Coming to Northeast Wisconsin live from the Civic Media Studios and featuring TV and radio broadcast veteran John Minow along with the City of Green Bay's longest serving mayor Jim Schmidt.
This is Minow and the Mayor.
And here are your hosts.
John Minow and Jim Schmidt.
Good morning.
Happy Trucker Thursday to you.
We are downtown in Oshkosh, and it is a perfect morning.
Isn't it though?
Perfect morning.
Awesome.
This is such a good looking city, too.
It's
clean.
That water, green grass.
Yeah.
Todd, if I were you, I would get that condo upstairs here.
We're upstairs at our studio downtown on Main Street.
That's exactly what I want to do.
I want to be right above where I work.
I
know.
I
know.
Looking out the back of stuff.
I know.
Yeah, this is we're actually we've kind of talked with the owner of the building to see if maybe we could do a show from up there.
I think that'd be
fun.
That'd be fun.
I would love it.
We'd end up doing it on the coldest, rainiest
Thursday.
Yeah, we've had some cold days here, but it is absolutely gorgeous this morning right here all throughout Northeast Wisconsin 61 in Green Bay, 63 in Hopkins, 64 in Oshkosh High today in the low 70s.
Mostly cloudy scattered showers.
It was actually a little bit humid yesterday for the first time.
Wasn't it?
It was nice yesterday, but yeah, it's coming to an end.
Yeah, I know.
I'm
going off again for the weekend.
Hey, one of the things I know in the U.P.
this is a thing air quality due to wildfires.
Oh, yeah.
Orange category.
I mean, it's to the point.
Here's the deal.
You know, you think, oh, well, it's just a little smoke in the air.
But they say there are particles.
that are in that smoke, that if you've got some lung problems, they'll get in your lungs.
You know, it's not just a matter of, okay, that's a little smoky.
I mean, that's like a serious thing that's coming across, huh?
Did they tell you to
wear a mask?
I don't know if it does, but I think that is what they're saying is like, you're going out and stuff like that and you got breathing problems.
They are saying that the orange could actually go red today.
So be aware of that.
Wow.
I know that was
up there.
Yeah.
Have you noticed that?
I haven't yet.
Yeah.
A few years ago in Manitowoc, I really did.
It smelled, you know, there's a place in Marquette where they used to make charcoal.
Okay, it was a charcoal factory.
Yeah.
All right.
And that's what it smelled like.
It smelled like that charcoal factory burning in Manitowoc.
And it was hazy.
But was it
Canadian fires?
Yeah.
Okay, yeah.
Well three four years ago remember when they first start coming over but Manitowoc could hit really bad for some reason and But I haven't noticed anything here of you.
Yeah a little bit.
Have you yeah?
It was a little hazy, but I
I didn't couple times I'd be outside and I'd smell smoke But I didn't know if it was the neighbor burning some water something.
Yeah, that's why I think it was that big of a deal because right if you're talking about that was a big deal
Yeah, that was a big deal.
I mean that was like whoa This is I still say one of my greatest things in the world a smell of grass fires
Yeah.
Remember when you used to like fields on fire?
I can't do that anymore.
I know, right?
That is, that's dry.
I know.
That's got its own smell.
And they used to say, because people up at the UP, they used to like their lawns on fire.
Yeah,
I know.
Because
they'd say the
grass would come in greener.
Exactly.
They did.
That was good for your grass, but no can do anymore.
Well, was that
legit?
Was that a true thing?
I think it was.
I really do.
Or is it like a whistail?
No, no, no.
I think they burned off the grass that was, so it would be more fresh.
grass would grow because the, yeah.
The other stuff's got,
right.
Yeah.
That's true.
No, they did do that.
Oh, that was a big deal.
Yeah.
I mean, I
remember Mary Terzaghi, our neighbor out there at the, you know, you know, Mary, I still think about this.
Poor Mary.
Nicely.
Yeah.
Five feet tall, five feet wide.
Yeah.
All right.
Cigarette hanging out of her arm.
My arm's the size of a butcher.
And I remember one time I was trying to make some money one summer.
I was like 10 and it's like, I asked her, I said, Hey, I'll cut your grass for like.
$2, you know, just, okay.
Well, she had one of those old, she didn't even have an electric, she had a push with the blades.
And it was real hilly and whatever.
And I got about halfway done.
And I said, I think it's, I think I need to charge more than $2.
She says, no, here's your $2.
Go ahead, Johnny.
And she took over and like nothing to it, put me to total shame.
The most old women from that generation, they were tough.
Just
big
tough
wrists and hands.
And they're mine.
They could do anything.
Absolutely.
Special breed.
Yep.
You bet.
But a beautiful day today.
We're down here in Oshkosh, which we absolutely love being down here at our WISS Studios great place around the corner on Main Street.
We've got a great line of people coming in today.
Today is beef jerky day.
Right.
I love that.
Is there anything better?
You could live on beef jerky.
A person could live on beef jerky.
I don't know that I was the biggest fan on, like, Slim Jim and stuff like that early on in life.
Oh, I was.
There's a specific taste to that I wasn't sure about.
Really?
Yeah.
What about jerky?
I think jerky's good.
I still, my goal is to, is, I need to rent out somebody's garage so I
can make stuff.
They, the equipment you need to make jerky is made into rivers.
Is it really?
Yeah.
That, that, um... I didn't know that.
Yeah.
And it just dries it all.
You see, put... A dehydrator?
A dehydrator.
You like the Nesco thing?
Yeah.
Two rivers at the same company, and they make these dehydrators.
Two rivers makes a lot of
stuff.
I tell you, two rivers and Manitowoc make more stuff where you just wouldn't.
It's like, OK, the
nets for the
NCAA tournament and the Wimbledon.
Yeah, they're made in two rivers.
Right.
Yeah.
It's
like crazy.
Aluminum.
Yeah.
Yeah, they're pretty creative there.
But that very popular is you can do it with fruit.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I'd want to do that.
It's not just.
Yeah,
it's not just beef.
I've got one.
I just haven't used it yet.
I don't have any room.
Do you have a dehydrator?
Yeah.
I don't think I've ever taken out of the
box
though.
But it's just right on the counter.
You don't need a lot of room for it.
No, no, it's the size of like a little.
I got a small like a big Nesco or something, you know.
So
I told you I'm down to 211.
Yes.
Anybody want my nutrition tips?
I'm sure we're going to get him anyway.
We're all less than 211.
So no.
Are you really?
What do you weigh?
John, you think I weigh less than 211?
No, John, I'm like.
170 you are not just wait.
I want to get up there.
It's 178 179.
What were you you're like 220 weren't you?
Yeah, we're talking about that Wow
He weighs less than me now you taking the shot.
Yes, he's taking you're taking the shot You told us that you told us you were on it.
Is that cheating?
That's cheating
is it
John?
I think so.
I get that is cheating
200 and
it's
a good deal.
I would say
that's the same.
Let's put this
guy's sponsor.
The way I'm doing it is the organic way.
So I'm big in organics.
OK.
My goal is to hit my goal weight and then get the guy helping me to be a sponsor.
OK.
Well,
I told myself I know a lot
of people on our Zempick, but I'm just looking at this.
This is how I
feel.
This is a
little Zempick.
It's whatever it is.
OK.
That's why it's the difference between me doing it the organic way.
All right.
would be the same as a guy that puts on a lot of muscle by working out and lifting weights, okay?
Versus a guy who takes steroids to put on the muscle.
Yeah, I don't think that's a
great analogy.
Yeah, I'm not sure.
Great analogy.
It's
a phenomenal analogy.
It's artificial.
This
is, I'm earning
it.
I'm earning it.
And I've talked to a lot of people before I did that.
This is a jumpstart thing that I needed like I just I've done what you've done I've done I've done everything on the weight lesson This is just a jumpstart and the key to this is you don't eat as much.
That's all it is It's nothing more nothing less.
There's the side effects to this.
It's unbelievable I mean or blood prick they have all these that's not why you take it though, but the side effects are positive versus usually Oh, you can throw up you do this or that So yeah, maybe another month, but
it
So what happens if you get off it and you gain all the weight back?
You know what?
I looked into that.
I don't think you do because you've changed a habit over, you know, sometimes they say 30 days to me it takes a little longer than 30 days for me to change a habit, but if six months you're eating differently, will that stay?
Well, mine will because like I said, I'm on a whole new urogrammic thing.
That's unbelievable.
What
do you enjoy?
Ergonomics.
Ergonomics,
that's like furniture.
Well, it's something.
Whatever.
It's anemic.
But I know why.
I don't know.
Yeah.
And I talked to why.
All right.
Well, I was going
to give some great nutritional tips.
Well, do
it.
Do it.
I do it.
I that's that they can always help.
Yeah.
What are you
doing?
OK.
Well, one of the things is that yogurt.
Right.
Greek
yogurt.
Yeah.
Non-flavored.
which tastes like paste.
I'll be honest
by vanilla.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So anyway, um, okay.
Then I put it with that peanut butter, the
natural, the natural peanut butter.
It's
natural.
It's all natural.
So do you, do you buy that or do you buy the peanuts at festival and then grind it up and make it a
front festival, but it's all natural peanut butter.
It says made only from peanuts.
You could
do it
yourself.
I was thinking about that.
I might do that.
Yeah.
I'm going to, I'm going to buy a peanut crusher thing.
What
are they having a
festival?
Yeah, I'm going to buy one.
It's a sense in the box with that.
That's right next to that dehydrator that you got, you know, stacking up.
Okay.
All right.
So natural peanut butter, which is good.
Peanut butter.
That's good.
Then the
other thing.
So I've been into anti-oxidantals.
No,
actually, oxy.
Yeah.
Anti-oxidant.
The
oxy liquid is that
anti-oxidants.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Stuff that like prevents cancer.
Yes.
Blueberries are the
number
one thing.
That's the
number one thing are blueberries.
Okay.
right number one thing makes sense so blueberries that's good okay and then i put that stuff in and then frozen bananas frozen bananas have changed my life they've changed it's changed my life so you know you eat a banana it's like you're eating a banana it's like you gotta eat a banana you cut them up it's a little you know chop them up little pieces couple inches and you freeze them
Okay, put them in the little plastic bags.
And then you put that in the yogurt with the peanut butter and the blueberries and a little bit of honey.
It's actually Wayne's honey, Wayne's natural honey.
Okay, unbelievable.
Do you see peel the banana and cut it up?
Yep, peel it, cut it up.
Doesn't get brown or anything?
No, not when they're frozen.
They're fantastic frozen.
They're fantastic frozen.
Do you remember the movie or the TV show that I really liked that I got back into it?
You know
that
one.
No, I don't
know.
Oh, man.
It's a Justin base Justin Bateman.
Oh,
yeah.
Yep.
And that
whole crew, right?
Oh, what what the heck was the name of it?
A lot of big names.
Yeah.
The girl with the really pretty eyes.
Yeah.
Port Portisha.
Portia Portia.
Yep.
De Rossi.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Can't remember what that's called.
I know, but
it's really good.
That one.
But anyway, they had the frozen banana stand.
Remember?
Arrested
development.
Arrested development.
There we go.
And they have the frozen
banana stand.
I would like to start a stand.
Frozen bananas.
With this, with the ingredients I'm doing here, it'd be the healthiest thing people could possibly have.
I'd be doing this for humanity.
I would even worry if I made a profit.
Okay, a couple things wrong with that.
What is that, that frozen banana stand?
I think they dip them in chocolate and stuff.
It's a whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole
whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole
whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole
whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole
whole whole whole whole
whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole
whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole
whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole whole
That's good for your skin.
Yeah Telling it in your heart and your heart the whole thing.
Yeah, all in one one cup.
That's my new Johnny juice
Hey, you were you may have an opportunity to do that Yesterday I talked with Brian Johnson was on for that lean local that shipyard's gonna have a lot of I know I'd like to have one of their spaces right like that, but they're gonna be like in train cars I want that I want that you don't need the whole thing, but I mean there I want one
of those cone axis
like this six
Yeah, feet eight feet ten feet of that.
Yeah,
one of those storage things.
That's right.
Yeah.
And
that's what I'm going to
open up.
I'm I'm going to be next to you, but I'm going to sell something different.
You sell it everyone.
Also, I'm going to be selling jerky.
I'm going to have that.
That could work.
I'm making my own.
You should do dehydrated fruit, too, though.
People like that because there's two vegetarians out there.
When I
go to the U.P., I'm going to shoot a lot of deer next year.
And we get a bunch of tags and I'm going to make venison jerky.
We got a bunch of text coming in, which we can get to when we get back, but they'll be up on your screen there.
OK, your
screen.
All right.
All right.
I'm just saying.
I'm
excited
about this, because look at me.
I sense in
that.
I'm
at the natural way, Jim.
And I'm dropping.
OK.
Natural, non-steroidal.
Think about it.
Steroidal.
Mine on the air,
coming your way from WISSN Oshkosh.
Back after this.
Yeah, I'm semi-crazy.
I gotta be half nuts.
and send my trucks.
My mother had half a mind to slow it down for a time but I'll never
Hey, happy Trucker Thursday to you on a beautiful day.
We're coming away from downtown Oshkosh at the WIS Studios, 601 South Main Street.
Today is jerky day, as we mentioned, peanut butter cookie day.
I love putting peanut butter on peanut butter cookies.
Is that weird?
I've never done that in either.
Put a little bit of peanut butter and butter.
on a peanut butter cookie, it's unbelievable.
Or a chocolate chip cookie.
That really adds to it.
It is Superman day.
Todd, you seem like you would have been a Superman kind
of guy.
No, Spider-Man.
Okay.
Spider-Man.
Um, Falafel day.
Falafel day.
Falafel.
Falafel.
Falafel.
Yeah.
Falafel.
Falafel.
Is
that a food?
Yes.
Okay.
It's Greek.
Brown Greek.
Right.
Yeah, okay.
Yes.
He can call right now.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes By
the way happy
birthdays to Kenny Wayne Shepherd great country singer
Junior Brown, another great country.
Cigarette
was a fucker.
That's right.
That's Junior right
there.
73 years old.
And Marv, Albert, one of the greatest basketball announcers of all time.
In fact, I think he is the greatest basketball announcer of all time.
84 years old.
I ran into Marv years ago at a Bucks game.
We got to be good friends.
And I was actually, I asked, I sent him a text last night and I said, Marv, would you be able to give us a call on the show this morning?
And I said, we won't talk about those issues you had.
Remember, he went on Letterman, he got a little pinky with women and yadda, yadda, yadda.
So did
you let Marv know that
he can call in right now?
Because I'm waiting for the
call.
So we're going to talk with Marv Elbert.
I don't think it's
been a while since you guys hung out, isn't it?
Well, he retired.
So I
wouldn't see him at games anymore.
He came to Green Bay a couple of times for Packer things.
He was great.
I
mean, we hung out.
He never shook
that.
No, he didn't.
But I remember we went out to the top shelf a couple of times.
Stuff like that.
He had a good time.
Victoria's secrets.
A little shopping.
Yeah.
So.
Okay, let's wait a good time with them.
So I'm hoping to talk to Marv Albert here in just a minute.
I got a couple other texts.
Rest in peace.
Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.
I know.
82.
That's all.
I
thought he would be older for some reason.
Well, they were young when they started that.
Yeah.
Holy Mack
was in his
brother.
A couple of friends.
Unbelievable.
What a weird situation.
Hey, they're dead.
Well, he was a little he had his issues.
She's the one that did Brian.
Okay, I don't know what he had a number of things and he was I don't know if he was public about it or they write it them up But there was well they way
that one movie.
It was kind of a made for TV type movie.
Okay, do we okay?
Once again, ladies and gentlemen is the 84th birthday of my all-time favorite Broadcaster legendary broadcaster in the NBA with the New York Knicks Marv Albert mr. Albert.
Are you there sir?
Yes
Good
morning, yes.
It's a
beautiful day here in northeast Wisconsin.
We're actually in Oshkosh right now and we just want to say that, boy, we miss you on the air.
Remember when you came to Green Bay that time, we hung out at the top shelf and stuff and remember that?
Yeah, that's right, Mark.
So, Marv, how are you doing in your retirement days?
I don't want to bring up that one incident you had, whatever.
Things
have been good, John.
I think I know what you're talking about.
Waking up this morning in Oshkosh, I'm sure it's a little fighting morning, if you will.
Yeah.
Okay.
He likes.
Yes.
Okay.
Marv, I remember that one time when you're in town and you wanted me to take you to Victoria's Seacrest.
Remember
that?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I like the finer things in life.
Yeah.
Who doesn't?
She sure did.
She turned her back on me though, John.
Yes.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
So, Mr. Robert.
Turned her back on me one night.
Turned
her back on me.
Literally.
Yes.
So, how do you, how do you celebrate your 84th birthday, Marv?
Oh,
probably a lady of the night.
Um...
and Staying out of court if you know what I mean.
Mr. Mayor just asked if you're kidding.
I'm kidding, of course.
I'll get it.
I'll probably have a state I'll probably go downtown I will probably spend some time with good friends Toasting years gone by.
Yes.
That's very nice.
Mr. Mayor has a question for you
I
thought, good morning, sir.
Yes.
Yes.
So Marv, I thought maybe you'd, you know, spend a day celebrating a hotel and order room service.
Oh, absolutely.
Why not?
Why not?
Hopefully the lady who delivers it is down.
If you know what I mean.
I mean, you know, for a for a gratuity, of course.
Right.
That's how the kids say it these days.
Yes.
How about a little something extra?
OK, well, Marv, like I said, we just want to appreciate you taking the time.
I'm sure many people are recalling you wishing you a happy birthday today.
And we wanted to be the first to say happy.
You know,
we go way back, John.
I thank you so much for your friendship over the years.
For you being with me in the courtroom.
That meant a lot to me through the course of the trial.
I do think it influenced the jury a little bit.
I think they were, they saw you and they said, well, you know, Marvin can't be that bad.
He said, she said, I don't know.
I feel like I'm getting myself into trouble.
Nothing happened.
Nothing happened.
Innocent, innocent behavior between two consenting.
a belt.
Allegedly, allegedly.
This is also not true, but
whatever.
OK, Harvey.
I mean,
one last question.
Do you still have that weird thing where you collect garter belts?
of course yes John yes it's only
weird if it doesn't work if you're if you're having a great broadcast because you're you're wearing women's underwear or you're not then you are okay well it's possible the pages are all wearing garter's right now I don't know they seem to have a rabbit's foot shoved up their rear end
well Marv Albert had
Happy 84th birthday, sir.
Thank you for taking the time.
It's great to talk to you once again.
Of course.
Any time.
Any time.
Are you enjoying your day, Marv?
Absolutely.
Oh, yes.
I thought I was going to say yes.
So
did I. Happy birthday, Marv.
Thank
you,
Marv.
Take care, my friend.
