaker 1: It's a block away. And so Leah became like a
Speaker 1: third grandmother to me, and we had a magnificent relationship,
Speaker 1: and it's it's one of the things that I treasured
Speaker 1: more dearly than about anything in my life when it
Speaker 1: comes to curation of folks and Leah. Her lunch menu
Speaker 1: was largely a sort of a New Orleans version of
Speaker 1: a meat in three.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: She would do you know, trout moniere and fried chicken
Speaker 1: and smothered chicken, pork chops, and then had a selection
Speaker 1: of yams, green beans, spoon bread. But inside of the restaurant,
Speaker 1: I mean it was tricked out to the nines and
Speaker 1: then has one of these most spectacular collections of African
Speaker 1: American art that exists in the city of New Orleans.
Speaker 1: She was a prolific collector, and so the restaurant was
Speaker 1: absolutely beautiful. So I would regularly when I was in
Speaker 1: New Orleans make a lunch stop with Leah to visit
Speaker 1: with her and eat fried chicken, then get on the
Speaker 1: to drive home to Oxford, you know, late afternoon. And
Speaker 1: a friend of mine from childhood who wrote for the
Speaker 1: paper one day we were leaving together, and then there
Speaker 1: had been a fam trip, a bunch of traveling food
Speaker 1: writers that were in town doing a piece on New Orleans,
Speaker 1: and it all been brought to Lea's and he said,
Speaker 1: you know, I sat here and listened to you, and
Speaker 1: I've done this for years. You talked about how great
Speaker 1: Lea's fried chicken is and blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: And this is my friend's named Lolis Eli, and Lois
Speaker 1: grew up in Uptown. Both of his parents were academics,
Speaker 1: and Lolis was black. And he said, let me tell
Speaker 1: you something, white boy, the best chick. You don't know
Speaker 1: where the best chicken is. It's right around the corner,
Speaker 1: and you need to go. You need to go try
Speaker 1: Willie May sometime and see what it's like. And so
Speaker 1: I don't remember if it was on that trip that
Speaker 1: just went around. I thought I'll grab a sack on
Speaker 1: my way out the door, or if it was the
Speaker 1: next time, but I I went around the corner, and
Speaker 1: I felt like I was cheating on my girlfriend, buying check,
Speaker 1: buying fried chicken from Willie Mays. And if I tell
Speaker 1: you that, I mean Willie Mays was a hole in
Speaker 1: the wall at the dining room had about five tables
Speaker 1: and fifteen or sixteen chairs. It was just covered in
Speaker 1: grease and invariably you go in there and there would
Speaker 1: be a pair of police officers sitting at one table,
Speaker 1: a couple guys that may or may not have been
Speaker 1: crack dealers at another. You know, it was, it was,
Speaker 1: but it was really like the It was the safe
Speaker 1: house for everybody. And she had chicken and smothered pork chops,
Speaker 1: and then on Friday shoot she would fry They should
Speaker 1: fry some fish, but you got any of those things
Speaker 1: with either white beans or red beans and rice, and
Speaker 1: then two pieces of white bread cut in half and
Speaker 1: just dropped on your plate. And that was it. And
Speaker 1: so anyway, I grabbed some fried chicken and took it
Speaker 1: out the door and got in the car with it,
Speaker 1: and I was full as hell when I got on
Speaker 1: the road, but I remember sitting there and I hadn't
Speaker 1: even you know, made it out to the airport before
Speaker 1: I was like, I can't stand the smell of this anymore.
Speaker 1: This is too much. And I remember biting into that
Speaker 1: chicken while I was driving down the interstate, and the
Speaker 1: skin was so crisp it almost shattered in my mouth.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was spectacular, and I thought, I was like, damn, lolss,
Speaker 1: one hundred percent right, this is the best freaking fried
Speaker 1: chicken I've ever eaten in my entire life, and so
Speaker 1: that became that became my regular practice of sneaking around
Speaker 1: on my girlfriend and eating fried chicken and sort of
Speaker 1: winking at everybody and telling them.
Speaker 2: Really may and now a few messages from our general sponsors.
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Speaker 1: Willie Mays was only so dooky chases on Orleans Boulevard,
Speaker 1: which is a four lane that runs through that neighborhood,
Speaker 1: and that neighborhood that's sort of the edge of Tremy
Speaker 1: in it, or I think it's where Tremy and the
Speaker 1: Seventh Ward butt up to each other and so they
Speaker 1: argue about which one it actually is. Whatever it was
Speaker 1: before the storm, it was one of the worst neighborhoods
Speaker 1: in the city of New Orleans. I mean it was awful.
