FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Midday Mobile - Dale Liesch talks Pay-As-You-Go and David Preston joins the show - October 10, 2024
There will be no personal nor direct attacks on anyone. And I would ask that you please try to keep down the loud cheering and the clapping. There will be no booing and no unruly behavior with that. This is painful and it will be for a long time. Baby, that's right. This man knows what's up. After all, these are a couple of high-stepping turkeys. And you know what to say about a high stepper? No step too high for a high stepper. This is midday mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 1065. Well, Sean's a tough guy. I mean, I think everybody knows that. You know, Sean, he took some licks. He hangs in there. Yeah, what's wrong with the beer we got? I mean, the deal we got drank pretty good, don't it? Did you hear what I said? So this is a great council. I had no doubt about them. That doesn't suck. If you don't like it, you're bad. Last question. Were you high on drugs? Last question, kiss my ****. All right, here we go. FM Talk 1065 midday mobile on this Thursday. Glad to have you here. Vote number and the text line 343, they're the same. 343 0106 for a phone call or a text. And reminder, yes, yes, yes. I keep harping on it. The FM Talk 1065 app, what are the many things you can do with the app? You can leave us a talkback message. There's a microphone icon on the front page. You can press that, record the message, emails it to the show, and we can play it back. All right, my man Dale Lee from Laney Apps is going to join us in just a second. I do want to read just a couple text here, a few text. No, just a couple for two people and then we'll get to we'll get to Dale because this. Well, there's three and then once set up for for Dale. So Billy, Billy says the question I asked the beginning of last hour and I put that video up. On on Twitter, on the X feed, you know, in searching for hurricane, built in information. I saw this video last night and then it algorithm sent it to me again today. The guy in Florida, the true Florida man moment where he's standing outside his home. Winds look like they're pushing 50 sustained. So any smoking crack. Um, I asked not really interested in the crack part of it, but I was like, how? I need to know about that lighter that works in those kinds of wins. Cause I like to, you know, like my emergency kit and Billy said that's a laser lighter. Okay. So I got to look, Billy, if you can find it online and send me a link, I need one of those. Also, Jason said, speaking of the tunnel, which we did the beginning of last hour, did you see the latest message? And it's OMG Becky. Look at that truck. It's so big. That's funny. When you can put Sir Mix a lot into things, good for whoever did that at the bankhead tunnel. And this all started, of course, with a fire dog, as we got in the conversation yesterday after talking to Spanish, Fort Mayor, Macmillan about the causeway and projects to be done to alleviate, which will be more traffic on the causeway. It was Marty who said he wanted his ashes spread on the causeway. And then I suggested that we actually do a funeral pyre when he dies and burn him there alongside the causeway. And then fire dog suggested in that general area, his desire for a funeral. Would be to be going through the bankhead tunnel in a 22 foot tall truck. And then that's how they get rid of the body. I guess it smacks the bankhead tunnel. So Dale, leash, what do you think? As as a way to go out, you have yourself smashed into the front of the bankhead tunnel. Interesting. Yeah, say that's that's a very interesting. I mean, they're probably worth ways to go. That's right. And then whenever you would drive through there, the friends and loved ones would say, look, there's a little piece of fire dog in there, you know, salute as you go by. So wait, is that like a splat? Is like a stain? That's what I'm thinking. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. It looks like. Yeah, that's what I think it looks like for sure. Yeah. So sometimes sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug, man. Thank you. Well, that's all. All right. So covers, speaking of roads, see, this is that that's the pivot, the segue way there. Speaking of roads, that's why you're, that's why you're the pro, man. That's why you're the pro and thank you and the cover story for landing up this week. The flagship pay as you go road program up again for Mobile County voters. Scott Johnson did the story. I have lived with pay as you go and a discussion. I'm a fan of pay as you go. I like it. I think it makes sense. I shamefully didn't know the history of this until the story rolled out. This is this is fascinating. Yeah, it goes, it goes back. It goes back such a long way that there was a newspaper called the Mobile News item that talked about it, which I, I have never, I've never heard of such a thing. So the news I put us, who does for Scott for digging that up and then could us to Mobile County for being ahead of the game a little bit. Yeah. This is one of those programs where it's like, you know, you always complain. People complain about, I don't know where my tax dollars are going. You know, the government needs to be more accountable for what