Beans, Bullets, Bandages & You
Beans, Bullets, Bandages & You
Episode 12: Strangers won't be welcome in rural areas at bugout time
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spk_0: 0:00
Hello, everybody. Hi there. Welcome to the three B. Why? Podcast for this week, months day? Whatever it is, we don't do normal intervals because we never know exactly what we're gonna be recording. It's a beautiful day was we're recording right now. We are way have just left the happening. Burger Fairfield, Iowa Airfield, as we've mentioned in previous podcast, is kind of on the way to a lot of places. We end up going saying they have great food. We're both vegetarians. When it comes to, we don't eat mass produced meat like No. So we're feeling a lot of vegetarian options. No, we're not anti meat. We're just not into letting people like from the factory meat. No
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commercial food industry. Handling my meat is not my first choice.
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No, we were discussing as we left Fairfield. How was Ah really interesting place. And it also shows up the dichotomy and the difference in the types of people in the expectations of people behavior, people that are from here in the Midwest and also who are coasters from the Eastern Ones Coast. Because Fairfield has both, unlike most towns in the Midwest. Now you'll see this Maurine in major college towns like Iowa City or Columbia or champagne or any of the major college towns, unless, to a lesser extent, the smaller state schools you'll see you'll see more of, AH, international student community. But Fairfield has. Something is totally different. It is the home of Maharishi International was founded by the Maharishi Yogi. They took over an old closed college campus, and slowly but surely, over the last 25 30 years, they've been demolishing the old campus and built rebuilding the buildings with buildings that have proper. Whether she,
spk_1: 2:05
I think it's
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kee kee proper ki flow
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of energy,
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the flow of energy in the building you meets the yada, yada, whatever.
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It's clean and healthy.
spk_0: 2:14
That's the cleansing New Agey. Yeah, you got it. On the one hand, it's tow us who are not my recent people. We think it's a little silly, but on the other hand, I gotta admit the building's air building look pretty cool. I mean, they're really kind of neat looking,
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and the people they attract eat a good restaurants,
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said they lots and lots and lots of restaurants down the size of Fairfield. Exactly how big purple it is 5 6000 would usually have one or two local restaurants, and then a smattering of you get a subway, maybe a Mickey D's, This area, probably. Ah Hardy's on the West Coast home called juniors. There's probably one of those, although they're not, is quite as popular. You won't see a Wendy's into town that size. You'll see a Taco Bell. So this is the kind of thing that you would see. That's not what you see in Fairfield. Fairfield has 35 or 40 restaurants in it. Okay, which in itself for a town in the Midwest is just you just That's unheard of the kind of restaurant you have in a town 10 times that size. It makes you wonder, Why is that now? Yes, my Reach International is there It is. It's college, so they do have students to go there. So you would expect more restaurants than maybe a typical town of 5000 but not 35 or 40 restaurants. That's just unheard of, which tells me that people who live in Fairfield eat out a lot. This is not typical of Iowa. Okay, thesis where we're coming from, there are two kinds of people that live in Fairfield. There are the local family. Been there are 100 years I A legions. And then there are the Maharishi's people. Who are you are fairly normal, I'd say in most ways
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on the new a GM
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of the New Age in which you know they're the typical. I don't even want to say tree huggers cause our early treatment or more. If you were to go to Sedona, Arizona, which we've been there, this is the kind of people that you would see it. So Thea,
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upscale New Age crowd with money. They're from the coast. They got a lot of money. They are liberal politically,
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and they are exceedingly self absorbed entirely
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without realizing it. Because they see themselves as being Maur International. They are more accepting of people of a difference of some kinds. They're not very accepting of people of a more conservative mindset, but lots of other kinds of diversity There,
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I say I wasn't even a conservative state. I was
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in the Midwest goes.