Speaker 1: I mean to the point where Willie May was not
Speaker 1: open at night. She lived. It was it was a
Speaker 1: shotgun that the restaurant was in and the restaurant was
Speaker 1: on one side and her house, her living quarters, were
Speaker 1: on the other side. But it was one of those
Speaker 1: places where everybody understood. The reason why everybody could go
Speaker 1: in there and eat was because it was one hundred
Speaker 1: percent off limits for any bs. I mean, she worked
Speaker 1: only in cash. Everybody, you know, who whoever went there
Speaker 1: knew that, you know, and she lived hand in mouth,
Speaker 1: so she had that. She had a coffee can full
Speaker 1: of wadded up bills that she bought her groceries with,
Speaker 1: I mean in the house. But you know, you didn't
Speaker 1: rob Willie May.
Speaker 2: But you didn't.
Speaker 1: You did not venture off by one block from Orleans
Speaker 1: once the sun went down.
Speaker 2: So William May is, as I understand the story, grew
Speaker 2: up in Mississippi, went to New Orleans, and I think
Speaker 2: opened this place in like the forties or fifties, opened
Speaker 2: a bar and was selling scotch, but she was cooking
Speaker 2: for her family. People smelled the smell and so she
Speaker 2: started selling what she was cooking. Is that about right?
Speaker 2: Is that story close?
Speaker 1: Yeah, The part of the building which is now the
Speaker 1: I guess the back part of the restaurant now was
Speaker 1: just storage when we went in and started working on it.
Speaker 1: That was originally a salon. And so she she came
Speaker 1: to New Orleans and was working as a cosmetologist I
Speaker 1: think she was cutting hair and and doing stuff, and
Speaker 1: grabbed a piece of the building and opened the bar.
Speaker 2: And cosmetology during the day and bartender at.
Speaker 1: Night and yep, and started doing that and then her
Speaker 1: food caught on and and ultimately the salon left and
Speaker 1: at some point the Scotch House took up the whole building.
Speaker 1: But by the time I started going and eating there,
Speaker 1: it was literally just the front, little bitty room and
Speaker 1: then the kitchen immediately adjacent to it at the back
Speaker 1: of it was just that's always just a mess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's that's what it was. And it was candidly,
Speaker 2: this little little African American woman who was old but
Speaker 2: don't think she was not strong, cook and chicken, and
Speaker 2: people from all walks of life going there because it
Speaker 2: was the best chicken in the world. And I assume
Speaker 2: her fish was probably just as good and making a
Speaker 2: life and that's part of you know, your life and
Speaker 2: where you came from. And Katrina hits and that is
Speaker 2: the very area that got the worst of the flooding, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was about eight feet of water. I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: the worst when you got out to Lakeview where seventeenth
Speaker 1: Street canal busted and you just you know, you had
Speaker 1: a fire hose of water coming through there, and you
Speaker 1: know they had it, so it took a lot.
Speaker 2: How deep was that restaurant under water?
Speaker 1: Eight feet?
Speaker 2: Eight feet? Yeah, eight feet And if we go back
Speaker 2: to what you said about your first day of stepping
Speaker 2: out in the street and the smell, and it's eight
Speaker 2: feet of that eight feet of deteriorating, rancid, disgusting, stagnant, hot, smelly, floodwak, right,
Speaker 2: which gets into sheet rock, and it gets into insulation,
Speaker 2: and it gets into studs, and it melts paint off
Speaker 2: ceilings where the water didn't even get and it warps furniture,
Speaker 2: even on the second story, and it completely destroys electrical wiring,
Speaker 2: and it is it's not like when you get a
Speaker 2: foot of water in your house for you know, thirty
Speaker 2: minutes because of tub upstairs leaks. It's it's standing rancid
Speaker 2: stuff that absolutely reaks carnage, and nobody could live there.
Speaker 2: And all of the folks from these areas took refuge,
Speaker 2: like we said, in places like Jackson, Mississippi, Little Rock, Houston, Shreveport.
Speaker 1: Yet wherever the busses took.
Speaker 2: Them, wherever the buses took them, because these are largely
Speaker 2: people of very very little means, and their only way
Speaker 2: to survive was to get on a bus. And they
Speaker 2: bus took them where the bus took them, and then
Speaker 2: they ended up sleeping on cots in churches and Red
Speaker 2: Cross stations. That's pretty much it, right, except for Willie May, who,
Speaker 2: at eighty nine years old, said, my entire life is
Speaker 2: that restaurant. That's my home, my restaurant, my place work.