Come back again sometime.
Wow.
Check this out!
Summer summer summer
All right, don't forget later on this morning the Scotty summer text to win statewide contest your chance to win a daily daily win a pair of Milwaukee Brewers club level tickets or $100 cash plus every entry puts you into the grand prize drawing a couple of them Wisconsin delz area vacation or door County vacation.
We got the keyword coming up later on this morning after seven o'clock download that civic media app right now and choose your station WISS or WGBW gets set to win with Mino and the mayor after seven o'clock.
All right, let's
I did what you did.
What you should
hear that music.
Can you
grab this?
Get ready for it.
I know I
was he was playing it yesterday.
I started reading it goes.
It's over
That's
right today is also red rose day isn't that nice
Expensive man.
Oh, are they yeah?
I mean that's saying are they I'm saying are they that's very expensive one rose
Yeah, if I were back to that era when you'd buy somebody roses or did something like that Would it be so bad to buy them those kind that really look real now and they last for a long time and nobody would know the difference
I Don't know if I would go that right.
Oh my god.
That would be the last place I would try to
Pull fake roses to really yes, yeah to Donna.
Yeah.
Yeah, it took.
Yeah,
I wouldn't do that desk and nobody in
every one.
Oh my god, beautiful roses.
Those are unbelievable.
Thank you.
And you're the only one that knows your artificial.
They can make things
if they were far away and they were like decorative like in a back table.
Maybe.
But it was your own play like at your place, right?
But I would never I would never
in an office.
Nobody would know the difference.
I don't know.
I Todd.
No, no no roses you're gonna throw some out on a grave or something That's one thing but you know there's a lot
of places that they won't let you have artificial flowers now.
Yeah at Cemetery's right.
Why is that?
Well groundskeepers and stuff like that.
Don't you think that has a lot to do with it?
Is
that what it is?
Okay, we'll drop them off and then they lay there for a couple of years, right?
Yeah, but I mean you bought real flowers
down the last what two days
But they're
organic
How can you be I saw somebody do this on Facebook and it was local It was like to appear and somebody said hey to the person that stole our flower pot of flowers that like our dad's thing.
It's like What kind of a human being can do that and look themselves in the mirror and say yeah, my family rate my mom and dad raised me right What kind of a scumball would steal something from somebody else's grave?
Yeah,
what type of a human being?
Yeah, no
That's something
I didn't hear that.
That's yeah, that's that's really low Todd you with me in that Absolutely, that's like people who go in and like turn over two stones.
I don't get that There's
got to be a special place in hell for that
stealing flowers from another great.
Yes, and less and I would never justify it, but what if This kid just felt for his mom and wanted to do his mom's buried and he just wanted to give her
well
That's a little different, right?
It's just a little I'm trying to put up maybe I'm trying to think is there any
I think I would accept it.
Maybe that one I would.
No, no, nothing, zero, not a zip.
Brian says, hey, Martin McGray and Barry Bons and a lot of home runs without medical help, so give Jim a break.
All right.
With the ozepic.
Yeah, ozepic.
Yeah.
It's a kickstart, John.
It's a
kickstart.
No, no, the difference is, OK, the only difference
is.
I'm not going to stay on it for the rest of my life.
But
it's like, a couple of weeks ago, we had the bodybuilders on, and it's all natural bodybuilding.
Right.
No artificial.
Well,
that's what they said.
Yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda.
They test them.
They do a p-test right before the thing.
So
I
would be, if I get into bodybuilding, I would be in that thing, you would be the other way where you would artificially stimulate yourself.
Well, wait, hold on.
Hold on.
That phrase should not have been said on the radio.
Artificial stimulation is
not... Oh,
yeah.
What did I mean?
Yeah, I'm not sure what you mean.
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah.
I just want to say that I want to defend...
Artificially stimulate your muscle growth.
Okay.
Okay.
Well...
No.
It's
still
good.
It's pretty
close.
Pretty close.
Got a text here.
Make sure with plain yogurt, all the ingredients, all the same ingredients you're using, just add ice and put it into a blender.
Donna.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's great.
Mino, you can't be running banana stands if you're coming to work with us at Simple Life.
Michael, all right.
I thought you were on the scallops diet on Tuesday.
We also have a scallop stand.
Yeah, this is OK.
OK, the scallop thing is I made an omelet with scallops.
Right.
And it was
phenomenal.
I'm going to send you something right now.
But I will say this, they are expensive.
Yeah, we were saying that we're really expensive scallops are expensive wait till you get them in a restaurant Yeah, give you like six thirty five bucks.
Yeah.
Yeah,
why are they so expensive?
Yeah, I got a recipe for you on scallops I'll send it to you at the next break, but I was going through that and But I have not found a recipe where they didn't have butter and garlic So I don't think your scallops are gonna taste that good.
Well garlic is fine I I'm big into garlic like okay, so I'm making this new soup.
All right
Cabbage soup.
We have a stand.
Cabbage
soup.
Okay.
Yeah.
Cabbage soup.
We're listening.
We're listening.
Jalapeños.
In the soup.
In the soup.
Okay.
Crushed garlic.
Okay.
Okay.
Onion.
Chopped up onion.
Green and red onions.
I mean green and red peppers.
Yep.
All together.
That can work.
Okay.
A little cayenne pepper.
All
right, yeah,
yeah, and then when you're done with that when you when you're ready to go you put a dollop of that Yogurt oh yogurt
the Greek yogurt.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
It's fantastic And what do you do with it?
You eat it.
No, do you put it like a you put it on like a Cracker or a piece of no, no, just a soup.
It's a
soup.
Oh, it's a soup Yeah, it's a cabbage soup
with
jalapenos.
Okay, so what's the the Ed water obviously and
garlic No, I you're a chicken broth
spicy chicken broth salt
not that
You
want a bet?
Look at the back of that box.
Okay.
See, that's what happens is like, you guys, you know, eat all this healthy stuff and then you get like a soda or something after that.
You're, you're, you're on the right track and you just blew it with that, that soda.
I'm not drinking soda.
Look what I'm drinking.
No, no, I'm talking about your suit.
Monster.
Monster zero.
Okay.
Monster zero
sugar.
Monster energy drink zero sugar.
Zero added sugars.
This is like.
This is like a
juice of the gods juice of the gods.
That's how you're going to
Johnny juice of the gods.
Monster with zero sugar.
I mean, it's the same as drinking an espresso type thing.
Yeah.
It's fantastic for you.
Carbs is six.
Yeah.
Why are they?
Why is this stuff so bad for you?
It's not.
It's got a bad rap.
Got a texture.
Falafel is Egyptian falafel is Egyptian falafel
is
Egyptian.
I thought it was
Greek.
All right.
It'll make
them
kind of sort of area.
All right.
Um, you were talking a little bit about the, uh, the Beach Boys.
I want to get back to that.
Were they all, did you ever see them in concert?
Oh, yeah.
I saw them at the old Fox city stadium one time after a game and then I saw that movie and it's like, Oh, those poor guys with the way their dad was to them and everything, like beat them up and everything.
Oh, I didn't, I didn't know all that.
Okay.
I
just, I think they're great.
I just, I mean, they had some of the greatest.
Yeah.
And they.
I don't know how much they charge, but they played it some pretty inexpensive.
That's what I
mean.
They played after Tim
Rattler game free concert.
And they they used to play a lot after some of the Padre games.
Yeah.
But yeah, they I've seen them.
I don't know, not more than more than anybody else.
I've seen them quite a bit.
It's like
they're one
of those bands.
There's sound.
It's just they'll never say they'll
never say this.
Now we're going to play some stuff from our new album.
You know what I mean?
Everybody gets up to go to the bathroom
or get a beer.
Yeah.
No, when they a band like that, you know where you're it's like Bob Seeger.
You know what you're gonna go.
So some of the songs that Brian Wilson wrote, right?
Wouldn't it be nice?
Wow.
Good vibrations.
California girls, sloop John B, surf and safari in my room, surfing USA, sale on sailor, help me Rhonda, surfer girl, wipe out.
Unbelievable that song.
Unbelievable.
One guy
wrote all these
songs.
Yeah.
Kokomo, California Dream and he wrote.
Just a guy from Hawthorne.
Don't worry.
Don't worry, baby.
Yeah.
I mean, unreal.
I don't
know.
I don't know what his background was, but Hawthorne's not like Beverly Hills, right?
I mean, he lived in this Southern California place and him and his brother and then was couple cousins and a couple friends.
I forgot who they all got together, but it wasn't like tryouts.
And I think I read something like they had never surfed.
They say, they wrote all these surfing songs, and they've never been on a surfboard.
Yeah.
That, a lot of talent there.
Us.
Yeah, unbelievable.
That's
great.
How much money do you make when you write a song like, I mean, like one song, you can be set for life.
If you have a number one hit, it keeps getting played over and over.
Can you imagine?
Google is not worth.
So who didn't?
OK, Carney Wilson.
Is that his
daughter?
That is his daughter
from
Wilson Phillips.
Wilson Phillips.
OK.
Yes.
They say that at the time of his death, he was estimated to be worth 100 million.
Wow.
Which when you think about it is a lot.
But when you were list all those songs and all the music today is that you're right.
It's not a lot.
Bill, you probably talk to the bees.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
Wow.
You know what's funny?
It's like, wouldn't you think?
If you got a hundred million dollars in your checking account, you would have every doctor in the world where you're not going to die.
Right.
To your, you know, whenever.
But look at Michael Jackson, right?
I mean, I know it's just it's sleeping in a tube and all it's just, I don't know.
How did he die?
I'm not sure.
Don't do it.
Don't do it.
What are we going to say?
A joke.
But what?
The dad joke.
Stop breathing.
It does say that he probably would have been worth a lot more, but his father sold the publishing rights to most of his early songs in 1969 for a very small sum.
Wow.
Those parents, man.
Yeah, they were right.
Terrible.
But you hear that a lot with actors and all that kind of stuff.
The parents use them to make money.
No question.
You know what they say has the greatest parents along those lines?
Taylor Swift.
Oh, yeah, her mom is pretty cool
her mom and her dad both very much just you know Making sure everything's taken care of they have the right people the whole thing.
I mean she's she's done it right I mean she did you see where she the money she brings in?
It's like almost like the gross national product of some Yes,
it is.
Yeah, it's it's unbelievable.
It's on both first.
She can move the needle.
She's unbelievable and what's cool about her is that it's her
It's not this band that's going to break up.
It's not this fighting they're going to have, you know, and eagles and splitting.
It's her.
So if she can, and I don't know, I don't hear much bad stuff about her.
So if she can maintain that lifestyle.
It's mind boggling.
It is mind boggling.
What can I do to move
the needle time?
How many years too late are you?
I don't
know.
I don't know.
But I feel like I got a rebirth.
Yeah.
No, we better.
I really do.
But it's one of those things to some of these young people, too, that they start out so great, so great, so great.
And then they flame out.
They just flame out.
And it's that bad manager, that bad parent, the bad friends.
Right.
I mean, it's just even like a Miley Cyrus.
Remember when she was on
the verge of
hugeness and went nuts?
And her dad was like.
Kind of nuts.
Kind of nuts.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I told
you, I met him one time.
Did you?
And I think she might have been with him.
when she was a little girl.
Got you.
I interviewed him at a game Packers against Kansas City Chiefs, 1994, Monday night game at Arrowhead Stadium.
And I did a interview with him pregame because he was a big Packer fan.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nice guy.
Very super nice guy.
Really nice guy.
Talked about he'd played tight end in high school in Kentucky.
Just a great normal guy.
It wasn't like that one guy you.
Interviewed you say, hey, can I can I bother you for a minute?
He goes, you already have.
That's Frank Gifford.
I think that's really a funny line.
The only one better than that was Frank Arsham and me and Nick Katamati.
Are we done?
And
I go yet.
Or Paul Horning the time he goes,
Hey
guys, I'm almost to Green Bay.
I'm about to lose you.
And you're in Green Bay.
We're in Green Bay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We've had a few kind of blow us off over the years, but that's all right.
But you know, another thing too with some of these big, big time artists like that, you wonder at what point they look back and they say, you know, mom, dad, what are you thinking?
You know what I mean?
where they were on that precipice of being so huge.
There's such a fine line between taking that next step and not.
And Todd, you know that's more than anybody, the music, because some of those young people would come around and they were so close.
Oh, yeah.
And then that next step is the hard
one.
Got a text here from Brian and Green Bay.
Brian Wilson died from drowning.
Oh, no.
And then he said, decided to try surfing.
Oh, too soon.
Brian,
come on.
Let the body's not
even.
What's wrong
with you?
Didn't even assume room temperature.
Come on.
I'm glad you're on your way
to
help the youth of America in their educational process.
Nice.
Tonight is the very first water fest in Oshkosh.
And we're going to talk to the guy, Mike Dempsey, about tonight's show, Hairball.
It's coming up in just a couple of minutes.
That's going to be big.
That's going to be awesome.
Right across the river from us.
I might take my boat there.
I'm serious.
on the 6th to beat William Kenworth pulling lugs.
Cab over Pete with a reefer on and a Jimmy hauling hugs.
We is heading for Bear.
And welcome back to Mino and the Mayor.
It's time for Valley Focus on 98.3 and 96.5 W-I-S-S and 97.9 W-G-B-W.
I'm producer Todd along with new Wisco bureau chief, Lisa Hale.
Hi, Lisa.
Hi, Todd.
How
are you?
Did that microphone get out of your way?
Yeah, it just
kind of just
moved
away from me.
So today, we are joined on Valley Focus
by Mike Dempsey, who is with Waterfest in Oshkosh.
Thank you so much for joining us.
I appreciate
it.
Well, thank you for having me.
39 years!
No, 39 seasons and 40 years.
We had one little hiccup if you remember.
Oh, that's right.
A little COVID going on or something.
Yeah.
It's great for us because we're literally just across the river from you.
So we see that great location all the time.
And sometimes we may be hanging out down here while the concerts are going on.
Well, that's fantastic.
We have quite a bit of a
Boating waterfest Navy crew that comes down the river and they tie up and it's beautiful
Mike this event is unbelievable.
It's it's really There's two things in Oshkosh.
I feel that help kick off the summer the Oshkosh farmers market and when you start talking about waterfest You know summers officially in the valley.
Well, thank you We we try to make it happen all summer long and we promote Oshkosh on the water and the
beautiful quality of life we enjoy here on the Fox River Valley all summer long.
And Waterfest is a midweek event.
It's not a weekend event, which I think is even better because, you know, weekends get so full with everything.
Well, it's community concert series and we don't want to get in the way of the church picnics and a lot of the other family dealings and a lot of people are out on Friday night for fish.
So Thursday is our night to
warm things up for the weekend.
So tonight is the official kickoff for Waterfest, and I know Hairball is going to be performing the big event.
Oh yeah, they're
bombastic 80s.
It's their 25th anniversary tour.
And I guess they've got some surprises for us.
So they'll have their fantastic light show and their pyro show and all the all the theatrical improvisations that we enjoy.
So
you're going to be kicking it off kind of with a big bang,
so to speak.
Yeah, we're very proud of that.
We have some other bands on the lineup.
We have the Michael Weber show.
He's a guitar phenomenon.
He's coming in from Ohio and he's very exciting.
And then
We've got Brett Noosky and his bad inventions and Brett's just coming back from England, I think, from his tour.
So we've got a triple headed monster going on here for opening night.
If there is anybody who is listening to this who's never heard of Waterfest, if you had to summarize it for somebody, how would you summarize Waterfest in Oshkosh?
Well, Waterfest really allows people to...
Enjoy entertainment for a few dollars.
It's it's in it's what's the charm of waterfests is its accessibility its affordability the beautiful
a format that we have here.
It's a very club-like setting inside one of the best boutique amphitheaters in Wisconsin.
And it's a beautiful park-like setting.
People can come and go as they wish.
So it's really one of those very accessible things, very affordable.
Veterans are free.
Opening night tonight.
Teachers are free if they bring their school ID.
Nice.
Nice.
That is nice.
Now, you mentioned it's very affordable.
How does one go about getting tickets for Waterfest?
Well, waterfest.org has all the tickets.
And we, you know, we, uh, we can sell them online or you can come and pay for it at the gate.
Uh, we have discount early, early bird discounts most most nights.
So, um, I think it's $10 if you're in line before six PM's, uh, opening night tonight.
So.
Get there early.
We're pretty, you know, if you're not quite there by six, but you're in line and we'll let you in for $10.
You guys
are
nice like that,
right?
Yeah.
So
we know opening night tonight, as you mentioned, hairball, Michael Wubber show, Brett Newski and the Bad Inventions.
You've got a great lineup this season.
Let's talk about some of those.
Well, we'll start at the back of the lineup.
We wrap things up August 14th with Loverboy, and that'll be a great show.
My sister's had that album, right?
The red, the red pants.
The red
leather pants.
Yeah, I swear.
If you're wearing red leather pants, we'll let you in free.
So Mike sent you.
Lisa, leave yours at home, okay?
I'll buy your tickets.
You don't want to see that.
And tonight bring the Spandex.
And the rest of that, we've got some really cool stuff, something for everybody.
Next week, we have George Therogood and the Destroyers, which is a fantastic show.
You can pick up the information on the supporting acts online there at waterfest.org.
Then on the 26th, we have Van from Australia making a stop there, only making a few stops in the US.
They're called the Cat Empire.
A little bit of Skal Latin beat.
Lots of fun dancing, music, horns and percussion and very, very, very accessible music.
There'll be a lot of fun.
We also have Copper Box and Kate Voss and that'll be a fun, fun night.
And then on the 17th of July, we have Big Bad Voodoo Daddy bringing the big brass in town.
And then August, no, July 31st, we have Vic Ferrari's encore performance.
Very, very good.
It's cool that they're
out there, right?
Yeah.
It goes back to the early days of Waterfest when we started the concert series format.
And both Vic and Road Trip were mainstays of helping set us up financially because they drew really well and they sold a lot of beer.
And they're always friends of the event.
And Michael Bailey actually opened Waterfest in the Lee Champa Theater with the National Anthem.
And he sang it beautifully, and he's such an operatic singer, so that'll be a nice show.
Great vocalist.
Great having him back, and then back, and that'll be fun.
And also supporting them, actually it's kind of a two-headed show again.
It's a shining star.
It's a shining star and they do the Earth, Wind and Fire.
There's probably, I think, 17 people in that band.
Wow.
Oh, they've got
to.
They're
doing Earth, Wind and Fire.
They've
got to have a
horn
set.
There's another night for some funky.
Oh, yeah.
That'll be fun.
That'll be there.
They're coming in on from Chicago, Errant Land area, and that'll be a big show.
One of the best Earth, Wind and Fire shows.
And then if you love Steely Dan, I'm guessing you'd love Steely Dan.
Yes, you do.