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It's not as the Midwest goes, it's actually kind of a blue state. So just keep that in mind. They read this last election their governors red, but they're kind of a blue state. So you keep that in mind when you talk about Iowa, they're much more liberal than all of Missouri is. So what does this have to do with prepping
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community dynamics?
spk_0: 5:36
That's where it just reminded us that we wanted to talk about community dynamics and we're gonna go. We're gonna do something a little. I think it's fun because obviously, if it really happened, it was horrible. You know, we're always going on about how this is not about walkie. You know the world as we know it. It is not about a blankets, the fan situation or without rule of law situation. Because we don't
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That's not what most of the three b y project is.
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Not about that, but today it iss we're going off the defense. We're gonna take a ride on the other rabbit hole just for fun.
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Sometimes seeing how it air might be on the extreme ends can give you some sort of feel for what you might see under less extreme conditions as well, because we saw the beginnings of the cracks of community structure while we were in the New Age grocery store
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absolutely way stopped at the New Age grocery store. It's actually a nice little store way overpriced, but they've got a lot of stuff there that you can't get elsewhere like we were kind of vegetarian type people. And we I will say we're New Agey health food type people. But we do like, you know, organic stuff.
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Your average grocery store in the Midwest does not order. Offer bulk Ira Vedek massage oil as I just saw in that job.
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Massage oil. Seriously, Organic. Seriously. Okay, well, anyway, pressing right along didn't see that one, but it's good. Grocery store way overpriced, but we go there anyway whenever we're in town. But go ahead and tell him a story, don't you?
spk_1: 7:10
When you interact with people in that store, you can always tell which ones come from Iowa families and which ones are coastal transplants associated with Maharishi. Just because of the groove of your interaction with him, the people from Iowa will look you in the eye when they're talking to you there smiling like they mean it. Can they do? They're friendly
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because they're Iowa agents, and I wager they're nice
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when they ask how you're doing, they'll actually stop to give you a chance to insert an answer and listen, rather than just not asking it all or are rolling over, they are much more. It's not only about friendly, it's much more about. There's an expectation that you can and should interact with strangers as if they're real people, not just objects in the environment that you're working with. It's not the same to go to a self checkout register and press buttons as it is to hand things to somebody who's running a register.
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What we're seeing is too different to different types of people Now. Admittedly, some of the people in Fairfield our way on the far end of the spectrum in some areas aren't
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in socio political spectrum, not
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even associate but the New Agey, Okay, but their attitudes and their way of dealing with others are very typical of coasters. You know, the brusque. Yeah, who are you? And why should I care thing
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they don't interact with strangers. They're not trying to be unfriendly per se. And they're not trying to be nasty to you certainly know, but it just isn't a part of their inherent mindset that they would have a real reason to pay attention to you or deal with you as a real human being rather than as somebody with which they have a transaction to conduct.
spk_0: 9:11
They look through you, not at you unless you have something they want. Now, why? Why we bring what's the point? What is the survival aspect of what I'm talking about?
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What's gonna happen when you put these kinds of communities under stress?
spk_0: 9:28
Exactly. What will happen in Fairfield when that community was Just assume a TL walkie happens, we're gonna make it. We're gonna make our our assumption event a really nasty one. We're talking about multiple E M p. Full blackout, long term scenario. Normally, I would say Iowa is a very good place to be in that sort of situation. There's gonna be some places I would not want to be in Iowa, and Fairfield would be one of them because of the dichotomy of the people there. It's gonna turn bad fast
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because of the hairline cracks you can see in the community when you just interact with him. Any kind of stress takes a hairline crack and pops it wide open
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to me. I thought I thought a lot about these scenarios. I'm gonna like everybody else I'm writing. Gonna write a book or a series of books on my take on the MP or grid down scenario. Just get everybody does it. Might will probably be horrible and you'll never read. Um, but I'm gonna do it.