Speaker 2: And she got an airplane, slipped away from her family
Speaker 2: and got an airplane by herself and flew back to
Speaker 2: New Orleans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there may be some question on whether it
Speaker 1: was an airplane or bus. It doesn't matter. She was
Speaker 1: ninety and the restaurant was all she knew, and I
Speaker 1: mean it was her I mean, it was her reason
Speaker 1: for being And so yeah, she slipped away from her family,
Speaker 1: came back to New Orleans. The water had been pumped
Speaker 1: off and receded, you know at this point, you know,
Speaker 1: and so what remained was this shell of a building
Speaker 1: that had been neglected for eighty years that was just
Speaker 1: totally washed out, so you know, and what it did
Speaker 1: was just basically, you know, it gave everything you know,
Speaker 1: inside of her building the ability to just say, oh
Speaker 1: the hell with it, just right. And so it was
Speaker 1: a it was a it was a mess. And the
Speaker 1: reason that I got involved is to go back to
Speaker 1: May of that year. So Katrina hit on August twenty ninth,
Speaker 1: in the beginning of May of two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: at the James Beard Awards William they had been recognized
Speaker 1: as one of the four America's Classics to be recognized
Speaker 1: that year. They recognized restaurants that that are that are
Speaker 1: not you know, fufie, you know, over the top. They're
Speaker 1: they're carrying on a tradition that wouldn't exist if the
Speaker 1: folks populating, you know, that business were not there to
Speaker 1: carry on the tradition. And she she she was awarded
Speaker 1: an America's Classic. And so she comes back to New Orleans,
Speaker 1: I mean we a group of us, had to figure
Speaker 1: out how to get her to New York at almost ninety,
Speaker 1: to get her to up on stage, to get her
Speaker 1: to the awards, up on stage, get her paid for,
Speaker 1: I mean all of it. She I mean she literally
Speaker 1: could not have lived any more hand of mouth than
Speaker 1: she did.
Speaker 2: I mean, she her money in a coffee can, yep.
Speaker 1: And you know, bought her stuff from the grocery store,
Speaker 1: got into the restaurant, prepared it, you know, saved the money.
Speaker 1: Her great granddaughter got tipped. And that's how she made
Speaker 1: her money, and that's how they lived. And so all
Speaker 1: of a sudden she comes back and there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of recognition. You know, she got doubles, her triples
Speaker 1: in business, all of a sudden, Folks are you know,
Speaker 1: taking interest in this place. And so she was struggling
Speaker 1: a little bit with you know, an increase of business.
Speaker 1: She did pretty much all the work in the kitchen
Speaker 1: by herself at eighty nine, and her great granddaughter helped
Speaker 1: out a little bit, but her great granddaughter had to
Speaker 1: basically do all the hustling out in the dining room.
Speaker 1: And so this is all of a sudden at a
Speaker 1: new level they were struggling to figure it out anyway.
Speaker 1: Then the storm hits and everybody picks up, you know,
Speaker 1: and goes off to Houston, and so, yeah, she she
Speaker 1: can't get her head around at all, and so takes off,
Speaker 1: comes back to New Orleans. Is apparently just despondent, sitting
Speaker 1: on the curb.
Speaker 2: Living and everything she owns was in that restaurant slash house, yeah,
Speaker 2: and was rooted.
Speaker 1: And a New Orleans Police Department officer finds her sitting
Speaker 1: on the stoop and goes up to you know, get
Speaker 1: her identification, find out who she is. Willie May is,
Speaker 1: you know. At this point, is just she's in shock.
Speaker 1: She can't talk, she doesn't have any idea, and the
Speaker 1: officer ends up going through her purse with her, and
Speaker 1: wrapped up in tissue paper in her purse is her Beard.
Speaker 2: Award, which is amazing too itself, right in that And.
Speaker 1: So the police officer calls the Beard Foundation, the Beard Foundations. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're not charge over, but you could try
Speaker 1: this guy, Lolas Eli, he might be able to help.
Speaker 1: So they get in touch with Lolis and Lolus calls
Speaker 1: me and another friend here in town, John t Edge,
Speaker 1: who runs the Southern Food Waste Alliance and says they've
Speaker 1: found Willie May. And he says, we got to do
Speaker 1: something to help her. And at the time that that
Speaker 1: I got that phone call, I was in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Philadelphia, Misissippi,
Speaker 1: and I had done the casino, had done a fundraiser.
Speaker 1: I was getting phone calls to go everywhere to work
Speaker 1: fundraisers to raise you know, five thousand, seven, ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars here and there. Money that wasn't accomplishing anything. But
Speaker 1: until I could find out what my job was going
Speaker 1: to be, I said yes to everything. And I get
Speaker 1: this call in Philadelphia, and you know, we said, look,
Speaker 1: this is something we can get our arms around. I
Speaker 1: know that restaurant, I know what's there. This is something
Speaker 1: that we could take on and you know, put up
Speaker 1: some new sheet rock where sheet could come down, just
Speaker 1: get her, you know right, you know, polish off the equipment,
Speaker 1: and then off.