And they're supported by the producers, also Atlanta.
based and they had a lot of MTV pop hits in the 80s.
How
long have you been part of Waterfest?
1989.
Wow.
That's a long time.
Oh
yeah.
We're lucky to have
you.
We're
lucky to have you.
We enjoy it.
It's a lot of fun.
It couldn't happen without the sponsors, fans, the bands love it.
Our vendors, our sound company from Green Bay does a great job of Lighthouse.
They're always on the job and helping us get the shows off even in climate weather.
And we try to make it fun for everybody.
It always is, Michael Dempsey.
Thank you so much for coming.
WaterFest tonight is the grand opening, hairball.
10
bucks.
10 bucks.
Buy 6 o'clock if you're online.
You can't beat that.
WaterFest.org is the website to go to for ticket information and all the entire lineup.
This is Mino and the Mayor, Valley Focus, more with Jim and John coming up next.
Hang on.
Coming to Northeast Wisconsin live from the Civic Media Studios and featuring TV and radio broadcast veteran John Minow along with the City of Green Bay's longest-serving mayor Jim Schmidt.
This is Minow and the Mayor.
And here are your hosts.
John Minow
and Jim Schmidt.
Hey, thank you very much.
It is our Scotty Summer Text to Win statewide contest.
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Plus, every entry puts you into one of our grand prize drawings of a Wisconsin Dell's Area Vacation or Door County Vacation.
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And this hour's keyword is family.
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So text that in F A M I L Y. You've got till the end of the hour.
Good luck.
Now back to John Mino, Jim Schmidt, my name.
Right.
Well, thank you very much, Todd.
You know, one thing that we always notice when we come down to the Oshkosh area, and we love coming down here just for the great city.
I can only keep driving in again this morning.
I'm looking at the dates of when buildings were built.
And one was 1890.
Another one was 1895.
It was just on the way.
I just love the history that has been restored here in Oshkosh.
But another thing about Oshkosh that every time we're here, this gets reinforced.
the passion you have for paying forward by going backwards with young people and the things and the opportunities you provide them.
And we're with two people that are so instrumental in doing those kind of things right now.
Kate Stelp and Bill Wyman, Oshkosh Area Community Foundation.
We're talking about one of these things when the camp, and I was just reading about it, typical for this area, has been in existence since 1937.
Boom.
Yeah.
I mean, phenomenal.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, we're happy to be here.
Thank you.
And a community needs a community foundation.
Because of what Johnny's talking about, we're going to talk about where some of your money goes, but it's incredible what you do to help the overall community, not just some specific projects, but this whole scholarship thing, which I really want to talk about is, I mean, you're investing in your future when you take these 300 kids.
We've
been around for coming on 100 years.
That's pretty cool.
And we've been helping the community since, oh, I'd say in the 40s, we started giving money away.
And it's been wonderful.
The passion that people have to give back to the community is just wonderful.
I think that is so cool.
I mean, that really and truly is.
You guys have such a nucleus here of like, OK, this is who we've always been.
No need to change it.
We're good.
You know what?
The breweries?
the different things, the fire stations that are still being used.
I love the fact that you guys never felt the need to like just knock everything down like you did with this great Molly Green Bay and and start over.
You
guys have
just taken the history and just enhanced it and made it better and can't pronounce the name.
Hi, Waila.
Hi,
Waila.
Yeah.
Explain that.
That's the one that's been around since 1937 and still going strong.
There was a camp out west of town that was on a small lake and the camp was doing as well as it did.
And I think it was in the early 90s or
so.
95.
It's 30 years of the fund this year.
So
they sold the camp.
And they put the money into the community foundation, and today we're still giving grants for camperships.
Yeah, I think those are just announced.
So some of the alumni of the camp really came together and rallied around that to carry forward the mission of the camp and the memories they had there.
So they still sponsor camperships.
for kids in Winnebago County to go to summer camps all over the state.
And yeah, it's 30 years of the Highway Law Youth Fund this year.
That's awesome.
And
you also do new things as well.
But what I like about community foundations like yours here in Oshkosh is you get your pulse on the community.
Whereas there may be needs that weren't there 25 years ago.
Exactly.
And so people, I don't know what your minimum is, but you have significant amount of money and you manage that money and you're doing quite well with that.
I mean, you invested properly is what I'm saying.
Right.
We have an investment manager that helps us, actually, that are out east, but they help us invest it.
And it's the growth recently.
It's been really good.
We've been in like 16 different investment categories.
We don't need to get into all that.
No,
but
you're
saying that their money just doesn't sit under the mattress to invest.
Right.
And again, I want to give you credit.
I want to talk a little bit about.
Only the scholarships is yet.
But where are some of the new things that you're giving money to?
Because demographics change out there.
But
if I could just put in that and that's great with the new things.
But there's one thing that just caught my eye where it's like this mission statement can stay forever.
The aroma of pine, pristine lakes, fresh air, screened cabins, open air tents, singing, swimming, canoeing, hiking and spending time being a kid in a kid's world now.
Yeah, I mean, I didn't get to meet a lot of the highway.
The ladies, the campfire girls, this last grant round, but there's spirited bunch.
And, you know, that's the thing about the community foundation is the things that we do run the gamut because we are here to unite the passion of our donors with projects that are needed and are meaningful.
So, you know, we've got folks who.
like the campfire girls to scholarship donors to people who are super passionate about particular organizations.
Recently, we just started a fund from an estate that just goes to keep seniors, older adults with their beloved cats, just cats, not dogs, cats in their homes.
So it supports organizations that like the Humane Society that has programs so that
cats don't have to be surrendered so that, you know, older folks can keep their cats.
And that's a real example.
I didn't just make that up.
And that's the someone can give you money and earmark it or just give it to you and say, look, you know what's going on
in the community.
But
I started to pick up on what you're talking about, that camp you have.
We have Camp Inalaya and it's just those father daughter things and just and again, it's something that's been around for a long time.
But then there's a lot of new things because Green Bay is, you know, demographically has changed quite a bit.
There's new programs for some of the
new opportunities that we have there.
So tell me a little bit more about what's new here in Oshkosh.
And you're doing a great job.
I'm not taking anything away from your existing programs.
That's important.
But what are some of the things that you do now that you didn't do 10 years ago?
Well, I think, and Bill, I'll need to lean on you for this.
I'm new to the Community Foundation.
But some of the programs that we've done with
reducing and preventing homelessness in this region are really critical projects.
So, like I said, I wasn't.
That's kind of what Jim just
said,
what he was saying with Green Bay too.
You
gotta be able to shift gears a little
bit.
Yeah, because it's not all camp you know I am.
There's kids that don't have
a
house to sleep in, much less a camp.
So, and we've, our community foundation I think is, well, you know them.
Yeah,
in Green Bay.
Yep.
Over the years, what's really changed I think is the amount of human.
Health and Human Services that we do the basic needs type stuff right and it's everything from from homeless to Shell not only shelter but food and and I even classify some education things into that too so we've really directed a lot more of our Total giving towards that area
right the basic needs and I think sometimes we I don't know I don't know if it was always there, but we sure address it a lot more But it's very obvious in Green Bay,
but that doesn't mean that we can't that we have to continue to sport
All these things that lift up all ships, right?
I mean we've done a lot of the Lee Champa Theater I'm just looking right across the street We helped with that and we did the years ago.
We helped with the swimming pool in town We've helped with the why and we've helped so we've helped with a lot of beautiful
parks
around here Yeah, and we have funds with the park so beautiful zoo.
I mean
We're trying to help everything.
And if we put all of our emphasis just in one area, it just, we won't strengthen the community, which is what our mission statement is.
That's awesome.
You
know, another cool thing though, too, it's like even in Green Bay, we're talking like they'll have these like art programs for more of the inner city type kids and these book drives and some of these things that, okay, those basic needs because there are, you know, there are kids that go to school hungry.
And that's not even a question.
So that's the fundamental part, but let's make it fun.
afterwards as well, correct?
Yeah, I think that's, and that's really what it comes down to because everybody has a specific passion for a different, a different area of need in our community.
And that's what we're here for.
That's why we can't, you know, or we don't just focus on one issue area because that would be a disservice to the passionate people in this community.
And you need every
They all got to work together.
You
just can't take one lane
because
then other things will get hurt a little
bit
Tell me about the scholarships.
Let's go back to that.
You awarded 305 scholarships
305 recipients more scholarships than that because some kids get more than one.
They're just so great
So
did you ever get more than one, Johnny?
No.
Did you ever get one?
I got one.
Did you?
That's
from the
Booster Club, Nagani Booster Club.
That's awesome.
I think it was $200.
OK.
Awesome.
That's nice.
Today, that's probably, you know, I'm just kidding.
I
got one.
It's one more than I got.
Same.
I didn't get any.
But
tell me about that event and how the selection process is going to be extremely difficult.
It's a really complex program.
Bill and I had to meet with our director of education yesterday so we could keep track of all of everything in the program because the Oshkosh Area Community Foundation serves a pretty wide geographic range.
We are all of Winnebago County, all of Washera County, Green Lake County, and the city of Ripon.
So it's Oshkosh area.
etc.
Yeah, yeah, that's about 15 different school districts.
I
was gonna say that's a pretty big geographical area right there.
That's a big circle.
So we're giving scholarships
in all of
those
schools.
Well you know what's great though too is because like even with a Green Bay you think okay well sure you know Green Bay East, Green Bay West, the prebbles of the world but you know we got these little outlying schools that really sometimes don't have that community you know funding and different things like
that.
Exactly.
What you guys are doing is going outside the the city boundaries which I think is really important don't you?
Yeah.
Right but what we're really doing is we're helping those communities develop
a way to give out scholarships because most of these scholarships that we're giving like in Berlin or Princeton or Green Lake
or it
was the smaller communities, those are the people from those communities that are actually supporting their schools.
We're just kind of the administrator in helping them develop a plan so that they can continue to help their own communities.
Which they need though.
Yeah, we're the partner.
That's the grass, absolutely.
Just for our listeners that may be geographically challenged, Princeton is...
like this little town.
Princess little
town.
It's not New
Jersey.
That's
a
good call.
We're talking
about scholarships.
He
mentions
Princeton.
Hey, I was going to
say,
I was going
to say, I was
going to
say, hey,
I think, I think for as many times as Jim drives through an area, they could do a scholarship just on his tickets.
Yes.
What was the other little time?
Brandon, Brandon
meets
Brandon received a nice donation from him last year.
I think
it's in his name, Mayor Schmidt Community Foundation
Scholarship.
Excellent.
Hey, you know, I can get you connected to the right people.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, 17 schools you said you work with?
15.
15, I'm
sorry.
And these kids send in...
that their applications then
it's a cool process actually because we have I mean we have over 250 unique scholarship funds some of them give out more than one award right you know it depends on the setup but kids only have to fill out one application we have a universal application process by the the region so if you are all the kids got to know is where they go to school and then they fill out one application it's pretty comprehensive and it gets they get matched up to opportunity
that they're eligible for, and then they get considered for those.
That's
right.
Okay, with that, so did you ever get any scholarships coming out of high school?
Sure,
I don't remember where they
are.
But anyway, I got the
Kiwanis, I know that.
Oh, there you go.
But I mean, that's quite the thrill when you get that letter.
Oh, yeah.
In the mail, and it's like, wow!
Yeah.
$22.
Whatever it is, it's just you feel pretty cool.
I don't
remember where that
scholarship is.
You got the scholarship, but
I don't remember where it is.
I guarantee in a
scrapbook someplace I've still got that letter from
1975.
Oh my
gosh.
It's just great.
And let's talk about some of the other programs that in the foundation, how people can give to the foundation too.
I mean, that's equally as important.
So let's talk about all that.
Well, I think that we're
going to send her a quick break.
Yeah, we're talking about it.
Yeah.
Summer, summer, summer.
Hey, once again, it's our Scotty Summer Techs2Wins statewide contest, your daily chance to win a pair of Milwaukee Brewers club level tickets or $100 cash.
Plus, every entry puts you into one of our grand prize drawings of Wisconsin Delaware vacation or Dorr County vacation.
Yes.
This hour's keyword is family.
F-A-M-I-L-Y.
Family.
Just download the Civic Media app in the Apple or Google stores.
Choose WISS or WGBW and use a text button to send the keyword family for your chance to win in the statewide contest.
This hour, you're playing for a pair of Milwaukee Brewers club level tickets and the keyword again is yes.
No, it's not family.
I'm just kidding.
Yes.
M-A-M-I-L-Y you have until the end of the hour.
Good luck.
Yes.
It's family, it's family.
It's Marv Elbert's birthday, that's where we're celebrating.
He said it all the time, so.
Yes, yes.
We actually had him on there one more time.
Yes.
Thank you.
Anyway, back to something more important than Marv.
The Community Foundation here in Oshkosh, which is more than Oshkosh, I didn't know that either.
That's quick to reach.
Yeah.
And by the way, I guess
say some of those are cool little towns when we drove down to where's it the Dells we came to Todd?
Yeah, you gotta go through Princeton.
Those are really cool little are saying is out there.
Yes.
Love those towns.
Yeah.
Except driving through
speed
limit.
They got to go slow.
So he got to take it.
Okay, cheese.
Is
your wife was
here?
What was that?
What was that last
word?
Yes.
I didn't get him.
We get
pulled over.
Yes.
Okay.
It gets a warning, I believe in Princeton.
We're going through the next little town, which is
Montello.
Yes.
Yeah.
I grew up in that area.
Three
minutes away.
I said, Oh my God, the guy's coming back again.
You must have, you must have forgot something to give to your license.
No, it's a whole different police department.
Three minutes later.
We'll over again.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
Expensive Christmas party.
Were you late?
We're
out of room.
I was going home.
I was going to get home.
So anyway, that was then.
The scholarships that you give out, and you made a good point that I think people want, maybe they want their name on a scholarship and they give their money to you.
And then you, with them, they can earmark it or they can tell you kind of what we're looking for.
Young women and
whatever they want to do, you know, YMCA.
But the minimum is $10,000.
And if you give out 4%, that's $400.
So you're thinking it would be nice if you could get an endowment or somebody to give you a check for, you know, maybe $25,000, $30,000.
We have a lot of different size scholarships.
I think that the one we like to talk about the most is called the William Bray Scholarship.
And back in the 60s, he gave about $90,000.
and we give out five percent or four and a half percent a year.
We've given out over, what, four hundred thousand dollars out of that scholarship.
Actually, we've given out over two million dollars out of that scholarship and it just keeps growing and growing.
So if you give a pretty worthy amount of money in the beginning,
takes right away.
You can see the the advantages of it and then over time it makes a huge difference.
And could I read some of the other ones that you give to that?
These are like kind of heartfelt.
Big brothers, big sisters of East Central Wisconsin to send eight little kids and their bigs to camp on a way in Wapaket.
So that's for the camps.
Yes, that's different than the scholarship.
I know
that totally but I'm just talking about somewhere some of this money goes with the foundation does.
Yeah,
exactly.
Hey
boy scouts America Bay Lakes Council 15 scouts that can attend camp of their choice boys and girls club of Oshkosh overnight trips 175 kids
and
camp Radford in New London Easter Seals Wisconsin five youth with disabilities to camp Wabiq in Wisconsin Dells friends of camp
I
don't
know how to say it either.
I don't know how to say it either.
I don't know how to say it either.
I don't know how to say it either.
I don't know how to say it either.
I don't know how to say it either.
I don't know how to say it either.
I don't know how to say it either.
I don't know how to say it either.
As soon as the little boy got off the bus, he said, Mom, when can I go back?
When can I go back?
I mean, those are the kinds of things where it's like, OK, scholarships are great for school and everything.
We all needed those and wanted those.
But when you talk about the influence and the impact you can have on these little kids.
I'll write a check right now for that.
I mean, it's really special to be involved with the community foundation and see, again, the breadth, the huge scope of things that the community foundation touches.
When we talked with Cheryl, our director of education yesterday, she was telling us about a new scholarship that just opened last fall.
It's called the Scholarship for Hope, and it supports students who have a refugee background, and that scholarship was
given out this spring for the first time.
We have scholarships that are memorials.
I
cannot remember the name of the individual, but it's named after a person in law enforcement who died on duty, and his family and loved ones, coworkers, created a memorial scholarship in his name.
The other thing that's really special about scholarships is family, multiple generations of families sometimes get involved in the award ceremonies each spring.
So they are part of seeing that legacy carry forward.
Awesome.
It's
really
special.
That's fantastic.
The camps, I just want to underscore that too.
I wish every kid could go to camp.
Right.
I mean, don't you?
I mean, it's just it's great.
But I mean, to help them out and like the scholarships are good.
It does help take the edge off.
But these camps are lifetime memories.
Exactly.
And I mean, I think that's underscored by the commitment that the High Waila the campfire girls have to the High Waila Youth Fund.
They, you know, they
No one asked them to to get together every year and read a bunch of applications from organizations.
You know, this is their passion and they get to continue living and carrying on that legacy of their cherished memories of camp to help today's youth.
And to put it in perspective to even like Joan Crock, who of course owns the Crock Centers, became a billionaire basically, very disadvantaged as a youth.
Yeah.
Was heartbroken when her rich kids were going to camps and her
Mission in life was, I'm going to make sure every kid gets to go to a camp or gets to go to a Y or gets to go to something like that.
So who knows some of these kids that are benefiting from these camps, what they could turn out to be and how they could keep paying this forward.
Like I'm all open up at McDonald's franchise, you know, and just take off.
She was great.
I mean, she's passed away since then, but she was in Green Bay and just.
It's the nicest person on the planet, right?
And it's a lot of the people are who give to your organization.
Kate Bill
Oshkosh area community foundation, what you guys do is spectacular.
Whatever it can do to sponsor that.
And when I said about writing out a check, I don't actually have a check.
You
can give
online.
No, no, that's stock.
Real estate.
You can
give
a lot of different
things.
Hey,
welcome back!
It's our summer Scotty text-to-win statewide contest your daily chance with a pair of Milwaukee Brewers club level tickets or $100 cash plus every entry puts you into one of our grand prize drawings of a Wisconsin Dell's area vacation or Dork County vacation.
All right, so this hour's keyword is family.
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family for your chance to win in the statewide contest.
This hour you're playing for a Paramilwaukee Brewer's club level tickets and the keyword again is family, not yes.
Family, F-A-M-I-L-Y.
You've got till the end of the hour.
Good luck.
And again, you want to text in because it helps Jim and John look good to the bosses at corporate.
Yeah, it doesn't look good when he says the keyword is yes.
What's that?
It's it's Mike.
It's a, uh, Marv Albert's 84th birthday today.
So that's, I didn't hear you guys talking.
Oh, wait.
Yes.
Oh,
yeah, that's awesome.
Yes.
Yes, exactly.
Well, Justin Schmick, how you doing, buddy?
I'm living the dream over
here.
I
was like, I'm on the radio.