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He's actually written a book or two in the past. So it's not as much of a pipe dream is he might be making it sound.
spk_0: 10:49
I am a journalist and professional writer. So But anyway, beside the point, what I see happening is in if we have a grid down situation, if it goes boom, the cities are just gonna they're gonna go off the rails. Okay, If you're in a city and by city, I mean suburbs as well, just city people or anybody that lives within the grouping of the city. Things are just gonna go bad, and it's gonna be faster than anybody would expect. I think it's just gonna you know you don't want to be there. I personally believe that if you are in a city, you are not gonna make it. If you're not got somewhere to go and you don't get get on your way there within the 1st 24 hours. You're not gonna make it. I understand a lot of people are out there planning to shelter in place for and for almost every other event that you can imagine. That's fine. You'll do great
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short term events,
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short term events. You'll be fine. Regional events. You'll be fine because the rest the country will help. We did help Katrina, you know, we did help the Hurricane Andrew people. We did help the Joplin tornado people. We called in the clans and everybody came running. But if it's a massive, grid down scenario is tough
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because there is no cavalry,
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there is no cavalry and it's good to get. It's gonna turn. Nobody's coming, nobody's coming and the food is very, very, very limited. Is very, very, very limited in the cities,
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the primary difference between what we think of his rule and what we're seeing A cities or I'll speak for myself here. The dependence on service is provided from the outside water, sewer, food,
spk_0: 12:45
right, period, sewer. You could work around waters tough and food is pretty unworkable. No, to me. If I'm a five. A survival minded person. Several things to me are nonstarters. And I know some of you people listening. I'm just gonna be a situation where you can't do a thing about it or you don't agree with me. I'm a survival person. I do not live a place that I can't get water like out of the local pond. You don't do it. Worst case scenario for us. If we have to get water to drink, there's a bunch of pines in town. And if that doesn't work there too reasonably sized lakes within.
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Try to have a very short
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bike ride of us. I mean, very short mile,
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as opposed to those long miles
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was opposed to the long miles, miles, air long If you walk, I'm in short. If you're right, amount of ice.
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We've got a strike that could carry significant water storage, so that makes it a short mile.
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Not surprisingly, we have a trick. You can do that because we're preppers. But anyway, if you don't have water and way to filter it, you're gonna be in real bad shape in a real hurry. And of course your neighbors have to have it too, because they don't have it. Things were gonna go really bad. I think a lot of people have in this mine the shelter in place thing. And if you have all kinds of supplies, I mean, if you are just sat on your supplies, absolutely said. And if you have all the water you're going to need and if you could play possible, nobody knows you're there. And if you can defend yourself and you know there's lots of and if maybe you make it
spk_1: 14:42
sounds like a poor would lose a city.
spk_0: 14:43
Yeah, but I mean, that's not at all what I have in mind. Situation worrying is a lot different because we live in a town. Let's say it's about 2000 people, more or less. Our county has about 5000 people in it were in North Missouri somewhere. Really say where. But we're in North Missouri. We're in an agricultural community that has a lot of agricultural assets. And yes, if there was a big E M. P, we would lose a lot of our agricultural assets. But we also have a lot of really old farm machinery is sitting around so we could plant and harvest oil would be very difficult. It would oil and gasoline would be would be a really, really big problem. We'd have to really, But
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we have some grain silos sitting around at any given point in time to sew way. Ah, a grace period before things got
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we plant and grow. Ah, lot more food a ton on a lot of time. A lot more than a ton more food than what we and sick. Even in a grid down Seattle walkie situation, that doesn't change.
spk_1: 15:59
Yeah, what's the food producers?
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We have water, and we are well off the path of,
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um, ravening hordes from population centers.
spk_0: 16:11
Yeah, the ravening hordes. Well, I mean, you got to turn that a lot of different roads to get to where we are. And not only that, we are a homogeneous community, and I don't mean all we were all just one race, but we're all one people.
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I would kind of correct that we are to that. Get along very well under likely to continue to get along well or two. The Mennonites.