they're spending my money on. This is one of those things where you could absolutely see where your tax money is going. And I think that's what people who even hard liners who are against like all, you know, the taxation is theft people, even those folks are like, are like, you know, probably not that bad. So yeah, this is a, you know, 6.5 mill, uh, middle tax. And this started, this started to pay for the causeway. That's, that's where it all comes together. We just talked about the causeway, but this. So for, for those of us who have lived with pay as you go, this was something that was put together to build that causeway. Yeah, you'll be, you'll be shocked. It came about because they needed the causeway and, and they were out of money. They couldn't borrow any more money. They were, you know, over-leverage or whatever. And so they came up with this idea and, uh, what is it? 19, the 1920s and they've been, they've been doing it ever since then. And the reason we talked about it this week is, is because it's coming up for, uh, you know, it's coming up for an election. It's coming up on the ballot in November. So, uh, we just wanted to let people know that it's, it's back up, uh, for, you know, uh, sort of re-election, I guess is the way to put it, um, to keep the money going towards those road projects. Now, an interesting, another interesting part of the story is just how, how, you know, you know, how, how much of this they have to use for paving. Cause they've got, you know, miles and miles of dirt roads throughout the county. And so that was the aspect of the story is, you know, we've had pay as you go for however many years we have done. We still have so many miles of dirt roads. And I think everybody would like to see it in a perfect world. All the dirt roads paved in, in the, in the county. But you can absolutely see places where they're in the process of paving. They don't pay the whole road all at once. It's like segment by segment. It's kind of, it's really fascinating. I know on the surface, it doesn't sound like it would be interesting, uh, to talk about roads and bridge money, but it is absolutely fascinating. And so I encourage you guys, if you want to learn a little bit about the history of, of the situation, but also about how the money is used and, and, and the ways that it's used, you should read this story. I do, I mean, I'm doubling up with Dale says, you don't need to read this because I learned, you know, I kind of, I've been in this business and I realized, holy cow, I'm ignorant on how all this works out there. 100% 100% and, you know, I, I focus almost entirely on, on city, the city and city issues. So for me as somebody who doesn't know that much about how the county operates outside of the couple of years that I covered them, you know, eight years ago, uh, or 10 years ago, this is, uh, ever fascinating. So yeah, you should pick it up definitely. I know there's probably people that are, you know, government kind of people can tell me why my thoughts are, are wrong on this, but the idea, like you said, half paved roads and all that, paying with the money you have, and I guess coming from the private sector just makes sense to me. It's like, uh, discussion is it this discussion is a state discussion of, of how we 45, right? And, and, and deadly it is. And the state, Al Dott saying, well, we don't have, we don't have the money to do the whole thing right now. So we're not going to do anything. And I know this is not paid for the same way, but I said, Hey, how about a little pay as you go at that level where you go, you know, what needs to be done first? Maybe you can't do the whole project today, but can you add some extra lanes in the places where people been killed and then you add some more when you get more money? I mean, just, it's always made so much sense to me, but then again, I'm not a government employee. I'm, you know, private sector. So yeah, yeah, no, I, I, I agree with you. I think, I think it's some, that would work for that today. I think there's some scenarios where you want to have all the money for it up front. Well, the automobile River Bridge project. Yeah, that one, I would say, yes, the bridge project. But like, right, right. Cause you want to have, you don't want that to take, I just feel like construction on that. Construction for years and years and years on something like that would be much more detrimental to traffic flow than say widening segments of 45 where there's been an increase of accidents or putting traffic lights or whatever you got to do to make it safer there. I, you know, I don't travel 45 very much. So I got a bus. Yeah. It's, excuse me. But no, no, I'm happy you don't. Yeah. Yeah. So, but no, it also, it also makes sense from, you know, just a fiscal standpoint to, to not, if you're, to avoid borrowing money, if you can. So, you know, if you don't have to, you know, I think, I think most people think of government, they think we'll get money for our match of this, this, this, you know, what we need to pay off this, this loan, we'll get that up front. We won't get all the money from it. We'll get that up front. And then we'll do the whole project and then we'll spend years paying it back. That is a way that traditionally governments have done things. And it makes, you