Tell
everybody who you are and
what you do, my friend.
Tell them what you do.
That's living the dream.
Yeah.
Well, my name is Justin Schmick.
I own the Schmick Freeman Insurance Agency.
I got offices in Amro and Oshkosh.
But you know, I'm so much more than that, right?
Not just an insurance guy, right?
I'm a dad.
I'm a husband.
I'm an exotic dancer for hire.
And Jay Long
walks
on the
floor.
You may want to back that
up.
Right.
But honestly, the exotic dancer part, it's by call only because I'm 41.
I
got to
stretch beforehand.
I
need time.
No impromptu.
I'm
not
just up there all
day long.
I
need some prep
time.
You're talking to somebody here, buddy.
I know I've been there.
So you're Chippendale.
Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you're here.
Yeah,
I'm more, you know, you know, from
the rescue Rangers, the chip and deal rescue Rangers, I'm more like the bigger guy.
Do
you
do
anything?
Jim and John, for your anniversary, we brought him in.
He's going to do a show for you.
I was stretching outside
beforehand.
Look at the time.
Thanks for coming in.
So we got going on tonight.
You got a big, big day night coming up here.
For me?
With Waterfest.
Well, Waterfest is tonight.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm not going to.
You're one of the
biggest fans of Waterfest.
I am a huge
fan of Waterfest.
I think it's a great.
It's an awesome concert.
It's always a lot of fun and hairballs tonight.
That's a huge.
Huge.
Yeah.
That's that's to be.
Ashkosh does it right.
And so does Amro.
I like Amro.
You see you have an office there.
Everybody likes Amro because Amro is awesome.
It is.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
We're talking about how cities get a lot of the attention.
But some of these outlying communities are.
Very special, you
know.
The first time they did the freedom free fall was in Omro at that airport there.
Oh, really?
And that was so cool.
And the whole so many people from Omro came out to support the veterans for prevention of suicide.
It was really cool.
I used to live out there.
I used to watch guys jump out of airplanes all the
time.
Perfectly good airplanes.
It wasn't crashing or anything.
Just jumped right out of there.
So when guys like that, do you actually insure them?
I mean, let's be on.
No, no, you would not.
That's
actually one of the questions is on the life insurance part of things is have you jumped out of a plane or are you going to be flying?
or anything
like that.
Are you serious?
Yeah, absolutely.
I went skydiving there.
Get this.
These guys have heard this.
When I was in high school, I went college, freshman college.
That was the first time I ever flew.
Really?
Think about that.
Getting up there and then jumping out.
So the first
time you were in a plane, you just jumped right out of it?
I did, man.
OK,
well, hey, forget this.
So what's the first time you ever
landed?
I don't know.
That's a
good
way to get over your fear of flying right away.
You just jump out.
It did.
And you get down safe.
You're like,
OK, well, is that really unlike the rider or whatever?
Yeah,
absolutely.
That's one of the questions.
Where are some of the other
things?
Are you going to be doing any long term foreign travel?
That's going to be another one that's on there.
Is this for life insurance?
It's for life insurance.
OK.
Yeah.
I mean, if it's car insurance, nobody
cares if
you're jumping out of a plane or
not.
Where are some of the other
things?
Wow.
On the life insurance side, there's a lot of questions.
A lot of it goes, you know, it's more on your on your health records and all that kind of stuff.
What kind of crazy things do you do in your life?
You know, things of that nature.
So they're just making sure that you're not a risk to to pass away early.
Okay, but this is a specific freebie insurance you do.
a lot of life insurance.
The only reason I want to ask is, you know how you watch these TV shows, and they always take out this big life insurance policy, and then they knock off their spouse.
Yeah.
Hey, that was like six episodes of Columbo.
Just one more thing.
But
has that ever happened to your company where it was...
That's
questionable.
I haven't I haven't had to do any
investigations on anything like
that But
I will tell you that like I've got to hit some numbers every once in a while for contests and things like that with my companies So I've got a lot of life insurance on myself
So
I will tell you that my wife is very aware that I am worth more dead than I ever Unexpectedly pass you go
first place you go.
Yeah.
Wow.
All right.
All right We'll do that.
So let me ask us when it comes to life insurance so many people like I'm gonna put that off I'm gonna put that off.
I'm gonna put that off
If you go back in time with people, when would you tell them you got to do it?
Oh, before you're 18.
Oh,
honestly, if you if you have kids, get a full term, a whole life insurance policy on them as soon as possible.
It's inexpensive and it's convertible on a few different ways throughout their lifetime.
So.
But if someone is young that has kids that's.
I did better off with term and even though it expires in 20 years and I did that, but we do a business.
If I had lost, I'd been dead.
It would have been.
I'm just curious, as you said the whole life, right?
You prefer that as a...
Well, for
a youngster, right?
Do me a favor
though, for anybody listening that doesn't know, go ahead and explain the difference.
Okay, well
term life insurance is just for a term, it's for a short term time, right?
So you can get a 5, 10, 15, 30 year, 25 year, depends on the company, right?
But once it's expired, that's
it, it's over.
And that money you put in, you don't get, it's gone.
Nope, you're rolling the
dice.
Something
might hold the dice.
You're gonna die before yeah, exactly much pretty much.
Yeah, that's a really fun thing to talk about on the
radio.
That's great I think it's important though.
I really do I know a lot of people that put that off put that off and the guy catastrophe dies and
Mm-hmm, and then there's a go fund me page that we
all there's a go fund me page and Jim and I both having been in real estate for closed houses.
Oh, yeah, those exact thing
absolutely
So yeah, the term life insurance is the term whole life is less to your entire lifetime.
And that can that can build cash value.
Right.
The term cash that in then down the road.
Yep.
And everything everything is situational in life insurance, right?
It depends on what you need.
For kids, like if you're a brand like a newborn or two month old, get them a whole life policy because that that that number most of the time will lock in right there.
And that's what they're paying monthly forever.
unless they upconvert it or put anything else into it.
As a parent, I would say, yeah, probably once you have kids, get a term policy.
If you buy a house, get a 30-year term policy for the amount that you owe on the house.
Because if you pass, the bank's still going to want that money.
They don't say,
oh, well,
you
died, so
you don't have to pay us anymore.
Don't worry about it.
They're going to find somebody to pay them.
It's OK.
And I think once you, when I say the term,
It's amazing if you want to do it again how expensive it is because you're older and oh, yeah The older
you get the closer you are to dying.
So that's pretty much it.
It is
so if you take it out when you're 20 It's much much less expensive because you're much less of a risk to pass away early at that point, right?
So the insurance every insurance company works on risk, right?
That's what actuaries do they say, okay, this person is We have this much risk on this person.
So this is how much it's gonna cost We have way more risk on this person So it's gonna cost way more money because we're gonna have to fork that money out earlier than
then later
and as they say about insurance it's true it's it's insurance isn't for you it's for the people who survive you yeah absolutely gotta get that through your head it's like wait man i'm doing this for them and yep it's gotta work with your money because if you miss a couple payments they could throttle back on your policy right yeah i
can just cancel
out right yeah so i mean it's but i don't think terms very expensive no it's not it's pretty reasonable yeah
what what things do you see that people have a misconception on when it comes to life insurance
Everybody nobody thinks they need it like right nobody needs
it until they need it
And that's without with all insurance is like how we don't need that until you need it until until something catastrophic happens You know like well now what am I gonna do?
You know now I got to start to go fund me and see if I can beg a bunch of people for money Well in turn you could have been paying 50 bucks a month and get paid out a whole bunch of money right at this spot right now So that's one of the biggest ones like well we don't we don't really need it and nobody wants to talk especially on the life
insurance Yeah,
so
Yeah, that's the that's one of the biggest things is it's really hard to get anybody to even talk about it or consider the fact that there's a chance that they're going to pass away at some point.
So in your insurance company, right, we talked about whole life term, did you do the auto home all that?
Yeah, we do all plus
auto home commercial, all of it.
Okay.
Except for, except for
health
insurance.
Health insurance makes no sense to me.
I can't wrap my head around health insurance.
Most people can.
Yeah.
It's
a whole different animal these days, isn't
it?
And my wife carries health insurance, so I don't even have to talk or think about it.
So yeah, that's a win for me.
Auto
insurance.
We
need that.
It's a law, right?
Do you have auto insurance?
Yeah, it
is.
Yeah,
it's a law that you have to get it from me too.
That is actually, yeah, it's a statute.
I was trying to ask you about auto insurance because I
people in Wisconsin we all drive the Geico you hear these things that are these discounted things and it happens with life insurance too and boy You don't read the fine print in there.
That's those aren't good policies some of those
Well, that's you that's the thing about about having an agent compared to like going on Geico comm or progressive comm is I had to go through all the Education part I had to get certified I had to learn about what all these coverages mean and you guys don't have to do that so
The best choice for you when you're looking at it, not knowing all the information is whatever is the cheapest, right?
Well, the cheapest is the state minimum 25.50 for auto insurance, which means if you run into somebody, you have $25,000 per person.
to pay for their medical expenses and things like that, and $50,000 aggregate for the entire incident.
So if you've got a couple people in a vehicle that have some long-term issues, that have some rehab, some missed work, stuff like that, you're gonna hit that $50,000.
Real
quick.
Real quick.
And then after that, and there's still bills though, come knocking on your door.
Yeah,
then it's on you
after that.
The insurance company will pay you, pay out up to the limit of the coverage, and then they'll say, well, we did, we fulfilled our obligation.
Good luck.
Okay, so okay, I'll be honest with you.
Sometimes I almost, it seems like I'm an old guy because like I'll watch some of these shows in the afternoon like a gun smoke or whatever.
And the commercials will be about, oh, Bob died and he didn't have life insurance.
Oh, he should call so-and-so.
Are those, I don't want to say the word scam, but are those like less than reputable?
No, I don't know.
It depends on the company, right?
I don't know
for
sure.
But you know the commercials I'm talking
about?
Yeah, I know what you're saying, but I think it's just the way that they're marketing it.
It seems kind of scammy, but it's just they're trying to get you.
They're trying to scare people.
They're trying to scare old people.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
And if you want to do that, there's a lot
of.
I mean, I'll be honest, I bought seven or eight policies.
Yeah, smart.
Smart.
I mean, cover my
butt.
But those may not pay for everything.
We'll cover your funeral costs.
they may not pay for all your funeral costs.
There are many things that are exempt from that.
You gotta read the fine print on that stuff, whereas an agent, you go to you, you know all that stuff, you read it.
You tell us this is what you're getting, this is the difference between this one and this one.
What we do is we'll give you the best advice that we have and a few different options, but we'll give you what, here's what we really think you should do based on what we are seeing here and what we know, and then we'll let you decide.
I'm not a sales guy, I'm not really good at it.
I've got the product.
I'll show it to you, here's what it costs, you want it or you don't want it.
That's pretty
much it.
If
you don't want
it, that's okay, we can still be friends.
What's the highest amount that a person could get?
on for life insurance?
Oh boy, I don't,
I mean, that depends on the company.
It's a, it's a whole like millions.
Oh yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I would be so nervous if I had like a $10 million policy on me.
Like he's just said, yeah, sleep is what I always do.
Someday would be like, you
know, dad, I know you
wouldn't be here right now.
There
was, I was a point in my life where I was worth more than in life.
But that was the term, but it doesn't a million dollars, John.
That's not that much.
I mean, you get the house, you got the kids, you got to get through school.
That's pretty quick.
So, wow.
Stick around, Jed.
This
is this is interesting
stuff.
Justin
Schmitt, Schmitt, Freeman Insurance, Oshkosh and Amro back right after
this.
Life I love is making music with my friends.
And I can't wait to get on the road again.
Going places that I've never been.
Seeing things that I may never see again.
I can't wait to get on the road again.
Summer, summer, summer
Hey, welcome back.
It is summer.
It's also a Scotty summer.
You have about seven minutes to go to text to win our statewide contest.
Your daily chance when a pair of Milwaukee Brewers club level tickets or $100 in cash plus every entry puts you into one of our grand prize drawings of Wisconsin Dell's area vacation or Door County vacation.
All right.
And this hour's keyword is family.
F-A-M-I-L-Y family.
Just download the Civic Media app in the Apple or Google Pay stores.
Choose W-I-S-S or WGBW.
and use a text button to send in the keyword family for your chance to win in the statewide contest.
Or again, this hour you're playing for a pair of Milwaukee Brewers club level tickets and the keyword again is family.
You've got till the end of the hour's minow set about seven minutes or so.
Minow and the Mayor on WISS and WGBW.
Welcome back.
We're coming your way from the WISS studios in beautiful historic downtown Oshkosh.
Yes.
Just make sure that will never get old.
I'd
love that when he'd be on Letterman and stuff
like that come in with
those wacky
letterman gave him a hard time though because he came out and he talked about all the heat he became real honest about what he did with the women I said
Let him kind of supported him in that,
didn't he?
He did it first and said, what are you doing this, Marvin?
He was like, oh, I shouldn't have done that.
I bit her on the knock and I wore garters.
What are you doing, Marvin?
Yeah.
You should be more a little defiant.
Right.
But he totally
did it.
He didn't let him end up saying, I think you're a good guy.
Yeah.
But he was
a little too honest.
Yeah.
I mean, that's always been my problem.
Yeah.
You told us that you liked wearing garters and biting people on the neck.
I think we'd all.
Yes.
We don't want.
Hey, I'll tell you what.
We don't confirm.
We don't confirm.
My
thigh.
God bless
you.
Take an inner tube.
Speaking of insurance.
Yeah.
Schmidt Freeman insurance.
Justin, you OK?
A couple of quick things that these guys were talking about during the break.
I'd never heard of.
Pet insurance.
Yeah.
Pet insurance.
You know, it's one of those things that you do.
You do love your pets.
You're worried about their medical part of it.
And I can understand getting pet insurance, especially if you're paying big money for a dog or an animal or whatever, because they're getting crazy expensive.
Me, I won't, like, 300 bucks is as much as I'll spend on an animal, on a dog, because I just, well, I don't have any money.
So that's really weird.
Chip spends that
to get his dog's
toenails clipped.
Yeah, yeah.
Our kids are gone and we just, you
know, right?
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Yeah.
But if you're, yeah, if you're putting big money in and it's a big investment, I think that's probably a smart.
They don't have
life insurance, do they?
I don't know about the life insurance side of it.
No, just health
insurance,
right?
Yeah.
The main thing is it covers those big medical bills, like if they swallow a toy or they have some kind of cancer or any kind of thing that comes up
that they cancer when they get older.
But, you know, pay, you know, four or five grand for a dog.
You want to.
and something goes in.
Because does that medical
stuff?
I paid $25 for my dog from the Humane Society.
So
does that
where you're from?
I didn't
know.
My dogs are always from the Humane
Society.
Oh, that's cool.
That's beautiful.
That's
awesome.
Mine on
Craigslist.
I gotta
say one thing.
You know,
people might have the stereotypical thing of an insurance salesman from, you know, back in the days of, you know, the TV shows where everybody's dad was an insurance salesman.
I bet you're the only insurance.
You are the only insurance salesman I know that has his own brand named Flip Flops.
Oh, yeah, I do.
Yeah, it's all about the brand.
I'm going to
just, you know, I'm going to take a picture for social media.
Yeah.
How cool in here is that insurance agent, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
But you know what that reminds of that?
Just remind I got a bad paying.
You ever get look at something.
It's like, oh, why do I just get a bad paying?
And it's because from yesterday, I had to go get my checkup for my skin cancer, which by the way, all good.
Yeah.
No, nothing new.
Nothing new.
Okay.
But he's got to go back next week.
Todd had me so scared.
I couldn't sleep the night before I went for my checkup.
He told me I was gonna be completely naked and they're gonna be he told
me I told you that like my
hands and knees and they're gonna be checking certain
every crevice ever
nervous about going in that sounds like fun.
Well, the thing is I put they said you want a guy or a woman doctor.
I'm like, I don't care.
I don't what's it.
It's a doctor and then I started thinking whatever whatever.
Well, it wasn't that bad, but I literally couldn't sleep tonight.
for cause of what Todd put in my head.
Okay.
So I took like six showers.
I did whatever put on my greatest whatever action or biker shorts and whatever.
That sounds wonderful.
Put on old English, you know, his lower parts.
Actually, you know the only
thing he said?
Man-scaping,
little manscaping before, right, right, right.
No, I
should have, because he said, oh, you got a little bit of a rash down there.
I'm not joking.
I said, yeah, it's working out too much.
But you want to know the one thing that I just thought about seeing you in flip-flops, it's like, oh, crap, the one thing I forgot to do.
You didn't clip your toenails.
I did not clip my toenails.
And they are gross.
Just
this pedicures, they're all over.
Just pollinate.
It's great.
And it's okay for guys to do it.
Oh, there it is.
And they do a great job.
I got
a fetish about somebody touching my feet.
I mean,
a bad
fetish.
Wait a minute.
A fetish, John, is okay.
Yeah, right.
No, you know, you have it, you, you, uh, you're adverse to that.
You have an issue.
You have a phobia.
A phobia.
There we go.
A phobia.
Yeah.
Not a fetish.
Yeah.
They both start with F. Yeah, exactly.
You were real close.
Thanks.
I know for
real.
Jeff Schmick, Schmick Freeman Insurance, Oshkosh Nonro, give yourself a plug.
Tell people why they should give you a call.
Listen, insurance is boring.
It really is.
Nobody wants to talk about it.
So talk about it with somebody that's fun to talk to.
That's us at Schmick Freeman Insurance.
And the thing is, you're not doing it for yourself.
You know what I mean?
The person that's going to come to talk to you about it,
they're not going
to benefit from it.
nearly as much as somebody that they love is going to benefit.
Exactly.
And what I like about, not just the products that you offer, but the different ages, you're not pigeonholed to this person.
You go 25 to 90.
Oh yeah,
we take all kinds.
Right.
Yeah,
absolutely.
I think that's
important because people need to be comfortable.
Promote your
social.
things.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Find me on social media.
I do tell daily dad jokes to my friend Stephanie.
So you can find me on Facebook and Instagram and Tik Tok and YouTube and all those things.
It's just you're there.
Yeah.
But stuff like that.
No, I'm not.
I have no idea how I got any kind of following on Instagram.
I'm not supposed to be on there.
I'm too old for that.
I have no no clue how that happened.
It just did give us one dad joke.
All right.
Guy walks into a library says I'd like to order a cheeseburger and fries.
Librarians like, dude, this is a library.
So the guy's like, OK, sorry, sorry.
I'd like to order a cheeseburger.
Yes.
That is funny.
That's actually really good.
That's a good one.
That is actually a
good one.
It's better than the one I told you.
It's
a lot better.
All the ones you told me.
One more time.
Tell everybody where they could find you.
Schmick Freeman Insurance, Amro and Oshkosh.
This
is great.
This guy is cool.