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Yes, but yeah. Guy concluded your true She is true. I include them because they're up they're part of us. They really are.
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Yeah. Mentally they are. But they would be taken care of each other,
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but they would take care of us. And we take care of them too.
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Yeah, but mostly
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we are brother communities way also, half of our counting. Almost half our county is men. Tonight we have some Amish too. Um, And for those not familiar with the Mennonite community, they are a strong community. They are very, um, family community. There's strong family intermarriages. Um, and so you might have ah, family with five brothers marrying five sisters. Now they're very careful not to marry close relatives. You know what I'm saying? It's not that kind of.
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They actually send a paddle. Young adults going to other Mennonite communities in other areas. Two keep the genes flew in, as you might say. So we're not trying to make cast any aspersions on these guys. They're good neighbors. Me like him.
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There are neighbors. We like him very much,
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but they are very much interlinked in each other's lives. Day to day, they are used to taking care of each other. When anybody has an emergency of any size, they have a fantastic emergency relief organization.
spk_0: 18:04
Oh, yeah, they just shut down. The community shuts down what they're doing that day, and they go to help and they go to help. Whether it's one of their fellow church members, one of their extended family or just anybody. Yeah, they're strong on the fire department's. They're strong on the rescue squads. They're strong. If the, um, supporting community charities,
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if you're out there sandbagging a levee, the Mennonite women will be serving you plenty of food.
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And you're gonna
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be lots of guys
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to the Mennonites and the Amish because they're just good, solid people. All right,
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so they there is a difference. There are two communities, but we're so comfortable being in those communities are so comfortable being interlinked with each other. It's not a much stress point. I don't see it as being a problem. Fairfield, Maharishi people and Fairfield Mid Iowa people are not really integrated communities. It's one kind of nestled inside the other, and there's an obvious break in continuity. When you cross the community lines, you can tell you've done it just by what kind of establishment you're in, and you're how people treat you there
spk_0: 19:32
Yes, my next. My next tick. I'm taking office. We're also a community that has limited opportunities for young people. So we're a community where people, a lot of the young people, will go to school. The go to college and then they'll go off on and do their thing
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to get a job somewhere with a job
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where we live and that will always be home in their hearts as where they grew up. But don't bring the grandkids home to visit Grandma and Grandpa. They're not gonna live with us. So let's say we have a jet walkie situation. Those people, those kids you always tell you, and I love all the bike riders. We just passed it by greater those kids who have the grand kids and stuff like that. Those kids will be welcomed home in a TL walkie situation by the entire community, without question, because they're ours.
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We saw him play football. We saw him play in the band. They were there with the high school events when we were out at the high screen,
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just out of the grocery store,
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their coal in you come.
spk_0: 20:56
Those people are gonna be welcome. But that's it. Nobody else will. People have a misunderstanding that if they bug out, that will go to somewhere where they can. I'm gonna tell you if your plan is to bug out into a small, isolated, close knit town and you don't have any roots there, you're not going to get past the roadblock set up three miles outside of town. They're going to turn you around and send you the other way because they don't didn't want anything from you unless you're a doctor. Bless your nurse or a veterinarian veterinarian. Ah, blacksmith, unless you have something that they need, you're going elsewhere because we don't want to feed you
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and they'll feel bad about it. But not bad enough to put their own people at risk by taking in strangers. As a matter of fact, I do more work at the place than salty does because I have more. My work schedule is a lot more accommodating to that sort of thing that his work schedule is. But when I'm talking to people up in, it's a couple of counties over what I'm talking to people in that area. I am always casually happened to mention that were from our little town because everybody in that region has heard of our little town were low making it and I do whatever business I can. They're making it clear that, yeah, we would count as locals were not actually from their county, but close enough. We're from the area.
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The kids from our school play football against the kids from their schools
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and that counts.