Speaker 2: We got five weeks off.
Speaker 1: Yeah again. The second worst miss calculation of my entire life.
Speaker 2: The first miscalculation was going to an all male college
Speaker 2: in Virginia in the middle of nowhere and thinking how
Speaker 2: could it get distracted there? But ended up there were
Speaker 2: about five all girl colleges nearby. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: So we got in and we partnered with some folks
Speaker 1: that were part of a preservation group out of the
Speaker 1: northeast that had said they wanted to sink their teeth
Speaker 1: into into something, and so they brought down all these
Speaker 1: ivy lead educated fellas to you know, sort of take
Speaker 1: a look at the building and and help us, you know,
Speaker 1: figure out the best way that we could surgically remove
Speaker 1: the weather board on the outside of the building up
Speaker 1: to six feet.
Speaker 2: For God's sake, isn't it funny how smart people could
Speaker 2: be so stupid?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it was, you know, it was all dry rod,
Speaker 1: and so it started splintering immediately, and you know there
Speaker 1: was just there was going to be no salveging in it.
Speaker 2: And so what termites thinkites would be a thing? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know termites, you know, you know urmites work. You know,
Speaker 1: you've got to have regular moisture and water, right, right,
Speaker 1: you know, you've got to have a post that's that's
Speaker 1: sitting on concrete that's sunk and gotten into wet dirt.
Speaker 2: Right so they can crawl up in a nest, right,
Speaker 2: I respectild like that was eating up with.
Speaker 1: This, Uh, this is a building that there was a
Speaker 1: lot of dry rot. But I mean it was it
Speaker 1: was some wood that had that had dry cured and hardened,
Speaker 1: you know, to petrified. Wow, it was it was yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the there we was still magnificent issues the
Speaker 1: back half of the building. Once we we sort of
Speaker 1: dug into it, determined that there were about eight layers
Speaker 1: of shingles that had been laid on top of shingles,
Speaker 1: so shingle on shingle on shingle. The roof was setting.
Speaker 1: From a construction standpoint, I don't think in the back
Speaker 1: half of the building that there was a single there
Speaker 1: was anything bigger than a two by four framing up
Speaker 1: the roof, right, so that should be two by eights, right,
Speaker 1: And what's worse is there wasn't two by four that
Speaker 1: spanned all the way from the apex to an outside wall.
Speaker 1: Everyone scabbed everything was scabbed together, and so all of
Speaker 1: a sudden we realized that, you know, we've got you know,
Speaker 1: two tons of shingles that the hand of God is keeping.
Speaker 2: In probably six tenpenny nails.
Speaker 1: Right, and removing that was was really dangerous. Anyway, the uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the point was we got into this thing.
Speaker 1: We thought, five weeks, we can get the sheet rock
Speaker 1: cleared out, get it cleaned up, hang new sheet rock,
Speaker 1: paint it, get it ready to go, get the stuff
Speaker 1: plugged back in, and off we go.
Speaker 2: And she can be cooking chicken, making her living again,
Speaker 2: and in an area of the city that desperately needed
Speaker 2: one thing to look fixed again. This is the flag
Speaker 2: I was talking about. I mean, this is an area
Speaker 2: of the city that there was a lot of neglect.
Speaker 2: It's not like the federal government swooped in and helped
Speaker 2: out all that much.
Speaker 1: No, no, I did. I mean I had two calls
Speaker 1: from the White House where they wanted to come take
Speaker 1: pictures there over the course of the project and take
Speaker 1: credit for it. And I may or may not have
Speaker 1: ended up on a on a watch list because of
Speaker 1: some language I used.
Speaker 2: The city desperately needed things to open that reminded them
Speaker 2: of New Orleans and their culture, and this was one
Speaker 2: of them. And so in and out in five weeks
Speaker 2: you got the people from the northeast going to help out,
Speaker 2: and no problem, right, and it ended up.
Speaker 1: Being well, it ended up being the sixteen eighteen month project. Instead,
Speaker 1: the folks from the Preservation Society threw up their hands
Speaker 1: after week four and said, this is beyond the scope
Speaker 1: of our ability.
Speaker 2: You mean the Northeast smart people. Yeah right, and I
Speaker 2: think we just lost that. The show just lost all
Speaker 2: of the New England listeners.
Speaker 1: Harbor no ill feelings. Yeah, so the same group of
Speaker 1: us ended up back on the phone once we realized okay,
Speaker 1: we've gone through five weeks now, and folks came from
Speaker 1: all over the world. So the Southern Food Ways Alliance
Speaker 1: helped set up, you know, a network to encourage volunteers
Speaker 1: who wanted to come to New Orleans and help out
Speaker 1: to do something, to come work with us.