know, it makes a little bit of sense. You want, if you're doing a big investment, you know, we do it with our houses. They'll have you, you know, you're making a big investment. You make a down payment. You pay it off monthly, you know, monthly. But with this, this scenario, they're not, they're not necessarily doing that. They're, you know, they're paying as they get the money. And it would make sense in a lot of, I think a lot of respect for sure. Here's my next segue. So that is the cover story when you pick up the copy of land app out on the streets now. But land app is a daily and I'm a online person. So I guess, yeah, and I get to see it daily. And you just mentioned, like, for example, there's another story about to hit over at landappmobile.com. As of today, you're writing about that. We were just talking about this the end of last week on the show is mental health care access in the state. And it's been probably brought to a bigger discussion on the VA side of it and what happened on the board and the director, but this is something that is a legacy. It was the first term of Bentley, I think, when he started shutting down the state facilities. What's going on now with this? You get a story coming out on the website this afternoon. Right. And yeah, and I'm not saying that the solution necessarily is reopen all the mental health facilities, all the mental hospitals, because there were, there were reasons why those residential hospitals were closed. But I will say, I will say, we are, we are the third worst state in the country when it comes to access to mental health care, right? That includes the percentage of, and it's based largely on insurance, right? So like a lot of it is either insurance doesn't cover mental health care. So if you might have insurance, you're going to have to pay out of pocket for it. A lot of the times people are just uninsured and they can't get access to mental health. So a lot of it, a lot of it is insurance based here in Alabama. And we're actually, I said we're third worst, we're the third worst state. We're actually the third worst in the state. If you add DC, if you add DC, so we're actually 48 out of 51. So it's not, it's an access to mental health here. And so there's, we got a lot of, we got a lot of work to do now. Now in fairness to the Alabama Department of Mental Health, we are, you know, that is, that is solely insurance based. If you go to quality of care and some of the factors that lead into that, especially when it comes to like youth access to mental health care, specifically, you know, programs and schools and stuff, we're a little bit higher. I think we're 37 for youth access. If you factor in quality of care, we're still, we're still pretty low on overall access to care, but we're higher in some of the other factors. So I just want to point that out that the state is doing things now that it wasn't doing, you know, during the pandemic years. So, you know, you've got more resources going to schools and things like that. So they're trying, but it is a worrying statistic when we're 48 out of 51 in access to mental health. We have got to do better as a state. And part of that, and I talked to some experts, expert from U.S.A., a professor from U.S.A., who was a mental health, who had worked previously as a nurse, a practitioner in a mental health care facility. You know, her thing was there's still a stigma attached to mental health care, right? If you're going, if you're going to therapy, if you're going to, you know, if you're getting medication for a mental health issue, you were having, you know, people might look at you a different way. It might be, you know, and that comes from sort of, that's a generational thing. I was talking to her, and I kind of see it too. Like when I was growing up, I grew up in the late 80s, early 90s, 2000s era. And it was sort of a situation where, you know, your parent, what do you have to be sad about? Why are you depressed? That sort of thing. You heard that a lot, or, you know, I'll give you a reason to be a better person. Not the most caring ways of parenting. It was the way, you know, my parents are great. Made herself from my childhood. Yeah, my parents are great. I'm very, I'm very sick, skinned. But it's, but, you know, now that we know more about mental health care, especially in youth, I think you're seeing, I think you're seeing that change a little bit. Not only, not only from a parental standpoint, but from a society standpoint. So those sorts of things are naturally occurring, but we probably need to do more to make it, you know, to make it better. How? So, yeah. That was, how heavy of a lift is this? You mentioned insurance. Those, you know, as I look at something, okay, can you, is there a triage list? Is the insurance thing, the major issue? Is it there's not a place to go? There's, you know, if I was in a function with state government, I'm trying to fix this. You know, what's my number one, you know, the biggest problem than number two, number three? Well, I, you look at the state too, states that are, that tend to be more rural. I think you're going to have more issues with access. Because what happens is, you know, if you're close to the city of Mobile, you've probably got access to resources that other people don't, right? But if