This guy is fun.
This guy is kind of fun for you.
All
right.
Good man.
Thanks
Justin.
All right.
We got set a quick break.
We come back.
We're attacking little pickle in bags.
Back after this.
Coming to Northeast Wisconsin live from the Civic Media Studios and featuring TV and radio broadcast veteran John Minow along with the City of Green Bay's longest-serving mayor Jim Schmidt.
This is Minow and the Mayor.
And here are your hosts.
John Minow and Jim Schmidt.
Hey, thank you very much.
Welcome back.
Man, that was a lot of fun to have Justin Schmidt from the Schmidt Freeman Insurance Company here in Oshkosh and Omron the house.
Now we've got Jeff Urke, Pickle and Bags, which is a great thriving place right here in Oshkosh.
Jeff, how you doing, buddy?
It's good to see you again.
It's been a while.
I'm doing good.
Good morning, guys.
I think last time we were here is about 14 below and windy.
It was different.
This is nice.
Tell me a
little bit about your place.
How's it going?
Going good.
Winter was busy.
Yeah, obviously not many things to do around here when it's 10 degrees below Yeah, so yeah, it was great a lot of a lot of people coming in just to pick up games We had some tournaments.
We had some bands Lots of events where people would rent it out whether it was a you know a birthday party or a retirement party Even had a wedding
Yeah,
you name it.
It was
great.
Yeah, they they rent it out.
So they own the courts that day or that time,
the whole facility.
I would think that'd be like a great bachelor or bachelorette party.
Oh, yeah, those two.
Oh, yeah.
And tell everybody what you the facility itself, though, first.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What's all in it's just not pickleball courts.
No, no, we're a venue.
So we have four pickleball courts, but those four pickleball courts, we can clear off, you know,
One of them, two of them, three of them, all of them, whatever.
Just take
the
net down, right?
Yeah, and just have a wide open place.
And we'll put up some bags from time to time, cornhole.
And, you know, when people are renting, sometimes they'll want, like, one court with five rows of cornhole on it, and then three pickleball courts.
And then we have a lounge.
It's a large room.
We call it a VIP room, where that's...
a place where, you know, when people are rented it out, they'll have food catered into it or whatever.
And then
we
have the whole bar area.
So, yeah, yeah.
I mean, that's awesome.
Pickleball is not a young person's sport.
You could 50 year old birthday parties would be great for that because they play.
Oh, yeah.
Everybody plays.
I mean, I guess everybody plays.
You were saying that last time.
Oh, yeah.
With the league.
Do you have leagues, tournaments?
Are they, do they go on throughout the summer or do they kind of take a break?
Oh, no, we have leagues.
You're round is your arm.
The leagues are definitely busier in the winter for obvious reasons.
You know, like we were talking before, you get about three good months in Wisconsin.
So people like to
get outside.
Yeah.
But yeah, we still have leagues, evening leagues.
So yeah, we're still filling them up and still having a great time.
Just not as many leagues.
OK.
Do you offer lessons for like, you know, like, John, like,
oh,
yeah, absolutely
wouldn't need any.
Yeah, we have lots of lessons going on.
I'm one of the instructors.
A buddy of mine, his name is Zach Connering.
He's actually a professional pickleball player.
He gives some lessons.
We're staying busy
when you said that you don't throw out that term loosely professional I mean I know that in the span of what five years at the most it went from hey this seems like kind of a cool thing for older people to do to Professional extremely competitive leagues with a lot of money involved.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it's it's it's popping and It's only continuing to grow
you know, watching professional pickleball players play, you know, on TV.
I watched money on the other night.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And I've been watching them for about five years now since I started right right around covid.
Right.
And thank
you.
And it was it was a different game.
Yeah.
You know, it's kind of Patty cake back then.
Now it's yeah.
Yeah.
It's it's speeding up.
They're still a slow part of the game, but it's it with so many more people playing.
the sport, you know, things change a little bit.
But, um, and like I said, last time I was on here, I mean, you're seeing people play from, I mean, 10 years old all the way into 70s, 80s.
And, you know, the way the game is played, depending on, you know, those ages does change a little bit, but.
They're all having fun.
70s,
80s.
That's right up your alley, guys.
I mean, I mean, John's
closer than I am, closer than I am.
If I make 80, yeah, we'll have a party.
That'll be the biggest surprise in the world.
That'll be the biggest upset of all time.
We'll have it at
P&B's
for you.
Absolutely.
Well, let me talk a little bit more about this whole thing.
How did it evolve to become?
I would think it's because.
anybody can kind of do it.
And for the real good pickleball players, I'm sure they're like, they get a little offended by that.
But the rudimentary fundamentals of it, anyone at any athletic level can do.
Yeah, that's what's great about it is because it has so many different levels.
Right.
All right.
Even when you go to these big tournaments, they have different.
Different levels for skill different levels for age So there's a place for everybody to fit in and to play against people similar to them Which keeps it fun, right?
You know if you go and you play against somebody that's just way worse than you That's not gonna be as much fun if you play against somebody that's way better than you That's not gonna be as much fun, but thing with pickleball Especially now that there's so so many people playing you can always find a competitive game
Right.
I mean, that's the cool part.
Absolutely.
So your company, though, is Pickle and Bags.
Talk about the bags a little bit more.
Is that people tournaments?
Are people really into that?
From time to time, we'll have tournaments.
Basically, what's happened with that is we've rented out the facility to some groups of guys that throw big tournaments.
So we don't have, we're really not running those.
We're just letting them use the facility.
It all started.
I had a buddy who
what's very active in having weekly tournaments and His organization would come in and then run those weekly tournaments as it turned out my buddy ended up moving to to Washington so some of the guys kind of picked up where he left off and The bags definitely haven't been as busy as the pickleball,
but there's not pickleball around the bags
are the thing.
You know, I just went to party to our county and it was all every every graduation party.
You'll go to the state of
Wisconsin.
We'll
have that.
It's it's very popular.
I mean, you see that on ESPN, too.
Yes.
Yes.
That was on the other night.
Yeah.
The elevation those guys get and dropping it down is incredible.
And some of the best players are like 15 years old in the country.
Yes.
Oh, yeah.
Thank you, Tom.
You know what you need?
You know what I think is going to be the next one, though?
And I think I'm going to start bringing it back as we just bought a bocce ball.
You're playing bocce ball.
That's a great idea.
Yes, right?
Oh my god, that's all we play my uncle nachos camp all the time was bocce ball.
Yeah, it really competitive.
Pickle bags and
bocce.
I mean, there you go.
Pickle bags
and
bocce.
Absolutely.
We'll just add it.
He'll be your
bocce manager.
Yes.
Yeah, we'll have to
bring in some grass and some hills.
I know even my brother, when we have our big, he does his, every year has this big party.
It's a
bocce ball tournament up at the U.P.
I used to play with some buddies with that.
In college, we'd play a buck of balls.
Yeah.
It's
really cool.
It's really competitive.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You ever play botchy Belgium?
I don't think so.
Is that croquet?
No, you throw it.
It's a bunch of balls, different size balls.
No.
Oh.
And you have the one ball you got to get closest to.
You throw that one out and no.
I don't think
so.
It's fun.
It's almost like a shuffle ball with balls.
Is it
croquet?
It's not croquet.
Do you have my wicket?
No, the
reason I asked croquet is because he said it's grass.
Donna, that is not
my special wicket.
The only reason I asked, because he said there's hills and grass and that's croquet.
OK.
Well, you can play it on any kind of lay of the land.
And it's
about your ball.
But it's more
fun if it's a little bit more of it.
Yes, exactly.
Because you got to play,
you know, how the balls
play the role, play the hill, play the whole thing.
You, Mr. Athlete and owning all these sports.
What do you think?
OK.
How many we're almost say two years into the show the first I've ever heard so what do you think?
I
don't know if I've ever played it All right,
all right,
all right, okay Wow, I want to know textures who's who plays croquet, and what's the last time you play croquet?
How do they text us on it?
You'll be surprised
I would be surprised.
You bet.
Download the Civic Media app.
Choose WISS or WGBW.
And just text in right now.
Croquet, yes
or no?
Yes.
Or no.
I think
that's a fun
game.
Yeah, absolutely.
By the way, we're going to throw this out there.
Text in came in.
The Freedom Freefall.
We're talking about the Veterans Freefall in Amral.
But this weekend, it's in Pulaski.
Vinny just texted.
Oh, that's right.
So thank you for that.
It's in Pulaski this weekend.
The Freedom Freefall, which is a great thing.
to help bring awareness to veteran suicide.
There's
a lot behind that.
Yeah, that's that's a great organization.
Absolutely.
So what are your plans?
I mean, how long have you been at this?
Three years?
Oh, no, it'll be two years in November.
So.
And it's going well.
You're making money.
People are you going to expand?
You're going to go to Green Bay.
Have you thought about that?
I get asked that a lot.
I bet you do.
But, you know, since we've opened up, there's actually been other spots that have opened up through the valley here.
I mean, you got a place in.
up in Appleton.
There's a place up in Green Bay, the Pickler.
And I've heard about some of those coming to also Appleton.
The Pickler is very popular across the country.
So you're seeing more and more pop up, which I mean, part of the reason I did it here was because there was really nowhere besides like a Y setting, you know.
So the idea of
expanding into a spot that already has places.
It's hard enough doing it when nobody else is doing it, let alone
people.
Give a little bit about your background, though, as far as Jeff, when you decided to make this leap, I mean, you've always been into sports and physical fitness.
I mean, your personal accolades, all-American and track and football and all these kind of things.
And how did you take that athlete and turn it into this?
Well, I'm an
idiot.
And I thought, oh, let's do another business.
Now, I've ran a small business for 15 years now, a jet fitness here in town, and really enjoyed playing pickleball.
Like we talked about last time where I started during COVID, it just gave you something to kind of look forward to every day.
So it was good for physical health, but also mental health.
And I was like, you know what?
More people need this.
to look forward to something that's actually healthy, that's addicting.
There's not too many of those.
And think about the other part.
So it's not like golf where you have to take 127 lessons and pay 100 bucks every time you go out.
It's not like tennis, which can be really got the whole big court and you got the whatever, whatever.
You know what I mean?
It's a type of thing where it's really user friendly.
Very, very.
And that's another reason why it's so popular.
Yeah.
So with all that being said, I was like, you know, the demand is growing so much and the supply just isn't here.
Especially like high, like really high level cords that are just super nice and nice nets and all that, you know, and so I looked for about a year just because you want to find a nice spot to, you know, make sure it's, it's fun to be at.
It's a
good atmosphere, those type
of things.
So.
Once I found it it was you know, then it was just a matter of Construction and getting it how it needed to be at putting in a bar, you know just for the you know bonus afterwards And
gives more opportunities to rent it out for other things though, too, right exactly.
It's a
great idea And it's a very social sport
so
people get done playing pickleball and they don't just go home They sit around and they shoot the breeze and you know that it's it's it's a very very social sport then
Another reason why it's so popular, you know,
that's a revenue stream too.
I mean you want to absolutely that I just when you talk about When we talk about the competition that there's a lot more that says you you want that because it raises it raises more awareness Absolutely, you know and that you got one guy there.
It's like well, what they don't know what it is.
I people involved the better Oh, man, and
tell everybody where you are and what you do my
man
2211 Oregon Street, unit Z, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Pickle and Bags.
Come on down, have some fun.
Graduation parties, bachelorette parties, the whole thing.
Fifty-year-old birthday parties.
Very, very nice venue for multiple things.
My
nose, 80-year-old birthday party.
And we get Justin Schmitt there as the adult dancer.
Oh, there you go.
That's right, he's Schmitt's friend.
Let's
bring your life insurance.
It's always great having you on.
Thanks for being here, man.
We love coming down.
Thank you, fellas.
I appreciate it.
I'm looking forward to it.
We'll be there.
Thanks, buddy.
Thanks
guys.
Hey,
welcome back.
I'm out
of the mirror coming your way for the beautiful offices in downtown Oshkosh at WISS.
It is Trucker Thursday.
Special thanks to Jeff Erky, Pickle and Bay.
We're gonna be stopping over at his place twenty to eleven Oregon Street in Oshkosh special thanks to Justin Schmick Schmick Freeman insurance Kate Steele and Bill Wyman Oshkosh area community foundation Mike Dempsey Waterfest in Oshkosh, and we've got some more great guests coming up But also I want to say that our poll our poll croquet.
Yes or no.
We've got No 85% we've got Yes 10%
And we've got big fat, no, 5%.
So we got for croquet so far.
I don't know why.
Yeah, I don't hear.
I'll tell you why, John.
As a kid, you played croquet, right?
Yeah.
Right.
They got the yard.
You played croquet as a kid?
We had a
set.
OK.
I didn't
know that.
Yeah.
Because you had a yard.
Yeah, big yard.
You had a family had a family and everybody played.
Yeah,
we did not
that hard of you talk about pickleball being pretty easy
Actually, I will say this super
easy.
Um, there's collectors old really old croquet sets or like a collector's item Yeah, because they're really old with the old wooden balls and stuff.
I remember seeing a set around I don't know if it was my grandparents who had it or my parents But we never played that we play, you know, we we're from a time as kids when we played lawnjarts
Lost eyeballs.
Absolutely.
That was right in my air in the 70s.
Yeah, that was.
That's amazing
that got on the market.
You know
what, little kids?
Oh my God.
Parents out there smoking cigarettes and throwing
alarms.
Right, and just at launchers.
And they drink in their
hand.
No question.
You talk about those bags, the arch, what
they put on his
lawn, and they come
down.
And they impale your head.
Right.
Written your skull.
They could.
They did.
I mean, it's true.
That's why they went
off the market.
I know, right?
But I'm surprised they even got on.
Well, you know, the other
thing.
And they were metal, too.
It wasn't like plastic.
Yeah, no.
And they were
weighted.
Yeah.
The other thing that were dangerous was the slip and slide.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
One of
those
two.
Right.
Did you still have a scar on my knee from?
Absolutely.
Well, I've got that scar on my knee from the Lazy River at the Dells.
You know, so when you were off, I don't know if it was yesterday, Jim, or last week, but we told the story of the Lazy River because we had somebody on that was a lifeguard.
Yeah, we did.
At like one of the Wisconsin Dells things.
We told the story of you flipping over in the Lexi River.
And she's like, oh my God, I've seen, yeah.
She's seen it before, though, didn't she?
No, no, no, not that.
No, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
And it's this little general store.
Wow.
And it's the greatest.
When you walk in, it smells so delicious from these fresh baked pasties they have in there.
It's unbelievable.
And I tell people, there's a slice of the UP that ought train area around municing.
It is the most beautiful place in the Midwest without question.
It's like a bigger Nechoto Beach.
Nice.
I feel like 10 times the size of Nechoto Beach.
and you can walk out to Lake Superior for like a hundred feet.
It's unbelievable how beautiful that area is up around Autrain, Michigan.
If anybody ever thinks about where can I go for a, you know, more than a weekend, like a four day vacation type of thing.
The name of the city is Autrain.
Autrain, A-U-T-R-A-I.
What, they're kind of like French?
What's it called?
There's
a lot of
French names in Michigan.
French Canadians up there.
Yeah.
Oh.
They were all the, all the
people.
I thought it was all, these Italians,
okay.
No, no, different parts of the UP are all like,
Anywhere near the water, it's a lot of Native American and French Canadian for all the fishing, commercial fishermen.
That makes sense.
So, Sault Ste.
Marie, Escanaba, Launce, Barriga, Munising, those are all French Canadians.
Yeah.
So, in the mining area, it's all Italians and Finns.
In fact, there's a lot of towns up there.
I bet our 90, at least used to be 90% Finnish because all the Finns used to come over, which was great.
Cool.
So, yep.
We got a very special guest coming up in a couple of minutes, ladies and gentlemen.
Talk a little bit about our veteran saluta that we always have with one of our great sponsors.
Yep, brought to you by Olsen Legal Group, LLC in Oshkosh, and also in...
Help me out here.
Where else?
Oh, the Berlin Berlin.
Yeah made Olson, of course, is the guy who helps us bring this out to you and part of that is that text that we got earlier from Vinnie freedom fall free fall is this weekend in Pulaski too.
So if that's something you have not experienced, well, you should go out and just to watch.
Absolutely.
If you don't jump, it doesn't.
No, no, right.
Exactly.
Watch that
and they do all tandem.
And the one time at the very first year we had it and it was in Pulaski, I believe that year.
had a guy that the last time he had jumped out of an airplane was on D-Day.
Wow.
D-Day.
And he came back.
And he did it again.
How cool is that?
They had Korean War vets, a lot of Vietnam vets, a lot of Iraq, Afghanistan vets that take part in it.
But it's all tandem.
Really, it was that?
Yes.
That's unbelievable.
It's so cool.
It's great.
It's a wonderful organization.
And I talked a little bit about how that all started with a young lady, a great friend of mine.
where she took up skydiving and she used that to help guys with posture and women with post-traumatic stress.
So really, really cool thing.
And if I didn't have an artificial hip and a back problem and stuff,
you've been doing it
yourself.
Absolutely.
So next week, I want to mention this, Terry and Mike are going to be joining us.
Vinny's going to be in two to talk about the veterans fishing university that they also do.
So that'll be that'll be your veteran spotlight or your veteran, veteran salute next week on Tuesday.
Great.
Well, we've got a gentleman coming up here, Mike Robinson from Oshkosh, just a few minutes.
I'm halfway through his story for writing it for my book.
And it's just it's it's unbelievable.
I mean, I've heard so many different experiences in wars from, you know, World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, everywhere.
But his story is one of the most unique I've ever.
experienced in my entire life telling these stories.
And we've got Mike coming on in just a minute.
It's our veteran spotlight brought to you by Olson Legal Group.
And we're giving him a nice welcome.
And plug for Olson, we're there.
But what he does is everything.
He is a great.
lawyer in this community.
So I just I nice guy too.
I want to give you a plug, Jim, because Michael from Simple Life Hospitality, croquet.
Yes, I was in a croquet club in a high school at UW and at UW Wisconsin.
Hey, Michael, you just lost
some credibility.
Michael, we know Johnny juice for you.
Highest esteem.
Highest esteem.
Until just now, Michael.
In the club.
Just now.
We got to start a quick break.
We'll be back with our veteran spotlight right after this.
I
was totin' my pack along the dusty Winnemucca Road when along came a semi with the high-end canvas covered low
Hey, welcome back!
I'm under the
mayor coming away from the WISS
studios in downtown Oshkosh on trucker thirst and a little jottie cash
taking us into one of our favorite segments actually my favorite segment of the entire week our veteran spotlight who's it brought to you by Todd Olson legal group in Berlin and Oshkosh just down the block from us in a beautiful location a fire station built in like 1910 it's fantastic a very good friend of mine right now a Vietnam vet Mike Robinson joining us and Mike tell you what
You talking with you again a little bit later for my book, Your Experiences in Vietnam.