Speaker 2: Kind of like you were, I want to do something,
Speaker 2: but how And this gave the answer to the how
Speaker 2: to well intentioned people that wanted to volunteer, And so
Speaker 2: you had a small army of people show up as
Speaker 2: a result of them plugging those people in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, you know, five weeks past. It turns out
Speaker 1: it took every bit of those five weeks to get
Speaker 1: the place cleaned out. I think in the first five
Speaker 1: weeks we ended up getting the roof off of the
Speaker 1: back part of the building, reframing the roof with proper
Speaker 1: timber and reroofing it. So we got it in the dry.
Speaker 1: But the rest of the building, this is twenty five
Speaker 1: hundred square feet, was completely gutted to studs. There was
Speaker 1: and by the way, there was no insulation. You know,
Speaker 1: it was wiring from the thirties, forties, fifties. I mean
Speaker 1: there were still a couple of circuits that were being
Speaker 1: carried on insulators. The plumbing, yeah, I mean, and there
Speaker 1: was you know, there were lead pipes, there was cast iron,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there was no ac I mean, so.
Speaker 2: We put something just You've got a business to run,
Speaker 2: so how how are you working that? Well?
Speaker 1: This the first five weeks, it just went down on
Speaker 1: the weekend, so you know, I can work during the
Speaker 1: week and then go down and do my thing. You know,
Speaker 1: when we ended up with follow the follow up phone
Speaker 1: call with myself and Lolis and John t. Edge and
Speaker 1: maybe one or two other PEOP people in there at
Speaker 1: this point, and everybody is scratching their heads, going, what
Speaker 1: the hell are we going to do now? And I
Speaker 1: just out of the blue, I just said I got it.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you guys will continue to help, you know,
Speaker 1: arrange volunteers, I'll I'll take this thing on. That's I'm
Speaker 1: just that dangerous that I know, you know that much
Speaker 1: about construction. And I've got I've got tools and generators
Speaker 1: and you know, and I've got a couple of friends
Speaker 1: here and there that'll help out. But you know, this
Speaker 1: isn't a huge job. This is the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that we can do and we'll get some support out
Speaker 1: of like people will be interested in this story. And folks, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, there was a massive fascination
Speaker 1: with southern food. You know, you had people who were
Speaker 1: just pouring their hearts out about the significance of New
Speaker 1: Orleans at that point and wanted to be a part
Speaker 1: of it. They were looking for feel good stories. You know,
Speaker 1: everybody was lobbing grenades at the federal government. And you know,
Speaker 1: and let me be very clear. You know, when a
Speaker 1: lot of people feel like they know, you know, what
Speaker 1: my politics are and how I feel, and you know,
Speaker 1: there was no playbook for how to deal with that.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think we had, you know, president
Speaker 1: who had some magnificently wrong people and wrong positions at
Speaker 1: the time when all this happened, and so you know,
Speaker 1: could the response have been better, sure, but who the
Speaker 1: hell was thinking at that time. Okay, well, let's just
Speaker 1: say New Orleans floods and the entire city right, like,
Speaker 1: what do we do? So, you know, it was easy
Speaker 1: for us to look like these knights and shining armor
Speaker 1: going into, you know, a blight neighborhood taking on a
Speaker 1: restaurant that very few people knew about. But the story
Speaker 1: was that if we didn't do it, there was no insurance,
Speaker 1: there was no savings, that this was a fifty year
Speaker 1: old fried chicken restaurant that would cease to exist in
Speaker 1: that moment. I mean, if we had not stepped in,
Speaker 1: you know, I believe fully that you know, that building
Speaker 1: would be a pile of rubble on that corner right now.
Speaker 2: Which, by the way, today there are still shells of
Speaker 2: buildings littering the New Orleans landscape from Katrina that nothing's
Speaker 2: happened with now. So when you say a pile of rubble,
Speaker 2: don't think that all this revitalization and all these areas
Speaker 2: going around and this thing would have been cleared and
Speaker 2: a Starbucks sitting on the corner, It literally would probably
Speaker 2: just be a collapsed pile of rubble, like so many
Speaker 2: structures all this time later, still really are right.
Speaker 1: Yet now it is a building that six days a
Speaker 1: week has a line outside two hours long waiting to
Speaker 1: get in. I mean like that, it's unbelievable. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is a you know it.
Speaker 2: It was nothing like that when when I went through it.