you live, if you live on a farm and, you know, not even Baldwin County, you live, you live in a farm somewhere in the black belt or the middle of the state, where you're further away from, from, from care, you're going to be less likely to get it, right? So that's, that's part of it too. It's, it's, it's, it's, you're worse off if you live in a, in a rural, a rural community. I was going to say a farm in Baldwin County, but I mean, that's just a short driveover. You could make that happen. I think, I think, I think also, um, what was the other thing? Uh, the insurance thing, yeah, you've got, you've got to like, talk to insurance companies that aren't covered and be like, it's very important that you guys cover it. I don't know if it's something you necessarily need the government to step in and mandate, but I, I think if more people bring it up, if you see more people use mental health care, the coverage, they will use it. As an example, I'm on, I'm on P hip, uh, through my wife's, uh, work as a teacher, and they used to cover, I think it was, I think it was 12, uh, sessions with a therapist, uh, a year, so you could go once a month. They've, in the time that I've had P hip, they have gone from that to unlimited. So you can, they cover unlimited trips to a therapist. So you could go weekly if you needed to. And that's, and that's just in the time that I've, that I've been married. The 10 years I've been married, we've seen that increase. So I think you're slowly seeing that the problem kind of resolve itself, but, but I think if more people, yeah, more people use the services and more people demand that the services be covered, I think you're going to see them cut, because they're businesses like anybody else. It's applying demand, right? So I think if you, if you demand it more, I think it'll happen. So that's, that's, that's it. You know, that's, it is a big lift, um, and, uh, and closing all the hospitals all at once is probably or slow or within the same amount of time is probably not the greatest. You know, the transition there is tough, but I, but I think we're, uh, we're doing state, state, state's doing what, uh, what it thinks it needs to do. And I think we could do a lot more insurance wise and help out. All right. People want to check this story out. Of course, it posts the website. So tell them how to get signed up. lany@mobile.com, uh, hit the, hit the subscribe button and get subscribed. It really helps us out. We're, you know, we're locally owned and operated. So it puts food on our tables and it keeps us doing what we're doing, gives us the resources we can do it. It's also out every week, uh, should be out everywhere now in our purple box. Just check it out. All right. Good stuff. Dale, I appreciate it. We'll talk soon. Thanks, John. All right. There goes the deletion. We're all coming right back. This is Midday Mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 1065. [inaudible] Right, uh, 127 FM Talk, one of 65 and Midday Mobile. Glad to have you along. Speaking of the, uh, the promo there for Ask the Sheriff. So we move some things around this month. Schedule lives and this and that for that. Yeah. Coming up on Tuesday, uh, Sheriff Paul Birch will be in. And if you heard John at this last month, we started getting, uh, Baldwin County Sheriff Lowry in as well. So we'll be doing that going forward. So I'll give you some times on that in the future. All right. To the text line here, uh, I got a bunch of them here, uh, to, to, to, to, to, um, so this textor says, uh, this was, this is Billy, which, but, and Billy hooked me up, by the way, gave me the, uh, link to that Amazon, uh, to buy that lighter that the crackhead was using from Florida. I don't want to smoke crack, but a lighter that'll work in a 60 mile per hour wind. I'm in. I'm in. Uh, says, okay, insurance number one, because I asked this question of Dale Leash, you know, I'm just, that's how I look at things and give me a triage. What's the biggest impediment was second was third. And, uh, Billy said that insurance is number one and talent is number two. It does not pay what people think, a PhD, 90 to a hundred thousand dollars. So that's, I guess what they're paying in, in Alabama. Is that the going right on that? I, I, so I have a half sister, my baby sister, uh, does this as a, as it works with children, right? Child therapist, uh, and she's down in, in Dade County, Florida. I don't never ask, you know, don't want to be rude, uh, what she makes. But I know down there and I don't know if it's a nature or her practice or where she is. I, they got a real nice house and her husband, my brother, I'm all pretty sharp kid too. But so I don't know what they get paid there, but this is, uh, so 90 to a hundred thousand here. It's just the way I look at it, let, let's get real, you know, not nobody protecting their own little duchy. What is going, what's, what's wrong? Okay. And then what's the biggest impediment? Let's attack that first. Then what's the second biggest impediment? We'll attack that second, you know, go down the list out there. Um, also Mark, well, we'll get to this. Mark said, Hey, Sean, I was listening to the debate between Dobson and figures today. So that ran. So, uh, ail.com had their debate between the two. Said, as a Dobson supporter, I'm, uh, I'm