And when you walked in and I told the guys here, it's like, Mike, how in the world are you sitting here with us right now?
Because knowing your story, it's almost a miracle that you're alive.
And I don't throw that out there loosely.
Wouldn't you agree?
Oh, I would definitely agree with that.
As a matter of fact, you know, when the one grenade did
Popped on over and it was three feet away from me and I couldn't reach it and it didn't go off But I did get hit on that operation But not seriously.
So, you know, you got to remember that The NVA we were in a triple canopy jungle and the NVA did completely surround us without us knowing it after the first initial ambush so KC Kevin Cahill
which is a super great Marine.
Lieutenant Nelson was carrying him and then he got hit for the third time, Lieutenant Nelson did.
But KC, he did get killed and he was our point man.
Pretty much a miracle that anybody came out of that alive.
And then like fast forward, if Delta caught money when it got to us when we did, even five minutes later,
Charlie company and I wouldn't be here today.
I
mean, you guys already talked to yourselves.
Let's save one bullet for ourselves, right?
Well, I don't think any one of the Marines would have killed themselves.
Well, one of the guys in the book that talked about that, it's like he wasn't going to be taking capture.
When you read the blog, you guys were out of ammunition.
We were.
We
were.
I'm just let me back up.
They were on it.
They were on a patrol.
They had to get to a destination.
They got
heavy pressure from one of the higher up officers who wasn't there to see what you guys were facing.
The NBA had it planned incredibly well, had you on all sides.
These guys were walking along, all of a sudden the NBA's above them dropping hand grenades right down on top of them.
These guys could not even see them to fight back, battle it on and on.
basically were down to their last couple of rounds of ammunition.
And to the point where they started singing the Marine hymn just for inspiration and started throwing rocks at the NBA, hoping the NBA thought they were grenades and would back off.
Go
ahead, Mike.
Yes.
And that was Lieutenant Jack Ruffer that started singing the Marine Corps hymn.
And this is.
We were getting our butts kicked and you know it was a pretty amazing that all of a sudden that song at the time the Marine Corps him got louder and louder and this is over the gunfire.
This is over the grenades that are dropping on top of us and then we couldn't figure out how they were so accurate with the grenades.
Well what they did is they tied themselves to the trees and the trees
you couldn't even see the sky.
That's how the triple canopy jungle was.
You just couldn't see the sky.
So that's how they were so accurate with their grenades.
And then like I say, you know, when he was singing Marine Corps, him, it got louder and louder.
Now, can you imagine what the NBA is thinking at this time?
And because they're very well trained.
So it was a pretty much a miracle that
We even survived that.
And then, like I say, after the initial ambush, we had helicopters come in, but we had to blow trees down.
And then when the first one of the helicopters came in, there was this one tree in the way, and he took his tail like, and it's just a perfect hit, and he knocked the tree over.
Otherwise,
they couldn't have gotten
out
the
wounded or bring in
ammo, right?
Right.
And they could not land because of the stumps.
And so then just as the last helicopter was taken off, this was about dusk.
That's when the second ambush or the second time that they attacked us happened.
And the rest is history.
Like I say, it was a pretty dramatic you can from the book, I imagine you can
It puts tears in your eyes and
it
gave me
nightmares.
I'm not even
joking about it.
I'm not trying to ask you if you still have
after you tell me that
story.
I had dreams that night.
I bet you do.
That's just a couple of how many people were there?
184
men was in Charlie company.
I think there was like 25 that came out.
Yeah.
All right.
And Johnny talked about nightmares and really that's still haunting you a
little bit all the time.
Matter of fact, I go.
Matter of fact, I go to two groups.
I go one in Green Bay at the vet center and one here in Oshkosh and that's run by the vet center in Green Bay.
So that's the only way.
And then I went to Tomah because I didn't want to live anymore.
We'll put it that way.
I won't say I didn't want to live anymore.
And then finally the vet center says, well, you're going to Tomah.
So I went to Toma for 10 weeks in 2014 and that basically saved my life.
You know,
Mike, I had a friend that
Marine
Vietnam horrible, horrible situation.
He's got I want to put you in touch with by the way, we're going to get together with this.
But he went to Toma for six months.
He didn't say a word.
He just sat and listened.
And then he decided to open up.
And that just shows how tough of a nut it is to crack
gentlemen like yourself.
It is.
It takes.
Not not months years and and you know, you never really get over it.
So you're never gonna quit having the dreams and then you're never gonna I Wouldn't say fighting a battle, but you have to deal with it and and that's what we do So in the middle of the night if I have a really bad one where I I feel rather uncomfortable.
I'll call somebody from our group Support group.
Yes
Support group, you know like sure from from the groups that I go to and boy they listen So you know you
know my guy get another good friend who was up around the rock pile, you know or the rock
We was at the rock pile.
Yeah, we was also at the rock pile We also got into a battle there and in Kantien we got in a battle where as she can't him we was out outside the wire and we were The difference between Kantien and case on is that kind?
you got hit every day.
But we were outside the wire and the NBA had us pinned down and we had to call in an airstrike on our own position.
But it's one of those things too where around the 4th of July he has to leave and go up to his cabin up around Crandon because he can't deal with the fireworks.
Yes, yes.
Do you deal with that too sometimes?
Yeah, I do that all the time.
It's very hard to deal with fireworks or anything like that.
As a matter of fact, I can remember when I first got back, I'm driving down Grand River, which is a lot of lanes in the highway.
In Detroit.
In Detroit, yeah.
And so there's some car backfired, apparently.
And I thought it was a gunshot, and I was on the floor of the car.
Then I realized that I'm not a nom, and I almost hit a tree.
I came two inches from hitting this tree because it was in middle.
They had an island in the middle of the road.
So, you know, it is what it is.
And not only that, but I've done that many times just walking into the store.
And I have a hard time adjusting with people walking behind me.
It's just because just all of a sudden it strikes you that the enemy is behind you, you know.
My counselor said I'm not supposed to call them gooks anymore.
Well, let me ask you this.
So Mike, we're talked a little bit about, you know, we talked about the Marines and all their training and everything like that.
And sometimes you wouldn't think it's the most gung-ho hardcore guy that would do something unbelievably heroic.
Talk about the photojournalist, the Marine photojournalist and what he did that was with you.
Yes.
That was Bill Perkins.
Bill Perkins was a photographer and he's the only photographer
all in any service and anywhere in any service that got the Medal of Honor.
And what he did is that like one of them grenades that was coming out from the trees landed in between these three and four Marines and Lieutenant, I mean, Lieutenant Perkins, Corporal Perkins jumped on the grenade and literally his body just went
you know, up into the air about three feet and back down.
And to this day, it was he saved all the Marines around him.
It was like just a miracle.
He gave his life, gave his life.
And the funny part was is that I knew him and we talked and, you know, we always used to kid around, you know, well, what is it?
How's this, this Marine going to shoot with a camera, with a camera, you know.
But he did photograph some of the events of that, you know, when we were first going into the jungle and there's, he did do that.
And, and the amazing thing was, is that somebody was smart enough to pick his camera up.
And there was actual footage on the camera that was saveable.
And it had bullet holes like galore on the camera.
So, pretty amazing
Marine.
As are you.
You seem to have a pretty good disposition, seem pretty happy to me.
I just met you, but...
Is it the group or what?
It is I mean,
I'm still people struggling out there as my
I There's times that I don't leave the house, you know, I I struggle and then So then I I'll either you know, sometimes I even have to call my counselor like I'll give you an example I May say kind of corny through you guys but
What happened is that my daughter's dog, a big black Labrador died.
Well, when I took that dog in, I'm thinking he's a Marine.
Yeah.
And then I told her, I says, when you put this dog down, I can't be there.
It's like it shoots through my head and I have these flashbacks like that's a Marine that's dying.
And how am I going to save him?
You know, because when you're over there, what's the most important thing?
the Marine next to you.
You're not thinking about the glorious trying to save the USA or anything else.
You're fighting for the Marine next to you, and he's fighting for you.
And then when you lose that Marine next to you, then of course, you don't have time to grieve.
You have to move on.
But it is very hard.
It's very hard to adjust to stuff like that.
I talked about it in group yesterday about what happened and how bad it got for me.
And it sounds corny, but it's very true, you know, so you gotta put it in perspective.
When you did have one friend that even after you came back,
you
tried to help.
Yes.
As a matter of fact, yeah, I didn't even get into that.
We just had a Marine that passed away and he was on Medina and he got severely wounded on Medina.
And so that marine George Bowles, this was just a couple, just last, what, about less than a month ago.
I went to Waterford, Michigan, and they did the funeral.
He got buried at Great Lakes National Cemetery.
And he was decked out.
He had on his Just Blues.
He wanted that.
I left a Marine Challenge coin in his coffin.
And then they had like a drawer that you could put it in.
But this Marine was really, really good.
You guys sent
out a quick break.
Stay with us.
OK, Mike?
All right.
Mike Robinson, incredible Marine Vietnam veteran.
Back after
this.
I've traveled and had my share, man.
Hey, welcome back.
Might know the mayor here on Trucker Thursday coming away from the WSS Studios in downtown Oshkosh.
WSS is where you find your Milwaukee Brewers tonight, taking on those hated.
Can I use where it hated?
St.
Louis Cardinals, 6-0-5 on WISS right here.
We're with a very special friend, Mike Robinson, on our slow to veteran segment brought to by Olsen Legal Group right here in Oshkosh and Berlin.
And Mike, you're telling some amazing stories and traumatic stories and all that.
But what's one of the things in regards to it and not to brand all the Vietnam vets together?
Because I think the media back in the day did a horrific job at painting everybody with that same brush.
But what would you like as a representative of the Vietnam vets?
non-veterans who amazingly survived, what would you like to get out to the people?
Well, just got to remember for one thing, anybody that fought in a battle, whether you were a, like, corpsman, medic, army has medics, you worked, I mean, you were a team, you worked together as a team.
You didn't work as an individual.
You never worked as an individual.
So everybody had to work as a team.
You never, you never left anybody behind.
I mean, we would lose lives to Marines to save another Marine.
And we even, even on Medina, we had to stay there an extra night because there was so much equipment and then we had to blow it all up the next day.
So, and then we lost a couple more or actually three more.
Marines the next night.
So that's the way you look at things.
But what's when you look back in this now, can you say, do you ever say to yourself, how did I do that?
How in the world did I do that?
Oh, yes, I, I, it's gone over my mind and probably a million times on how I ever survived.
You got to realize that I was a third platoon radio man, we were the for the whole battalion, we were the lead platoon.
the lead.
I mean, the lead company, the lead platoon and the lead squad for the whole battalion.
So I was about the seventh Marine back or whatever.
And I'm right behind Lieutenant Nelson.
And what is the first thing that the NV takes out the radio man radio man.
So you know, cancel off the communication.
Yeah, it's well to communication.
So you know, yeah, there there's
It's incredible.
And, you know, even Casey, when we was going up that trail, he says, nah, this is bad.
He had some really bad vibes.
And he says, and they ordered us to go up that trail.
And we knew that it was very well traveled.
And then, you know, that's his history.
And you know
what?
You're talking about some of that Casey, just a good young kid.
And you see, you know, you think the movies always do it.
Hollywood doesn't miss justice to you guys because they always have someone like a John Wayne, somebody 45 years old, who in real life would be 19 years old.
And the pictures of that Casey, young kid with freckles who looks like he should be, you know, maybe a freshman in college at the most, right?
Right.
Right.
Right.
And that's who the Marines were.
These
young kids.
I was a young kid there.
And you know,
Um, you'll grow up really fast.
And of course, uh, and if anybody ever tells you you're not scared to death, well, they wasn't a nom because we were scared to death every moment that we were there.
But you didn't have, you got to realize that, um, when somebody got killed, you didn't, you didn't have time to mourn.
You had to move on and save the next Marine.
You had to move on and, you know, uh,
And take the orders as they come through and naturally when you're in a real battle, you don't get any orders You just got to fight the enemy and I mean you can't realize how many enemy was in our position the next morning I mean they were like literally right in front of us and they dragged some of the NBA off that we had killed and then in this one picture that they portrayed all the out this these two officers and
a couple of non-coms were there and they're looking down at the ground.
Well, it was NVA that was in our perimeter.
And they says, well, what are we going to do with this NVA?
And then we're supposed to bury them.
Well, there's no place to bury them.
So tell them what you did.
We threw them over the cliff.
That took
care
of
it.
I guess it did.
Mike, I can ask you a couple of things.
I mean, that's unbelievable you've been through.
I'm sure you've been asked, too, would you do it again?
But I really want to ask you, would you recommend military to your grandson?
Absolutely.
100%.
I mean, Marine Corps all the way, baby.
Marines love Marines.
It's just our greatest honor ever to wear that Marine Corps uniform.
And then, yes, I would recommend it because you
not only because now you're at your as you're you're learning how to work together as a team instead of the individual.
Do you not agree that you can accomplish a lot more with it?
Why be a you when you can be a team,
right?
And you you said something a little bit earlier.
It's not the battle.
It's not the, you know,
politicians, it's not the generals, it's not the whomever, it's that guy next to you, that guy
on your
left and that guy on your right, that's who you're fighting for.
Right, right.
And you, you know, you got to remember, you become numb of all the horror that you have witnessed.
You become numb of that.
And think about that for a second, man.
I mean, all these years, do you think it gets any better?
No.
But you have to learn how to
Ah, let's say cope with it or, you know, deal with it.
And that's why I go to group.
And if I didn't go to group and I didn't hear these stories from these other people, and whether you were Army Marines or Air Force, whatever, what service you're in, they basically are saved my life because otherwise I'd be six foot under right now.
So you guys are still taking care of the guy on
your left and the guy on your right?
That's right.
Mike
Robinson.
It's an honor that you're allowing me to tell your story in my next book, and I look forward to talking to you again this afternoon.
Thank you for being here, and man, gratitude isn't the right word for it, and appreciation, and just admiration.
Thanks for your doing.
You're incredible.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you, buddy.
All right.
Well, we're out of time.
Todd, thanks for having us down here.
They're beautiful.
What?
W.I.S.S.
Studios.
Yes.
And our girl, Lisa Hale, has been quiet today, huh?
Imagine that.
Imagine that.
That's unbelievable.
All right.
We got to go.
Everybody, we're back into our morning back in Green Bay.
Might on the mare.
See ya.
You're listening to Civic Media.
You can tune into any of our live shows on any radio station across the state with the Civic Media app.
Find us in your phone's app store and listen anytime, anywhere.
Good morning.
Happy Trucker Thursday to you.
We are downtown in Oshkosh, and it is a perfect morning.
Isn't it though?
Perfect morning.
Awesome.
clean.
Yeah.
Todd, if I were you, I would get that condo upstairs here.
We're upstairs at our studio downtown on Main Street.
know.
That'd be fun.
I would love it.
Thursday.
Yeah, we've had some cold days here, but it is absolutely gorgeous this morning right here all throughout Northeast Wisconsin 61 in Green Bay, 63 in Apton, 64 in Oshkosh High today in the low 70s.
Mostly cloudy scattered showers.
It was actually a little bit humid yesterday for the first time.
Wasn't it?
It was nice yesterday, but yeah, it's coming to an end.
Yeah, I know.
Um,
Hey, one of the things, um, I know in the UP, this is the thing air quality due to wildfires.
Oh yeah.
Orange category.
I mean, it's to the point, here's the deal.
You know, you think, ah, well, it's just a little smoke in the air, but they say there are particles.
that are in that smoke, that if you've got some lung problems, they'll get in your lungs.
You know, it's not just a matter of, okay, that's a little smoky.
I mean, that's like a serious thing that's coming across, huh?
Did they tell you to wear a
Yeah.
Did you notice that?
I haven't yet.
Yeah.
A few years ago in Manitowoc, I really did.
It smelled, you know, there's a place in Marquette where they used to make charcoal.
Okay, it was a charcoal factory.
Yeah.
All right.
And that's what it smelled like.
It smelled like that charcoal factory burning in Manitowoc.
And it was hazy.
Canadian fires?
Yeah.
Okay, yeah.
Well, three, four years ago.
Yeah, right, right.
Remember when they first started coming over?
But Manitowoc could hit really bad for some reason.
But I haven't noticed anything here, have you?
Yeah, a little bit.
Have you?
Yeah, it was a little hazy, but I
Yeah, that was a big deal.
I mean, that was like, whoa, this is... I still say one of my greatest things in the world is the smell of grass fires.
Remember when you used to like fields on fire?
I can't do that anymore.
And they used to say, because people up at the U.P., they used to like their lawns on fire.
Yeah, I
Because they'd say the grass
Well, was that legit?
Was that a true thing?
I think it was.
right.
true.
No, they
Oh, that was a big deal.
Yeah.
remember Mary Terzaghi, our neighbor out there at the, you know, you know, Mary, I still think about this.
Poor Mary.
Nicely.
Yeah.
Five feet tall, five feet wide.
Yeah.
All right.
Cigarette hanging out of her arm.
My arm was a size of a butcher.
And I remember one time I was trying to make some
one summer.
I was like 10 and it's like, I asked her, I said, Hey, I'll cut your grass for like.
$2, you know, just, okay.
Well, she had one of those old, she didn't even have an electric, she had a push with the blades.
And it was real hilly and whatever.
And I got about halfway done.
And I said, I think, I think I need to charge more than $2.
She says, no, here's your $2.
Go ahead, Johnny.
And she took over it and like nothing to it.
Put me to total shame.
The most old women from that generation, they were tough.
They were tough.
Just big tough wrists and hands.
anything.
Special breed.
Yep.
You bet.
But a beautiful day today.
We're down here in Oshkosh, which we absolutely love being down here at our WISS studios.
Great place to run the corner on Main Street.
We've got a great line of people coming in today.
Today is beef jerky day.
Right.
I love that.
Is there anything better?
You could live on beef jerky.
A person could live on beef jerky.
I think jerky's good.
I still, my goal is to, is I need to rent out somebody's garage so I can make
makes a lot of stuff.
I'll tell you, two rivers and Manitowoc make more stuff where you just wouldn't.
It's like, OK, the
NCAA tournament and the Wimbledon.
Yeah, they're made in two rivers.
Right.
Yeah.
It's
Yeah, it's not just beef.
I've got one.
I just haven't used it yet.
I don't have any room.
Do you have a dehydrator?
Yeah.
I don't think I've ever taken out of the box
So I told you I'm down to 211.
Anybody want my nutrition tips?
I'm sure we're going
Are you really?
What do you weigh?
it's
say that's the same.
Let's put this
The way I'm doing it is the organic way.
So I'm big in organics.
Okay.
Well,
of people aren't as epic, but I'm just looking at this.
This is how I
as epic as whatever it is.
Okay.
That's why it's the difference between me doing it the organic way.