Speaker 1: No, and and so, you know, I think the combination
Speaker 1: of the press that it got, the association that was
Speaker 1: made between the Southern Food Ways Alliance and Willie Mays,
Speaker 1: you know, and the fact then that once they reopened,
Speaker 1: you know, every food show and every food writer wanted
Speaker 1: to come through there and shoot footage and you know,
Speaker 1: and write about it being the best fried chicken in
Speaker 1: the country. And you know, YadA YadA YadA that there
Speaker 1: was the response to it was was explosive. And you know,
Speaker 1: here we are twenty years later and Carrie Seaton is
Speaker 1: still sitting on that corner, uh, you know, making fried chicken,
Speaker 1: you know, every day and we say this all the time.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: The thing that's really inspiring about it from a generational standpoint,
Speaker 1: that restaurant is better today than it was on the
Speaker 1: best day that her great grandmother cooked in it.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. Willie May was there the entire
Speaker 2: sixteen months from the day she showed up in Houston,
Speaker 2: sitting on the corner to when you showed up in
Speaker 2: her life and all the volunteers. But sadly, once it
Speaker 2: finally opened up at ninety two, I think ninety one
Speaker 2: years old.
Speaker 1: Ninety two years now, she'd have been ninety one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at ninety one years old, she was just physically
Speaker 2: unable to stand over the stove and cook all day,
Speaker 2: and mentally it took a toll on her and she
Speaker 2: was never able really to to work in and run
Speaker 2: her restaurant again. But her great granddaughter stepped up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a that that part of the of
Speaker 1: the process was going away, the most challenging part.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I at the for the for the better part of
Speaker 1: a year, I was going down to New Orleans, you know, twice,
Speaker 1: I mean three times every two weeks. Basically, I'd go
Speaker 1: down for three days, come home for a couple of days,
Speaker 1: three days, come home for a couple of days, four days,
Speaker 1: you know, and work and come home for a couple yard.
Speaker 2: I mean, running a business going back and forth, that's
Speaker 2: that's a that's a lot for a fourteen month stint.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: But I was forty and you know, I still had
Speaker 1: a lot of energy when I was forty.
Speaker 2: I remember those days too, But uh.
Speaker 1: So I spent a lot of time in there by myself.
Speaker 1: Willie May, Willie May would her son drove a taxi
Speaker 1: wan bring her over and unload her and put her
Speaker 1: in a chair, and she'd sit in the corner with
Speaker 1: the newspaper and just talked to me whatever I was doing.
Speaker 1: And you know, and as we moved through this project,
Speaker 1: in the project was was was getting written about, and
Speaker 1: there was interest in it. You know, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: family members started showing up that never had any interest
Speaker 1: in the restaurant before. And in their minds, you know,
Speaker 1: this is something that is all of a sudden. You know,
Speaker 1: they've got some sort of you know, generational equity in it,
Speaker 1: and you know this is gonna inorder their benefits somehow.
Speaker 2: And which is not what you bought in for now.
Speaker 1: Right, And as you know, as time went along, they
Speaker 1: were manipulating Willie May. Willie May was getting very confused.
Speaker 1: She was, you know, I watched a woman who went
Speaker 1: from a you know, a seventy year old, ninety year old,
Speaker 1: you know, into a full one hundred year old, ninety
Speaker 1: year old, just by virtue of the fact that she
Speaker 1: was taken out of her regular routine that she had
Speaker 1: been in for fifty years.
Speaker 2: And she may not have died in the flood, but
Speaker 2: the flood killed her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, and she survived for you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of years, a couple of five, six years
Speaker 1: after the storm, I mean, after we got her reopened,
Speaker 1: and I mean, I don't know how much she was there,
Speaker 1: but the infighting that went on, you know, led me
Speaker 1: to a place where there were moments when I was
Speaker 1: in there, and I mean I was on my knees
Speaker 1: praying because I didn't know what these hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: of hours we're going to ultimately lead to. If we
Speaker 1: were going to, like there was a possibility in my mind,
Speaker 1: we could hand the keys over these folks and they
Speaker 1: go thanks, And next thing we know, they're nailing a
Speaker 1: for sale sign to the side of the building and
Speaker 1: then they're just going to split up whatever it is
Speaker 1: that they can can make off of it.
Speaker 2: As you know, as a Catholic, no good deed goes unpunished.
Speaker 1: Of course, and you know, and that was, you know,
Speaker 1: and that was one of those things where I really
Speaker 1: had to meditate on you know that you just you
Speaker 1: can't qualify your philanthropy. I mean, you do the right
Speaker 1: thing for the right reason, and no matter what the
Speaker 1: outcome is or what the consequence is, you're just doing.
Speaker 2: Did you question your efforts at some points? Of course,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of money involved, he too. I mean
Speaker 2: you had to have spent a fair amount of money
Speaker 2: doing those raised a fair amount of money.