what I was able to watch the debate. I was slightly disappointed in her performance. She has the policy and she has the good factual arguments, but she was not nearly as good at communication, communicating her position as figures. He's a lot like Obama. His policy is trash, but he's a very good speaker. It's unfortunate, uh, said, uh, just tuning in now, but I haven't touched on yet. I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you were able, I did not see the debate, but I will try and check that out tonight. I know it'll be online trail.com. Yeah, and that may be, I think that's our last debate before November 5th. There may be one more, but I think that might be the last one. All right, be right back. This is midday mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk one oh six five. I dropped one 35 FM talk one oh six five and midday mobile. I'd have you along with a check-in with my buddy playing price from parish come out in in Robert's tail who got to see, uh, in person earlier this week when he's delivering some farm equipment. So, uh, I know we're going to talk about some other things, but, uh, the, uh, he even got the land pride bush hog or road remover for me that matched my Kubota tractor. So that was a big win. Um, now that's the best I've ever looked, man. A brand new piece of equipment that matches the tractor. Thank you. Absolutely. Absolutely. We've got plenty of land pride and stock right now. All the different attachments, uh, we, we got the, the bush hogs. The, uh, pallet forks, grapples, um, finished mowers, box blades, a little bit of everything, uh, all in stock right now. And he also got to see my much referenced old Kubota RTV when I talk about how the new ones look and love mine still run mine, but those new RTVs man, uh, for, for size and amenities, these things are fantastic. Absolutely. And we, we have got, uh, quite a few of those in stock right now. Um, we just unloaded another truck this morning with RTVs on it. And I will say on the RTV 850s, those are the gas burners that Kubota makes. Um, they've got some pretty healthy rebates on them right now up to $2,000. Um, all of that qualifies for zero interest financing on the gas and the diesel RTVs right now, um, as well as all of our tractors, many escalators, skid steers, um, and all the land product attachments all qualify for that zero interest financing right now through Kubota. Let's always say it's on the, you've got rebates and you have the financing as zero. Yeah, so we, we do right now. So it right now is the perfect time that right here at the start of deer season coming up. Um, to, to upgrade, we, we take trade in. So if you, if you've got, um, you know, a full wheeler or another side by side that you want to trade in, we, we will take a trade in, um, on the new ones. Why do I think you're talking to me every time we do this directly? Why do I feel like you're, I just, I just noticed you, I just noticed you're looking a brand new one. So I just want to mention that. You got my attention as well. And also a people that aren't going, uh, people have got maybe some work to do this weekend at rental department, pretty stocked up here with equipment. Absolutely. We got all the different sides and the many excavators, all, uh, the different skid steers, open cab, enclosed cab with all the different attachments. Um, we got plenty of tractors here, uh, at the moment. But I know that by the weekend, those will, will start to leave, uh, because it always happens this time of the year on Fridays, everybody's looking to go to the woods and might need a tractor or an extra tractor to go get all these deer fields planted. So we've got all that, um, in stock right now in our rental department. All right. So that rental department and the new equipment, the RTVs are all where? How do people find you? Well, right here in the middle of Robert's down highway 59. Um, you come by see us Monday through Friday. Um, eight to five or Saturday's eight to noon or give us a call at two, five, one, nine, four, seven, four, one, seven, one. Thank you, Blaine. Thank you, Sean. All right. Uh, there's Blaine Price from Paris tractor in Robert's tail. And let me do this. I'm bringing on my next guest and he, who, who is right now. So listener of FM talk one, oh, six, five caller texture to FM talk one, oh, six, five. And he's kicking out books. Like a pop star kicks out albums or singles, uh, but he wants to talk about something other than just maybe we'll work his books into it. David Preston joining us now. Hey, David, speaking of my books, I've got my third one coming out in November. See, this is out of, it's, it's ridiculous. Okay. It's ridiculous. I mean, it's like, I would think, you know, writing a book, that's a thing I would do once in my life. And here you are. You're doing one and then we're talking and then you got the next one. Now you get the next one. Good for you. Yeah, the next one is going to be a modern day mob murder book based in New Orleans. So, um, good for you. Cause everybody, you sound, we've talked about this before. So many people, not everybody. So many people go, you know, I could write a book, but we never, we never do. All right. We never do. You're, you're one of the, uh, a few that says, you know, the heck with it. I am