All right.
would be the same as a guy that puts on a lot of muscle by working out and lifting weights.
Okay?
Versus a guy who takes steroids to put on the muscle.
Yeah, I don't think that's a
Yeah, I'm
Great analogy.
a phenomenal analogy.
It's artificial.
This
I'm earning it.
And I've talked to a lot of people before I did that.
This is a jumpstart thing that I needed like I just I've done what you've done I've done I've done everything on the weight lesson This is just a jumpstart and the key to this is you don't eat as much right?
That's all it is.
It's nothing more or nothing less.
There's the side effects to this It's unbelievable.
I mean or blood prick they have all these that's not why you take it though But the side effects are positive versus usually oh, you can throw up you do this or that So yeah, maybe another month, but it
So what happens if you
Well, mine will, because like I said, I'm on a whole new urogrammic thing.
That's unbelievable.
you enjoy?
Ergonomics.
Whatever.
to give some great nutritional tips.
Well, do
OK.
Well, one of the things is that yogurt, right?
Greek
yogurt non-flavored which tastes like paste.
I'll be honest
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So anyway, um Okay, then I put it with that peanut butter the
butter.
It's natural.
It's all
So
front festival But it's all natural peanut butter.
It says made only from peanuts
Well, you could
yourself.
I was thinking about that.
I might do that.
I'm going to buy a peanut crusher thing.
festival?
Yeah, I'm going to buy one.
It's a sense
other thing, so I'm bringing it to anti-oxidantals now.
Like what is that?
Anti-oxidants.
Yeah, stuff that like.
prevents cancer.
Blueberries
one thing are blueberries.
Number one thing.
It makes sense.
So blueberries?
That's good.
Okay.
And then I put that stuff in and then frozen bananas.
Frozen bananas have changed my life.
It's changed my life.
So, you know, you eat a banana, it's like, eh, you're eating a banana.
It's like, eh, you gotta eat a banana.
You cut them up, it's a little, you know, chop them up, little pieces.
And you freeze them.
Okay, put them in the little plastic bags.
And then you put that in the yogurt with the peanut butter and the blueberries and a little bit of honey.
It's actually Wayne's honey, Wayne's natural honey.
Okay, unbelievable.
Do you see peel the banana and you cut it up?
Yep, yep, peel it, cut it up.
Doesn't get brown or anything?
No, not when they're frozen.
They're fantastic frozen.
They're fantastic frozen.
Do you remember the movie or the TV show that I really liked that I got back into it?
Oh.
You know that one.
know.
Oh, man.
It's a Justin base Justin Bateman.
yeah.
Yeah,
whole crew, right?
Oh, what what the heck was the name of it?
A lot of big names.
the girl with the really pretty eyes.
Yeah.
Port Portisha
Portia.
Yeah.
Yeah.
it's really good That one but anyway, they had the frozen banana stand remember
Arrested development.
Arrested development.
frozen banana stand.
I would like to start a stand.
Frozen bananas.
With this, with the ingredients I'm doing here, it'd be the healthiest thing people could possibly have.
I'd be doing this for humanity.
I would even worry if I made a profit.
but this would be that peanut butter I'm talking about.
I'd make my own peanut butter.
what?
That's not a bad idea.
know.
No, I would make the actual malts for them.
I'd make it up, but blend it all up.
This is the most antioxidants type of food you could possibly eat.
It's delicious.
It's nutritious.
And it's satisfying.
That's good for your skin.
Yeah Telling it in your heart and your heart the whole thing.
Yeah, all in one one cup.
That's my new Johnny juice
Hey, you were you may have an opportunity to do that Yesterday I talked with Brian Johnson was on for that lean local that shipyard's gonna have a lot of I know I'd like to have one of their spaces right like that, but they're gonna be like in train cars I want that I want that you don't need the whole thing, but I mean there I want one of
those cone axis
feet
Yeah.
One of those storage things.
That's what
looking at.
Right.
I'm going to be next to you, but I'm going to sell something different.
Sell it everyone.
Also, I'm going to be selling beef jerky.
I'm going to have, that could work.
I'm making my own.
You should do dehydrated fruit too though.
People like that because there's little vegetarians out there.
But when I
go to the UP, I'm going to shoot a lot of deer next year.
And we get a bunch of tags.
And I'm going to make venison jerky.
screen.
All right.
All right.
I'm just saying.
I'm excited about this, because look at me.
I sense in that.
at the natural way, Jim.
And I'm dropping.
Okay, natural.
Non-steroidal.
Think about it.
Steroidal.
Mine
on the air,
coming your way from WISSN Oshkosh.
Back after this.
Yeah, I'm semi-crazy.
I gotta be half nuts.
of them down the road
in these semi trucks.
My mother had half a mind to slow it down for a time, but I'm never gonna give it up.
Hey,
happy Trucker Thursday to you on a beautiful day.
We're coming away from downtown Oshkosh at the WIS Studios, 601 South Main Street.
Today is jerky day, as we mentioned, peanut butter cookie day.
I love putting peanut butter on peanut butter cookies.
Is that weird?
either.
Put a little bit of peanut butter and butter on a peanut butter cookie.
It's unbelievable.
Or a chocolate chip cookie.
That really adds to it.
Uh, it is Superman day.
Todd, you seem like you would have been a Superman kind
Um, Falafelde, Falafelde.
Falafelde.
Falafelde.
Falafelde.
Falafelde.
Falafelde.
Falafelde.
Falafel
By
birthdays to Kenny Wayne Shepard, great country singer.
Junior Brown, another great country singer.
That's right.
That's Junior right there.
73 years old and Marv Elbert, one of the greatest.
basketball announcers of all time.
In fact, I think he is the greatest basketball announcer of all time.
84 years old, I ran into Marv years ago at a Bucks game.
We got to be good friends.
And I was actually, I asked, I sent him a text last night and I said, Marv, would you be able to give us a call on the show this morning?
And I said, we won't talk about those issues you had.
Remember, he went on Letterman, he got like pinky with women and yadda, yadda, yadda.
waiting for this.
So we're going to talk with Marv,
he, you know, he retired.
wouldn't see him at games anymore.
Yeah.
He came to Green Bay a couple of times for Packer things.
Um, he was great.
I
never, he never shook that.
No, he didn't.
But I remember we went out to the top shelf a couple of times, stuff like that.
And he had a good time.
Victoria's secrets, a little shopping.
Yeah.
So.
OK, let's wait a good time with them.
So I'm hoping to talk to Marv Albert here in just a minute.
I got a couple other texts.
Rest in peace.
Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.
I know.
82.
That's all.
I thought he would be older for some reason.
Yeah.
Holy Michael, his brother, a couple of friends.
Unbelievable.
What a weird situation.
Hey, they're bad.
Well, he was a little he had his issues.
He's the one that is Brian.
Okay, I don't know what he had a number of things and he was I don't know if he was public about it or they write it them up But there was well they way
that one movie.
It was kind of a made for TV type movie.
Okay, do we okay?
Once again, ladies and gentlemen is the 84th birthday of my all-time favorite Broadcaster legendary broadcaster in the NBA with the New York Knicks Marv Albert mr. Albert.
Are you there sir?
Yeah?
Good morning,
yes.
It's a beautiful day here in northeast Wisconsin.
We're actually in Oshkosh right now, and we just want to say that, boy, we miss you on the air.
Remember when you came to Green Bay that time, we hung out at the top shelf and stuff, and remember that?
Yeah, that's right, Mark.
So, Marv, how are you doing in your retirement days?
I don't want to bring up that one incident you had, whatever.
Things
have been good,
John.
I think I know what you're talking about.
Waking up this morning in Oshkosh, I'm sure it's a little fighting morning, if you will.
Yeah.
Okay.
He likes us.
Okay.
Marv, I remember that one time when you're in town and you wanted me to take you to Victoria's Secret.
Remember
that?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I like the finer things in life.
Yeah.
Who doesn't?
Exactly.
She sure did.
She
sure did.
She
turned her back on me, though, John.
Yes.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
So,
Mr. Robert.
Turned her back on me one night.
Turned her back on me, literally.
Yes.
So, how do you, how do you celebrate your 84th birthday, Marv?
Oh,
probably a lady of the night.
and Staying out of court if you know what I mean.
Mr. Mayor just
asked if you're
kidding.
I'm kidding, of
course.
I'll
get it.
I'll probably have a state I'll probably go downtown I will probably spend some time with good friends Toasting years gone by.
Yes.
That's very nice.
Mr. Mayor has a question for you
I
thought good morning, sir.
Yes.
Oh,
not?
Why not?
Hopefully the lady who delivers it is down.
If you know what I mean.
I mean, you know for a for a gratuity, of course, right?
That's how the kids say it these days.
Yes.
How about a little something extra?
Okay, well, Marv, we like I said, we just want to we appreciate you taking the time.
I'm sure many people are recalling you wishing you a happy birthday today and we wanted to be the first to say happy.
You know, we go
way back, John.
I thank you so much for your friendship over the years.
For you being with me in the courtroom.
That meant a lot to me through the course of the trial.
I do think it influenced the jury a little bit.
I think they saw you and they said, well, you know, Marvin can't be that bad.
He said, she said, I don't know.
I feel like I'm getting myself into trouble.
Nothing happened.
Nothing happened.
Innocent, innocent behavior between two consenting
it out.
Allegedly.
Allegedly.
This is also not true, but whatever.
one last question.
Do you still have that weird thing where you collect garter belts?
Of course!
Yes!
John, yes, it's only weird if
it doesn't work.
It's
what I've always said over the years.
If you're having a great broadcast because you're wearing women's underwear or you're not, then you are.
Okay, well... You know what I mean.
You know, it's possible the pages are all wearing gargers right now.
I don't know.
They seem to have a rabbit's foot shoved up their rear end.
Okay, man.
All
Well, Marv Albert had...
Happy 84th birthday, sir.
Thank you for taking the time.
It's great to talk to you once again.
Of course.
Any time.
Any time.
Are you enjoying your day, Marv?
Absolutely.
Oh, yes.
Happy birthday, Marv.
Thank
Marv.
Take care, my friend.
Come back again sometime.
Wow.
I'm not gonna
make it
home tonight.
All right, don't forget later on this morning the Scotty summer text to win statewide contest your chance to win a daily daily win a pair of Milwaukee Brewers club level tickets or $100 cash plus every entry puts you into the grand prize drawing a couple of them Wisconsin delz area vacation or door County vacation We got the keyword coming up later on this morning after seven o'clock download that civic media app right now and choose your station WISS or WGBW gets set to win with Mino and the mayor after seven o'clock.
All right
John,
ah, it's over.
right.
Today is also Red Rose Day.
Isn't that
Yeah, if I were back to that era when you'd buy somebody roses or did something like that Would it be so bad to buy them those kind that really look real now and they last for a long time and nobody would know the difference
that.
oh my god, beautiful roses, those are unbelievable.
Oh, thank you.
And you're the only one that knows you're artificial.
They can make things.
If they were far away and
do that.
In an office, nobody would know the difference.
I don't know.
Todd.
I just
lot of places that they won't let you have artificial flowers.
No, yeah at Cemetery right.
Why is that?
to do with it?
Is that what it is?
Yeah,
put real flowers down
what two days
organic
How can you be I saw somebody do this on Facebook and it was local It was like to appear and somebody said hey to the person that stole our flower pot of flowers that like our dad's thing it's like Wow, what kind of a human being can do that and look themselves in the mirror and say yeah My family rate my mom and dad raised me right?
What kind of a scumball would steal something from somebody else's grave?
what type of a human being?
Yeah, no
Isn't that something I didn't hear
got to be a special place in hell for that
know.
No, nothing.
Zero.
Not a zip.
Um, Brian says, Hey, Mark McGray and Barry bonds in a lot of home runs without medical help.
So give Jim a break.
kickstart.
The difference is okay.
like a couple of weeks ago.
We had the bodybuilders on and it's all natural bodybuilding, right?
No, you know artificial.
that's what they said yada yada yada yada.
They test them.
They do a p-test right for the thing.
That's
would be if I get into bodybuilding, I would be in that thing.
You would be the other way where you would
artificially stimulate yourself.
I'm not sure what you mean.
Yeah,
Artificially stimulate your muscle growth.
No.
still
close,
close.
Got a text here, make sure with plain yogurt all the ingredients, all the same ingredients you are using, just add ice and put it into a blender, Donna.
Yeah, absolutely, it's great.
Mino, you can't be running banana stands if you're coming to work with us at Simple Life, Michael.
All right.
I thought you were on the scallops diet on Tuesday.
We also have a scallop stand?
Spark.
Yeah, this is, okay.
Okay, the scallop thing is, I made an omelet with scallops.
But I will say this, they are expensive.
Scallops are expensive.
Wait till you get them in a restaurant.
Could be like six, 35 bucks.
Yeah.
Yeah, why are they so expensive?
Okay, I got a recipe for you on scallops.
I'll send it to you at the next break.
But I was going through that.
I have not found a recipe where they didn't have butter and garlic.
So I don't think your scallops are going to taste that good.
Well, garlic is fine.
I'm big into garlic.
Like, OK, so I'm making this new soup.
All right.
soup.
Jalapeños in the soup.
In the soup.
OK.
Crushed garlic.
OK.
OK.
Onion.
Chopped up onion.
Green and red onions.
I mean green and red peppers.
Yep.
Yeah altogether.
That can work.
Okay a little cayenne pepper All right.
Yeah.
and then when you're done with that when you're ready to go you put a dollop of that Nail yogurt.
Oh yogurt
a
it's a cabbage soup with jalapenos
and garlic.
No, I your chicken broth
Not that bad
I'm not drinking soda.
Look what I'm drinking.
sugar.
Monster energy drink zero sugar.
Zero added sugars.
This is like, this is like a
of the
it.
Johnny juice of the gods.
Monster with zero sugar.
I mean, it's the same as drinking an espresso type thing.
Yeah.
Well, that's fantastic for you.
Carbs is six.
This.
Yeah.
It's not.
It's got a bad rap.
Got a texture of Falafel is Egyptian falafel is Egyptian
Greek.
All right.
little Michael kind of sort of area.
All right.
You were talking a little bit about the the Beach Boys.
I want to get back to that.
Were they all, did you ever see them in concert?
Oh yeah.
I saw them at the old Fox City Stadium one time after a game and then I saw that movie and it's like, oh those poor guys with the way their dad was to them and everything, like beat them up and everything.
Oh, I didn't, I didn't know all that.
Okay.
I just,
great.
mean.
They played after Tim
they're one
never say this.
Now we're going to play some stuff from our new album.
You know what I mean?
Everybody gets up to go to the bathroom
beer.
Yeah.
No.
A band like that, you know where you're, it's like Bob Seeger, you know what you're gonna
all these
I don't know.
I don't know what his background was, but Hawthorne's not like Beverly Hills, right?
I mean, he lived in this Southern California place and him and his brother and there was a couple cousins and a couple of friends.
I forgot who they all got together, but it wasn't like tryouts.
And well, I think I
read something that like they had never
They say, they wrote all these surfing songs, and they've never been on a surfboard.
Yeah.
That, a lot of talent there.
Us.
Yeah, unbelievable.
great.
How much money do you make when you write a song like, I mean, like one song, you can be set for life.
If you have a number one hit, it keeps getting played over and over.
Can you imagine?
Google is net worth.
So who didn't?
OK, Carney Wilson.
daughter?
from
OK.
Yes.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
Wow.
You know what's funny?
It's like, wouldn't you think?
If you got a hundred million dollars in your checking account,
would have every doctor in the world where you're not going to die.
Right.
To your, you know, whenever.
But
joke.
The dad joke.
Stop breathing.
It does say that he probably would have been worth a lot more, but his father sold the publishing rights to most of his early songs in 1969 for a very small sum.
Wow.
Those parents, man.
Yeah, they were right.
Terrible.
But you hear that a lot with actors and all that kind of stuff.
The parents use them to make money.
No question.
You know what they say has the greatest parents along those lines?
Taylor Swift.
cool her mom and her dad both very much just you know Making sure everything's taken care of they have the right people the whole thing.
I mean she's she's done it right I mean she did you see where she the money she brings in?
It's like almost like the gross national product of some yes
It's on both for she can move the needle.
Yeah unbelievable and what's cool about her is that it's her
It's not this band that's going to break up.
It's not this fighting they're going to have, you know, and eagles and splitting.
It's her.
So if she can, and I don't know, I don't hear much bad stuff about her.
So if she can maintain that lifestyle.
It's mind boggling.
It is mind boggling.
What can I do to move the needle time?
How many
Right.
I don't know.
But I feel like I got a rebirth.
Yeah.
No, we better.
I really do.
But it's one of those things to some of these young people, too, that they start out so great, so great, so great.
And then they just flame out, and it's that bad manager, that bad parent, the bad friends.
I mean, it's just even like a Miley Cyrus.
Remember when she was on
hugeness and went nuts, and her dad was like.
Kind of nuts.
Kind of nuts.
Yeah.
Yeah.
told you, I met him one time.
Did you?
And I think she might have been with him.
when she was a little girl.
Got you.
I interviewed him at a game Packers against Kansas City Chiefs 1994, Monday night game at Arrowhead Stadium.
And I did a interview with him pregame because he was a big Packer fan.
Yeah.
Very super nice guy.
Really nice guy.
Talked about he'd played tight end in high school in Kentucky.
Just a great normal guy.
I think that's really a funny line.
The only one better than that was Frank Arsham and me and Nick had a body.
Oh yeah.
Are we done?
I go yet.
Or Paul Horning the time he goes,
guys, I'm almost to Green Bay.
I'm about to lose you.
Bay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We've had a few kind of blow us off over the years, but that's all right.
But you know, another thing too with some of these big, big time artists like that, you wonder at what point they look back and they say, you know, mom, dad, what are you thinking?
You know what I mean?
where they were on that precipice of being so huge.
There's such a fine line between taking that next step and not.
And Todd, you know that's more than anybody, the music, because some of those young people would come around and they were so close.
And then that next step is the hard one.
even.
What's wrong with
serious.
You're listening
to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
Hi, Todd.
How are you?
way?
Yeah, it just kind of just
out of your face.
Moved away from me, yeah.
So today we are joined on Valley Focus
by Mike Dempsey, who is with Waterfest in Oshkosh.
Thank you so much for joining us.
I appreciate
it.
Well, thank you for having me.
39 years!
No, 39 seasons and 40 years.
We had one little hiccup if you remember.
or
on.
Well, that's fantastic.
We have quite a bit of a
Boating waterfest Navy crew that comes down the river and they tie up and it's beautiful Mike this
Well, thank you We we try to make it happen all summer long and we promote Oshkosh on the water and the
beautiful quality of life we enjoy here on the Fox River Valley all summer long.
And Waterfest is a midweek event.
It's not a weekend event, which I think is even better because, you know, weekends get so full with everything.