Speaker 1: We we did, and you know, and and yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I never I never until you just said it, like,
Speaker 1: I never really thought about, you know, what I spent
Speaker 1: out of my pocket. I just didn't care, you know.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of trips up and down the highway,
Speaker 1: you know, to the tune of about one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty bucks a trip, you know, on gas in a
Speaker 1: you know, in a suburban.
Speaker 2: And pepless nights away from your business.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, those just weren't the things that
Speaker 1: I thought about that, you know. The the nice thing
Speaker 1: is that you know, the end of the story is
Speaker 1: that you know, in spite of the fact that you
Speaker 1: know that Willie may ultimately passes, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: right before hundredth birthday, you know that she never did
Speaker 1: work another day you know, in the restaurant, you know,
Speaker 1: but it remains in the hands of the family and.
Speaker 2: The great granddaughter who actually hustled for tips originally, which
Speaker 2: is rightfully where it should have been done. It sounds like, yeah,
Speaker 2: and the recipe on the chicken hadn't changed.
Speaker 1: No. Now it's still spectacular, and you know, and as
Speaker 1: I said, you know, they've expanded the menu slightly, but
Speaker 1: not you know, gone beyond you know, what they're capable
Speaker 1: of serving.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I that I always loved
Speaker 1: was it Willie May You know when I said you
Speaker 1: would get your plate of food with two pieces of
Speaker 1: white bread. You know, she would go through these sunbeam
Speaker 1: or bunny loaves of bread and uh, and she'd serve
Speaker 1: all the bread out of them. And she would keep
Speaker 1: one bag that she'd just throw the heels in. And
Speaker 1: she would throw the heels from the loaves in the
Speaker 1: in the bread bag, throw them in the freezer, and
Speaker 1: hang on to the heels until she had enough heels
Speaker 1: to make a pan of bread pudding. No way, and
Speaker 1: so and it was it was total Russian roulette when
Speaker 1: you went in there, whether she was going to have
Speaker 1: of bread pudding or not. She had bread putting a
Speaker 1: butt once every you know, or two days out of
Speaker 1: every two weeks or.
Speaker 2: Something because she had to get enough eels to make it.
Speaker 1: Right and never saw you know that. Well, maybe if
Speaker 1: I just like left some bread out overnight and let
Speaker 1: it dry out, you know, I could sell bread pudding
Speaker 1: on the rag and uh so, but Carrie now keeps
Speaker 1: bread putting on the menu. Here's a great grandaughterre you operator, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she and she is married and they I think I
Speaker 1: read recently they're they're looking at opening a second location
Speaker 1: in the in the French Quarter or or somewhere. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I hope for her sake, you know, that
Speaker 1: she can do that, that her you know, her work
Speaker 1: continues to pay off because she she could have walked
Speaker 1: away from the same thing and it just wouldn't be there.
Speaker 2: So in that that first few days of that five
Speaker 2: week process where it was going to be five weeks,
Speaker 2: I remember reading that there was and I think you
Speaker 2: said it, you know, it took all that time just
Speaker 2: to get everything out. But I think I remember reading
Speaker 2: that there was a debris field that was the inside
Speaker 2: and outside and what was this place that was like
Speaker 2: ten feet wide by eight foot tall by you know,
Speaker 2: fifty or sixty feet long. Just how many people did
Speaker 2: you have there, because that's a bunch of crap to
Speaker 2: be carrying out of a building and putting on a curve.
Speaker 1: Well, the story of the the people who volunteered, folks
Speaker 1: who came once, folks who came multiple times, Folks who
Speaker 1: came from as far away as Europe and South America?
Speaker 2: Are you kidding? To help you?
Speaker 1: It was? It was, it was, and this was really
Speaker 1: this was not me. This was the SFA, the Southern
Speaker 1: food Ways alone.
Speaker 2: But they were right, yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think that most of them were
Speaker 1: connected to the s f A. You know, there there
Speaker 1: were probably some who just wanted to come and be
Speaker 1: part of something and ended up falling in our laps.
Speaker 1: But those first five weeks, we took a picture every
Speaker 1: weekend with the volunteers on the side of the building,
Speaker 1: and we have a vinyl banner with sort of the
Speaker 1: project name on it, and everybody autographed it. And it
Speaker 1: was hundreds and hundreds of people that came in those
Speaker 1: first five weeks.
Speaker 2: And not just from New Orleans, literally from all over
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: All over the world. And you know that the whole process.
Speaker 1: I made so many amazing friends. There's still a half
Speaker 1: dozen folks that you know, I rubbed up against on
Speaker 1: that project that check in with me from time to time.