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You say that does count,
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but it's not or not. Thesixty hunters who have the cabin and come up twice a year to hunt and then leave again. Um, I do not think the reception of the city Hunter's if they bugged out two somewhere in our county near the place, I don't think they're reception would be as warm and welcoming as would our reception of we bugged out to the place. For that reason,
spk_0: 23:18
here's something that we know is something that we know intrinsically. If and heaven forbid we get into a shit. Excuse me. Sorry. Try to keep it. G rated a shoot its toe situation. We will have a choice to make. Do we stay in town? Are do we go to the place? Because whichever one we choose we will lose the other. Yeah, it's just gonna happen. We'll have to choose
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a significant bike right away.
spk_0: 23:53
Right now. We don't It's not a choice we do. Places not developed enough. We're working on it. But it's not developed enough. Um, with almost the only real exception with that being, there is one exception where we would choose the place the best in isolation. Pandemic situation.
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Yeah, there we expected the last few months.
spk_0: 24:17
Yeah. Then we'd probably choose the place. And that's why we think personally of all the really bad situations to happen, that's much higher on the list in a lot of the others, because they do happen. You know, most of our prepping work clothes for is for the things that are most likely to happen. So So I just wanted to give the people what kind of a heads up that that, you know, you're if you live in the city and chances are you do because most people do. 90% of America lives in the city, more than 90% so probably nine out of 10 of you live in the city and by the city. I do mean the suburbs they cow
spk_1: 24:56
because they're equally dependent on service. Is I always shocked when I visit suburbs, they don't have gardens. I mean, they have gardens, but there's just flowers in them. I like flowers. These are my friends. But it astounds me to see people with that much space. And when you talk to them, they're talking about liking to live out in the country, enjoying having some land, wanting to get out on the weekends and be in the fresh air and stuff. And they grow absolutely none of their own food or and very little else. That's just odd to me.
spk_0: 25:32
No, we're not trying to put anybody down per se.
spk_1: 25:36
No way. Wouldn't mind set and
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realize that. You know, if you want. If you're thinking about bugging out, you've gotta have somewhere to go, and you've gotta have it ready. And you got to get there fast
spk_1: 25:54
and you really should make connections there. Absolute. So you're known? Absolutely. And it kind of would probably go without saying that. Make yourself known without people being tempted at it. Cost word at the end. Yeah. Hello, Iowa regions on bikes,
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regions on bikes. Somebody
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about to drop off the back because he's getting
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bench. And we would be surprised to see couple back here. Yeah. Yeah. Iowa is a bike capital of the Midwest, which is we find a very good things were right. Max. Excuse me. I'm sorry. So is there anything else you got? Something else you wanna add? Do we wrap
spk_1: 26:38
it? Make your connections, connections? That's my end. Word on this topic
spk_0: 26:45
because you're not. If you you're not getting in, you're not coming to my town and getting it. It's not gonna happen. It's
spk_1: 26:52
not that they're full of island. It's just the town
spk_0: 26:55
is no different than any other day. I could pick a town on a map whether I just never throw out of people's Zuri names that happening. Tipped? Uh, Russia Port Marceline. You can look all these places up the map. Did you steal dots on the map to you? Right? Any of those towns? So they're just pick three random places.
spk_1: 27:19
Pro sports gonna have the same kind of split the Fairfield is.
spk_0: 27:23
But you're not getting in there. No, that's what I'm saying. Any of these towns and go over to Illinois and get in listless towns just the same thing, mended. They
spk_1: 27:35
won't have things to sell to you that they would have to sell to the person who's lived two blocks away from on their whole life. Exactly. They'll find it in their stockroom when it's for somebody from their community.
spk_0: 27:48
If you're just some random person living in a house that just came in, you know that's gonna be a lot harder than Oh, yeah? Well, that someone so's kitsch graduated back in 99. Fine. I'm telling you, those people will have no problem. But go ahead and think about this stuff, All right? That's what we got to say. We're gonna wrap this one up. It will catch the next podcast.