going to do it and, and follow through, get it done, publish it, then do it again, and publish it. Now I'm getting ready to do it a third time. Good on. Yeah. Yeah, uh, when you, uh, when you get your leg chopped off, uh, and you can't work anymore, you get, uh, it frees up your time to do that kind of stuff. Well, no, but that's, but that's, you know, you did a good thing. Instead of sitting there with nothing. So I, it, it's great reads. I've enjoyed the last two. So can't wait to see the third. But you've got an event coming up that you want to bring everybody's attention to. And when I read the title of this event, I said, if I come out, I feel like I have to be in some kind of linen suit or seersucker or something. But it's the Oakley Literary Lawn Party going on this weekend. Correct. Cause, uh, it's the Oakley Literary, uh, first ever Oakley Literary Lawn Party. It's a book festival, uh, that is a fundraiser to support the historic Oakley mansion and the historic mobile preservation society that runs the mansion. And it's, uh, we're going to have up to, uh, we're going to have about 25 authors that are going to be set up on the lawn of the historic Oakley house, uh, selling their books. And we're going to have, uh, speakers, authors that are going to be speaking about the process of writing books, about the, uh, speaking about their books. And of course the house will be open for tours as well at the same time. And, uh, so we're inviting everybody to come out Saturday, uh, which will be the 12th from 11 to four, uh, is when the festival is going to be happening. Now, what, like I joked about my linen suit, but I mean, what do we, do we have to address for success at this thing or what? I mean, tell me about coming out. Absolutely, absolutely not. T-shirt and blue jeans is, uh, it's fine. You can come in your Alabama or Auburn, uh, jerseys or even your South Alabama jerseys. Everybody is welcome. Even if you've never been to the historic Oakley district, which is the neighborhood around the house, I would encourage people to come to the festival just to check out the neighborhood because if you like, uh, mid 20th century architect, uh, homes architecture, you're going to love the Oakley district. It's a beautiful neighborhood, but it, uh, but, and then the Oakley house itself is a beautiful house as well. So, I mean, there's, uh, uh, uh, lots and lots of reasons to come, uh, uh, come to the book festival. The authors are just one of many reasons to come. As a matter of fact, we're going to, we're expected to have great weather. I suspect strongly that the weekend weather scale tomorrow, not to steal Dr. Bill Thunder is going to be a 2.0, uh, weekend weather scale. The first of all, we've had in a while. There's already people, they started in on Dan and Dalton this morning, already people putting their guesses in, um, at a 2.0. So I think you're probably with the majority thought on that. I wanted to ask you this question and right here, the event will celebrate the rich literary history of mobile and the Gulf Coast region. Um, like I, I believe in that, but I'm also a Homer, right? So I'm always trying to make sure that my mobile color glasses aren't fooling me. Do you think that's arguably that we have a deeper history here for, for authors? I think we have a very strong argument to, uh, that stands up against any literary area in the world, even Mississippi, you know, with Ernest Hemingway and, uh, and all of the authors that have come out of Mississippi because think about this, Sean. Back in the antebellum time era, we had two best-selling female authors living right here in mobile. That was unheard of for that time frame. Very few areas had one female best-selling author. Even fewer had to do with Augusta Evans Wilson and, uh, and Octavia Walton Laverte, uh, both living, uh, making their home here in mobile during that timeframe. That was just unheard of. And even to this day, we have a rich literary history. As a matter of fact, some of the authors that are going to be at the event, I'm obviously going to be there. If you want to come out, uh, get assigned copies of my book, uh, my books, obviously I'll be happy to, uh, to get you one. But if even if you want to just come out and see my new bionic, uh, leg, absolutely come by and ask to see it. And I'll, uh, I'll be happy to show you. But we're going to have Paula Lenore Webb there who's written a biography of Octavia Walton Laverte herself. Brendan Kirby is going to be there selling copies of Wicked Mobile, another, uh, other local authors like Paul Bruceky, who's, uh, just released a, uh, a nonfiction book about the Civil War Battle of Spanish. For it's going to be there and we're going to have authors from multiple genres there. Don't just, just think it's going to be just mobile or just nonfiction or just history. It's going to be, we're going to have authors from the Southern Gothic, uh, genre as well as romance as well as nonfiction authors. So it's going to be a good collection of a bunch of different authors. Okay. So this gets started 11 o'clock on Saturday. It goes to a four. Is there just, just go ahead and plan to be there? Is there a website or anything they need to check out first or just know to be there from 11 to four? Just know to be there from 11 to four