Speaker 1: They send me pictures from you know, when they run
Speaker 1: into a big bad breakfast and Charleston. They you know,
Speaker 1: just want to know how I'm doing and what's going on.
Speaker 1: You know, I met my wife and uh we I
Speaker 1: met a woman who would become my wife, and we
Speaker 1: courted through all of this. And you know, there were
Speaker 1: two people that came along as part of that project
Speaker 1: that locked arms with me and spent time with me
Speaker 1: and helped me and became close enough friends that two
Speaker 1: of those guys stood in in our wedding together. I
Speaker 1: mean stood, they stood with us and uh in our wedding.
Speaker 1: That's how profoundly moving, you know, this was that, you know,
Speaker 1: the the relationships that were that were built and or
Speaker 1: forged as a you know, as a result of the
Speaker 1: time that we spent together, and you know, and how
Speaker 1: emotional it was.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was.
Speaker 1: The roller coaster of emotions that went on constantly, you know,
Speaker 1: while they're you know, both you know, being fear, joy sadness, love, ache. Yeah, exhaustion.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a it's it's truly something that you know,
Speaker 1: I can't I can't imagine. Uh, and I know that
Speaker 1: it doesn't come close to, you know, to any sort
Speaker 1: of true uh you know, battlefield reality.
Speaker 2: But there have to be.
Speaker 1: There was definitely some similarities, and it definitely took an
Speaker 1: army of folks, you know, just out of nowhere. But
Speaker 1: there's a pile of those that are you know, they're
Speaker 1: friends for life.
Speaker 2: It's an amazing story. So you taking the time to
Speaker 2: understand that save your involvement. Willie May's legacy ends at Katrina.
Speaker 1: Yeah, more than more than likely. Uh, it's just it's
Speaker 1: one hundred percent at a at a dead end and also, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, open the door to uh, you know, some
Speaker 1: really great exposure. You know, the the volume of business
Speaker 1: they do now is just it's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can do more than a living. Yeah. But
Speaker 2: the point is, John, nobody anointed you. You're not a politician.
Speaker 2: You're not You're not somebody that that that tabs you
Speaker 2: the guy to go fix stuff. You're a normal guy
Speaker 2: going through life, building your business, building your brand, working hard,
Speaker 2: and you see a need in your home in the
Speaker 2: face of a catastrophe and you filled it and in
Speaker 2: doing so, you saved a family's legacy and really, honestly
Speaker 2: a piece of New Orleans legacy. And I don't care
Speaker 2: how many Big Bad Breakfasts you build in your career,
Speaker 2: nothing can replace that. And I think it's a fabulous story,
Speaker 2: an amazing story, and you are almost overly humble about it.
Speaker 2: But you know, well, with the risk of sounding condescending,
Speaker 2: you should be proud.
Speaker 1: Well, well, thank you. It's very kind of you to say,
Speaker 1: but I won't lie to you. One of the one
Speaker 1: of the one of my favorite moments from it all
Speaker 1: only came about two years ago when we had a
Speaker 1: hurricane bearing down on New Orleans and uh and I
Speaker 1: was talking to John Ty and I said, the sin
Speaker 1: can't hit New Orleans. I don't have another Fried Chicken
Speaker 1: rest It's sixty years old.
Speaker 2: Hey, listen. One of the things we do is we
Speaker 2: share contact information. If someone here's your story and is
Speaker 2: inspired to help somebody else out that's in need, is
Speaker 2: there an email address through your restaurant business that people
Speaker 2: could reach out to you. I'm easy.
Speaker 1: I'm John at Big Bad Breakfast dot com.
Speaker 2: John at Big Bad Breakfast dot com and you're in
Speaker 2: seventeen cities now right, a big bad breakfast.
Speaker 1: Well, we have seventeen locations.
Speaker 2: Seventeen locations. Yeah, and if you have a big bad
Speaker 2: breakfast in your town, this is a shameless plug. But
Speaker 2: if you have a big bad breakfast in your town
Speaker 2: and you hadn't been, check it out. It's an Oxford
Speaker 2: staple and it is really good breakfast stuff. So and
Speaker 2: if you're ever in Oxford on the Square, check out
Speaker 2: City Grocery or Boo Rah. John's food will be on
Speaker 2: display there. It's been wonderful visiting with you, John. I
Speaker 2: appreciate your time.
Speaker 1: Thanks man, it's been great.
Speaker 2: This is a ball and thank you for joining us
Speaker 2: this week. If John or another guest has inspired you
Speaker 2: in general, or better yet, to take action, please let
Speaker 2: me know. I'd love to hear about it. You can
Speaker 2: write me anytime at Bill at normalfolks dot us and
Speaker 2: I'll respond. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it
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Speaker 2: normal folks for our premium members we'll have bonus content
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