at 400 Oakley Place. If you wanted, uh, more details about the authors that are actually going to be there. If you search for Oakley literary lawn party on Facebook, there is a Facebook page. Uh, there's also a, uh, page on the historic Oakley, uh, house website as well that you can, uh, check out if you're an author looking for an event to do this weekend. We do still have some, uh, some bring your own table and chair tents and, uh, tent spots available. So go to the website, sign up, uh, sign up and get your, uh, your fees paid and come out and join us for a, uh, a time where the boogie chicks, uh, food truck is going to be there smelling, selling smash burgers as well. And other, other goodies that they have available. So we're going to have a good old time. Good stuff, man. Well, best of luck at the event and congratulations once again, you're, uh, cranking out the books. You're doing what everybody says. Uh, one day I'm going to do, well, you've done it, man. So good on you. Thank you, sir. All right. There's David Preston joining us. Yeah. I can't wait for the new book here. So, you know, a, a listener and a contributor to these shows on FM talk and, uh, he's written, you know, and we've got a, now going to be the third book in it. It's, it's, have y'all ever done that? If you ever thought, man, I would write a book on something. I mean, I've got a couple of ideas in mind, but taking that, taking that plunge, right? Sitting down and starting to read. I mean, starting to write that book. Uh, that's a challenge. It's a challenge for sure. All right. To the text line here, um, still some text coming in here on the mental health, uh, story that Dale Leash has got, got coming out at maybe right about now, over at landyepmobile.com. There are different parts to this and I appreciate the text or earlier. They kind of gave me a, a breakdown on the triage of what was going wrong. Uh, you know, you've got these. Is it an issue of a place to go? Is it insurance? Is it people that take the job of being that therapist? I mean, everybody says mental health, mental health, mental health. Okay. So what are we doing about it? And to know that we ranked third from the bottom in all the 50 states, plus the district of Columbia, we can do better a lot, a lot better. Um, on the flip side, I get this too. So Bob said, Sean, I'm not poking fun at the mental health issue. Uh, but the gentleman on the radio mentioning how we were raised back in the 70s and 80s. And some of the phrases he was using triggered one that I heard from my mom all the time. Are you crying? I'll give you something to cry about. Well, Bob, I, with you, I heard that same thing said. Or if my brother and I would roll her eyes at her, she would say, what did you just say to me? That's right. Remember, at least have it, that's a generational thing. Did I roll my eyes at my parents? Absolutely. This is, this why it's horrible to have me as a father. I said, kids, when you roll your eyes at me, at least turn your, turn your back. Cause that's what I used to do. Of course I rolled my eyes at my parents. But I turned my back because I, I do better. Like self preservation, maybe, uh, you see, that's why I say annoying with my kids. I'm like, you're going to do that. I was at all teenagers. I'd say, you're great, great, great grandparents. That always shuts them down. I'm like, you're great, great, great, great grandparents have those same problems. And their parents were jerks too. So just turn around when you roll your eyes. Let's see where it gets me on that. Right. Let's see if we got, yeah, we have time to get into this for the breaker. Maybe not, do we? Okay. The, there's an interesting story here that came up a couple of days ago from WPMI. And it was, I mean, I think it's probably on other news sources in the state. But it was about the, um, the, the pappy van, I call it the pappy van winkle lottery. Now the state doesn't call it that. They call it their sweepstakes. But this is one of these sorts. And yes, I harp on the ABC, the fact that the state of Alabama is in what I think should be the domain of the private sector. They're in the liquor business. And once again, still have ABC to monitor, make sure the kids aren't drinking under age. I'm for that. If we, the people of the state decide we need an entity to charge a big excise tax on booze coming into the state. So it can be filtered out elsewhere to, to run these operations. That's fine. But having the storefronts where the state operates, the liquor store is always bothered me. Well, now the state is moving into what I call a lottery. They call a sweepstakes. I'll tell you more about that when we come back right here on the day mobile. [MUSIC] This is Midday Mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 106.5. [MUSIC] I tell 152 FM Talk 106.5 Midday Mobile. By the way, uh, bed's up here. I know it's, it's October. And for somebody like me, I'm way away from Christmas shopping season, but there's a lot of responsible people. And if you want to get the best selection, but it's time to make the move to go see my buddy Clint Jamison at Adventure Earth Bicycles. And if you think about buying one, maybe you need to think about buying two. And that's the number of people that Clint says come in and heard me talking about my e-bike that I got a couple of years ago and I love my e-bike. Like I've told you time and time again, it's got me in my fifties riding the bicycle more than I did in my thirties and forties. And no, it's not. You can run it all electric all the time. I use it in assist mode, makes it just fun to ride. You get out and ride more, get more exercise. But if the number of people we said come in and they buy one, and then they come back between days and weeks later to buy a second one, because somebody else in the house is jealous of that e-bike. So think about that. If you're going towards Christmas shopping, maybe time to get two, or at least just get one, you know, for that special someone. And then you'll end up getting one for yourself. Great selection, over 75 e-bikes in stock at any point. And there are a bunch of different kind of designs and range and battery power and all that. And the beauty is Clint is he lives this world. He knows it inside and out. So you get professional advice from Clint when it comes to buying your next e-bike. Or if you want one without the electric, you know, without the battery, he's got 400 of the non-e-bikes in stock at any point. He's a good old-fashioned bike shop too, where they do the repairs there. They do the service work right there at the store. Adventure Earth bicycles at the corner of Littleflower and Airport in Midtown. They're online, you can see them there. We're going to go take, like, do a little, you know, pre-shopping at adventure-earth.com. But you got to go in person, see the e-bikes, take a test ride, see what I've been talking about all these years, and check it out at Adventure Earth bicycles. And maybe go ahead and get that Christmas shopping done now. To the, uh, to the text line here, um, you know, again, this one's quick. And I want to get this out of the story. Otto said, Hey, Sean, just one quick question. Inflation's up by 17%. And Social Security is going to go up by 2.5%. What's that about? It's about 14.5% short, isn't it, Otto? The way I see it. All right, to finish out with this story, because it's a perennial with me. But so they've got the lotto, I'm sorry, the sweepstakes is open now with the ABC stores. Eight ABC stores in the state of Alabama have the right to sell the limited edition. I think they're all Berbins. It's really kind of, it's pretty much around getting the Pappy Van Winkle, right? It says beginning Monday, October 7th, ending Sunday, October 27th at 5 p.m. Alabama residents of legal drinking age will have the opportunity, the opportunity, y'all, to buy a product to enter the ABC Select Spirits 2024 limited release sweep, uh, sweepstakes, where 150 winners will be drawn at random for each location listed below to purchase restricted quantities of highly coveted whiskey brands. Lucky winners will have the chance to purchase Alabama's allocation of Pappy Van Winkle bourbon and other limited quantity whiskeys at eight ABC, eight selected ABC Spirit stores. That happens on December 14th. It goes to also, I've got to be legal age at Alabama. Driver's license, okay. What I'm getting to here is in our fair state, where the state is in the business of selling booze, right? In the booze selling business, there's a whole bunch that goes with that. And in a place where you have a limited edition of Berbins, highly coveted, that opportunity is not going to the free market, sorry, the privately owned liquor stores, it goes to the state. So that's the first burr under the saddle. Second here is, sure, it is a sweepstakes. You can't use the word lottery because there's no money being paid to get in. But you're going to be drawn at random, which is not a game of skill, is it? No, it's a game of chance. And I would argue that the people that are drawn in this are going to spend money. So there is money involved. If you're drawn, I guess you could say you could get drawn and not go shop. But you're drawn, you're going to go buy the Pappy Van Winkle for me. Or I hope. So by this game of chance, you then spend money, which puts money into the mix of this random opportunity. So once again, not again, you know, how they talk about, as they try to parse out the gambling laws, and I don't use a gaming term, but as they parse out the gambling laws in our state, they'll say, is it a game of skill or is it a game of chance? Well, there's no skill to win the lot, sorry, sweepstakes with the ABC stores. It is a game of chance. And if you are successful in this game of chance, then you spend money. So I would argue that here we have the state of Alabama still in the business of selling booze and they're holding a lottery sweepstake thing there in our area. If you want to take part in this, the ABC store in Fair Hope, the one in Theodore, they both will, I guess, be participating in this. And this lottery, this sweepstakes, sorry, not, we know it's not lottery. It's the sweepstakes. It's a good on you, state of Alabama. There you go. All right. Paul Finebaum takes over tomorrow, big day too, because number one, we'll give you a chance to win that $100 gift certificate to Mason Hills Farm. And I think I'll take the old FM Talk 1065 van or just my truck and meet y'all out at Smoke on the Farm that starts tomorrow out in Grand Bay at Joey's place. We'll talk more about that tomorrow.