Well, it's community concert series and we don't want to get in the way of the church picnics and a lot of the other family dealings and a lot of people are out on Friday night for fish.
So Thursday is our night to.
to warm things up for the weekend.
Oh yeah, they're
bombastic 80s.
It's their 25th anniversary tour.
And I guess they've got some surprises for us.
So they'll have their fantastic light show and their pyro show and all the all the theatrical improvisations that we enjoy.
So
you're gonna be kicking it off kind of with a big bang, so to
speak.
Yeah, we're very proud of that.
We have some other bands on the lineup.
We have the Michael Weber show.
He's a guitar phenomenon.
He's coming in from Ohio and he's very exciting.
And then
And we've got Brett Noosky and his bad inventions.
And Brett's just coming back from England, I think, from his tour.
So we've got a triple-headed monster going on here for opening night.
Well, Waterfest really allows people to enjoy entertainment for a few dollars.
The charm of Waterfest is its accessibility, its affordability, the beautiful
a format that we have here.
It's a very club-like setting inside one of the best boutique amphitheaters in Wisconsin.
And it's a beautiful park-like setting.
People can come and go as they wish.
So it's really one of those very accessible things, very affordable.
Veterans are free.
Opening night tonight.
Teachers are free if they bring their school ID.
Nice.
Nice.
That is nice.
Now, you mentioned it's very affordable.
How does one go about getting tickets for Waterfest?
Well, waterfest.org has all the tickets.
And we, you know, we, uh, we can sell them online or you can come and pay for it at the gate.
Uh, we have discount early, early bird discounts most most nights.
So, um, I think it's $10 if you're in line before six PM's, uh, opening night tonight.
So.
Get there early.
We're pretty, you know, if you're not quite there by six, but you're in line and we'll let you in for $10.
You guys are
right?
Yeah.
So
Well, we'll start at the back of the lineup.
We wrap things up August 14th with Loverboy, and that'll be a great show.
My sister's had that album, right?
The red, the red
pants.
The red leather pants.
Yeah, I swear.
If you're wearing red leather pants, we'll let you in free.
So Mike sent you.
Lisa, leave yours at home, okay?
I'll buy your tickets.
You don't want to see that.
And tonight bring the spandex.
And the rest of that, we've got some really cool stuff, something for everybody.
Next week, we have George Therogood and the Destroyers, which is a fantastic show.
You can pick up the information on the supporting acts online there at waterfest.org.
Then on the 26th, we have Van from Australia making a stop there, only making a few stops in the US.
They're called the Cat Empire.
They're a little bit of Skal Latin beat.
Lots of fun dancing music, horns and percussion and very, very, very accessible music.
There'll be a lot of fun.
We also have Copper Box and Kate Voss and that'll be a fun, fun night.
And then on the 17th of July, we have Big Bad Voodoo Daddy bringing the big brass in town.
Then August, no, July 31st, we have Vic Ferrari's encore performance.
Very, very productive.
It's cool that they're
Yeah.
Vic goes back to the early days of WaterFest when we started the...
the concert series format and both Vic and Roadtrip were mainstays of helping set us up financially because they drew really well and they sold a lot of beer.
And they're always friends of the event and Michael Bailey actually opened Waterfest in the Lee Champa Theater with the National Anthem.
and he sang it beautifully and he's such an operatic singer, so that'll be a nice show.
Great vocalist.
Great having him back and then back and that'll be fun.
And also supporting them, actually it's kind of a two-headed show again.
It's a
shining
star.
And they do the Earth, Wind and Fire.
There's probably, I think, 17 people in that
band.
Wow.
Oh, they've got to.
They're doing Earth, Wind and Fire.
They've got to have a horn section.
funky music.
Oh, yeah.
That'll be fun.
That'll be there.
They're coming in on from Chicago, Errant Land area.
And that'll be a big show.
One of the best Earth, Wind and Fire shows.
Yes, you do.
And they're supported by the producers, also Atlanta.
and they had a lot of MTV pop hits in the 80s.
How long
1989.
Wow.
That's a long time.
have
you.
We enjoyed it.
It's a lot of fun.
It couldn't happen without the sponsors, fans, the bands love it.
Our vendors, our sound company from Green Bay does a great job of Lighthouse.
They're always on the job and helping us get the shows off, even in climate weather.
And we try to make it fun for everybody.
bucks.
10 bucks.
Buy 6 o'clock if you're in line.
You can't beat that.
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Minow and Jim Schmidt.
Hey, thank you very much.
It is our Scotty Summer Text to Win statewide contest.
Your daily chance when a pair of Milwaukee Brewer club level tickets are $100 in cash.
Plus, every entry puts you into one of our grand prize drawings of a Wisconsin Delz area vacation or door county vacation.
Well, thank you very much, Todd.
You know, one thing that we always notice when we come down to the Oshkosh area, and we love coming down here just for the great city.
I can only keep driving in again this morning.
I'm looking at the dates of when buildings were built.
And one was 1890.
Another one was 1895.
It was just on the way.
I just love the history that has been restored here in Oshkosh.
But another thing about Oshkosh that every time we're here, this gets reinforced.
the passion you have for paying forward by going backwards with young people and the things and the opportunities you provide them.
And we're with two people that are so instrumental in doing those kind of things right now.
Kate Stelb and Bill Wyman, Oshkosh Area Community Foundation.
We're talking about one of these things when the camp, and I was just reading about it, typical for this area, has been in existence since 1937.
Boom.
Yeah.
I mean, phenomenal.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, we're happy to be here.
Thank you.
Because of what Johnny's talking about, we're going to talk about where some of your money goes, but it's incredible what you do to help the overall community, not just some specific projects, but this whole scholarship thing, which I really want to talk about is, I mean, you're investing in your future when you take these 300 kids.
We've been
around for coming on 100 years.
That's pretty cool.
And we've been helping the community since, oh, I'd say in the 40s, we started giving money away.
And it's been wonderful.
The passion that people have to give back to the community is just wonderful.
I think that is so cool.
I mean, that really and truly is.
You guys have such a nucleus here of like, OK, this is who we've always been.
No need to change it.
We're good.
You know what?
The breweries?
the different things, the fire stations that are still being used.
I love the fact that you guys never felt the need to like just knock everything down like you did with this great Molly Green Bay and and start over.
You
guys have just
taken the history and just enhanced it and made it better and can't pronounce the name.
Hi, Waila.
Hi,
Waila, explain that.
That's the one that's been around since 1937 and still going strong.
There was a camp out west of town that was on a small lake and the camp was doing as well as it did.
And I think it was in the early 90s or
so.
95.
It's 30 years of the fund this year.
So
they sold the camp.
And they put the money into the community foundation, and today we're still giving grants for camperships.
Yeah, I think those are just announced.
So some of the alumni of the camp really came together and rallied around that to carry forward the mission of the camp and the memories they had there.
So they still sponsor camperships.
for kids in Winnebago County to go to summer camps all over the state.
And yeah, it's 30 years of the Highway Law Youth Fund this year.
And
What I like about community foundations like yours here in Oshkosh is you get your pulse on the community.
Whereas there may be needs that weren't there 25 years ago.
So people, I don't know what your minimum is, but you have a significant amount of money and you manage that money and you're doing quite well with that.
I mean, you invested properly is what I'm saying.
Right.
We have an investment manager that helps us, actually, that are out east.
But they help us invest it.
And it's the growth recently.
It's been really good.
We've been in like 16 different investment categories.
We don't need to get into all that.
No.
you're
Exactly.
if I could just put in that and that's great with the new things.
But there's one thing that just caught my eye where it's like this mission statement can stay forever.
The aroma of pine, pristine lakes, fresh air, screened cabins, open air tents, singing, swimming, canoeing, hiking and spending time being a kid in a kid's world now.
Yeah, I mean, that's, I didn't get to meet a lot of the Hwala, the ladies, the campfire girls, this last grant round, but there's spirited bunch.
And, you know, that's the thing about the community foundation is the things that we do run the gamut because we are here to unite the passion of our donors with projects that are needed and are meaningful.
So, you know, we've got folks who like the campfire girls,
to scholarship donors, to people who are super passionate about particular organizations.
Recently, we just started a fund from an estate that just goes to keep seniors, older adults, with their beloved cats, just cats, not dogs, cats, in their homes.
So it supports organizations that like the Humane Society that has programs so that
cats don't have to be surrendered so that, you know, older folks can keep their cats.
And that's a real example.
I didn't just make that up.
on in the community.
But
We have Camp Inalaya and it's just those father daughter things and just and again, it's something that's been around for a long time.
But then there's a lot of new things because Green Bay is, you know, demographically has changed quite a bit.
There's new programs for some of the
new opportunities that we have there.
So tell me a little bit more about what's new here in Oshkosh.
And you're doing a great job.
I'm not taking anything away from your existing programs.
That's important.
But what are some of the things that you do now that you didn't do 10 years ago?
Well, I think, and Bill, I'll need to lean on you for this.
I'm new to the Community Foundation.
But some of the programs that we've done with...
reducing and preventing homelessness in this region are really critical projects.
So, like I said, I wasn't.
That's kind of what Jim just
said,
You gotta be able to shift gears a little bit.
Yeah,
Yep.
Over the years, what's really changed I think is the amount of human.
Health and Human Services that we do the basic needs type stuff right and it's everything from from homeless to Shell not only shelter but food and and I even classify some education things into that too so we've really directed a lot more of our Total giving towards that area
but that doesn't mean that we can't that we have to continue to sport
these things that lift up all ships.
Right.
I mean, we've done a lot of the Lee Chapel Theatre.
I'm just looking right across the street.
We helped with that and we did the years ago.
We helped with the swimming pool in town.
We've helped with the Y and we've helped.
So we've helped with a lot of
beautiful parks
around here.
Yeah, and we have funds with the parks.
So beautiful zoo.
I mean.
We're trying to help everything.
And if we put all of our emphasis just in one area, it just, we won't strengthen the community, which is what our mission statement is.
That's awesome.
You know,
another cool thing though, too, it's like even in Green Bay, we're talking like they'll have these like art programs for more of the inner city type kids and these book drives and some of these things that, okay, those basic needs because there are, you know, there are kids that go to school hungry.
And that's not even a question.
So that's the fundamental part, but let's make it fun.
afterwards as well, correct?
Yeah, I think that's, and that's really what it comes down to because everybody has a specific passion for a different, a different area of need in our community.
And that's what we're here for.
That's why we can't, you know, or we don't just focus on one issue area because that would be a disservice to the passionate people in this community.
You
because
bit
305 recipients more scholarships than that because some kids get more than one.
They're just so great
So
you ever
you?
That's from the Booster Club, Nagani Booster Club.
That's awesome.
I think it was $200.
OK.
Awesome.
That's nice.
Today, that's probably, you know, I'm just kidding.
I
Same.
I didn't get any.
But
It's a really complex program.
Bill and I had to meet with our director of education yesterday so we could keep track of all of everything in the program because the Oshkosh Area Community Foundation serves a pretty wide geographic range.
We are all of Winnebago County, all of Washera County, Green Lake County, and the city of Ripon.
So it's Oshkosh area.
etc.
Yeah, that's about 15 different school districts.
I was gonna
say
that's a pretty big
geographical
area right there.
That's a big circle.
So we're giving scholarships.
in all of those schools.
Well you know what's great though too is because like even with a Green Bay you think okay well sure you know Green Bay East, Green Bay West, the Prebles of the world but you know we've got these little outlying schools that really sometimes don't have that community you know funding and different things like that.
Exactly.
What you guys are doing is going outside the the city boundaries which I think is really important don't you?
Yeah.
Right but what we're really doing is we're helping those communities develop
a way to give out scholarships because most of these scholarships that we're giving like in Berlin or Princeton or Green Lake or
was the smaller communities, those are the people from those communities that are actually supporting their schools.
We're just kind of the administrator in helping them develop a plan so that they can continue to help their own communities.
Which they need though.
Yeah, we're the partner.
That's the grass, absolutely.
Princess little town.
It's not New
That's
scholarships.
Todd, I was
to say, I was
I think, I think for as many times as Jim drives through an area, they could do a scholarship just starting to get some tickets.
What was
little time?
Brandon
is
Brandon
meets.
Brandon received a nice donation from him last year.
I think
Excellent.
Hey, you know, I can get you connected to the right people.
Okay.
Yeah.
I think 15.
15, I'm
it's a cool process actually because we have I mean we have over 250 unique scholarship funds some of them give out more than one award right you know it depends on the setup but kids only have to fill out one application we have a universal application process by the the region so if you are all the kids got to know is where they go to school and then they fill out one application it's pretty comprehensive and it gets they get matched up to opportunity
that they're eligible for, and then they get considered for those.
That's
right.
Okay, with that, so did you ever get any scholarships coming out of high school?
Sure, I don't
where they are.
But anyway, I got the Kiwanis,
Oh, there you go.
But I mean, that's quite the thrill when you get that letter.
Oh, yeah.
In the mail, and
wow.
Yeah.
$22.
Whatever it is, it's just you feel pretty cool.
that scholarship is.
You got the scholarship,
scrapbook someplace, I've still got that
gosh.
Well, I think that we're going
to send her a quick break.
Yeah, we're talking about it.
Yeah.
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Yes
This hour, you're playing for a pair of Milwaukee Brewers club level tickets, and the keyword again is... Yes!
No, it's not!
Family.
just kidding.
F-A-M-I-L-Y.
You have until the end of the hour.
Good luck.
Yes.
It's
Albert's birthday, that's where we're celebrating.
all the time,
yes.
Tony.
Yes.
Thank you.
by the way, I gotta say some of those are cool little towns.
When we drove down to where is it?
The Dells we came to, Todd?
Yeah, you gotta go through Princeton.
Those are really
cool little.
Marcos saying is out
there.
Yes.
Love
those towns.
Yeah.
Except driving through
speed limit.
They got to go slow.
So he got to take it.
Okay, cheese.
Is
wife list here?
What
that?
We get pulled over.
Yes.
Okay.
It
gets
a warning, I believe in Princeton.
We're going through the next little town, which
is Montello.
Yes.
Yeah.
I grew up in that area.
Three
minutes away.
I said, Oh my God, the guy's coming back again.
You must have, you must have forgot something to give to your license.
No, it's a whole different police department.
Three minutes later.
We'll over
again.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
Expensive
Were you late?
room.
I was going to get home.
So anyway, that was them.
The scholarships that you give out, and you made a good point that I think people want, maybe they want their name on a scholarship and they give their money to you.
And then you, with them, they can earmark it or they can tell you kind of what we're looking for.
Young women and
whatever they want to do, you know, YMCA.
But the minimum is $10,000.
And if you give out 4%, that's $400.
So you're thinking it would be nice if you could get an endowment or somebody to give you a check for, you know, maybe $25,000, $30,000.
We have a lot of different size scholarships.
I think that the one we like to talk about the most is called the William Bray Scholarship.
And back in the 60s, he gave about $90,000.
and we give out five percent or four and a half percent a year.
We've given out over, what, $400,000 out of that scholarship.
Actually, we've given out over $2 million out of that scholarship and it just keeps growing and growing.
So
you give a pretty worthy amount of money in the beginning, it takes right away.
You can see the
the advantages of it.
And then over time, it makes a huge difference.
And can I read some of the other ones that you give to that?
These are like kind of heartfelt.
Big brothers, big sisters of East Central Wisconsin to send eight little kids and their bigs to camp on a way in what
that totally.
But I'm just talking about somewhere.
Some of this money goes.
What the foundation does.
Exactly.
Boy Scouts America Bay Lakes Council, 15 Scouts that can attend camp of their choice.
Boys and Girls Club of Oshkosh.
Overnight trips, a hundred
175 kids
Camp Radford in New London.
Easter Seals, Wisconsin.
Five youth with disabilities to camp Wabik in Wisconsin Dells.
Friends of Camp...
I don't know how to say it
either.
Okay.
Anokeige.
To give 10 youth week-long experience at their employment.
Wisconsin Badger Camp.
two youth with developmental disabilities to enjoy a week at Wisconsin Badger Camp in Plantville, a YMCA of the Fox Cities, 20 youth to camp, Nanabushu in Lakewood.
I mean, these are unbelievable things.
And there's some testimonials about one of the people says, as soon as the little boy got off the bus, he said, Mom, when can I go back?
When can I go back?
I mean, those are the kinds of things where it's like,
Okay, scholarships are great for school and everything.
We all needed those and wanted those, but when you talk about the influence and the impact you can have on these little kids.
I'll write a check right now for that.
I mean, it's really special to be involved with the community foundation and see, again, the breadth, the huge scope of things that the community foundation touches.
When we talked with Cheryl, our director of education yesterday, she was telling us about a new scholarship that just opened last fall.
It's called the Scholarship for Hope, and it supports students who have a refugee background.
given out this spring for the first time.
We have scholarships that are memorials.
cannot remember the name of the individual, but it's named after a person in law enforcement who died on duty, and his family and loved ones, coworkers created a memorial scholarship in his name.
And the other thing that's really special about scholarships is
family, multiple generations of families sometimes get involved in the award ceremonies each spring.
So they are part of seeing that legacy carry forward.
It's really special.
Exactly.
And I mean, I think that's underscored by the commitment that the High Waila the campfire girls have to the High Waila Youth Fund.
They, you know, they
No one asked them to to get together every year and read a bunch of applications from organizations.
You know, this is their passion and they get to continue living and carrying on that legacy of their cherished memories of camp to help today's youth.
And to put it in perspective to even like Joan Crock, who of course owns the Crock Centers, became a billionaire basically, very disadvantaged as a youth.
Yeah.
Was heartbroken when her rich kids were going to camps and her
Mission in life was I'm gonna make sure every kid gets to go to a camp or gets to go to a Y or gets to go to something like that So who knows some of these kids that are benefiting from these camps what they could turn out to be and how they could keep paying this forward?
Oshkosh area community foundation, what you guys do is spectacular, whatever it can do to sponsor that.
And when I said about writing out a check, I don't actually have a check.
You can give online.
Real estate.
You can
give a lot of different stuff.
Hey, welcome back.
It's our summer Scotty, Texas win statewide contest.
Your daily chance with a pair of Milwaukee Brewers, club level tickets, or $100 cash.
Plus, every entry puts you into one of our grand prize drawings of a Wisconsin Dell's Area Vacation or Dork County Vacation.
This hour you're playing for a pair of Milwaukee Brewers club level tickets, and the keyword again is family, not yes.
Family, F-A-M-I-L-Y.
You've got till the end of the hour.
Good luck.
And again, you want to text in because it helps Jim and John look good to the bosses at corporate.
Yeah, it doesn't look
good when he says the keyword is yes.
It's it's Mike.
It's a Mark.
Albert's 84th birthday today.
So that's why I
hear
you
guys talking.
Oh, wait.
Yes.
Oh, yeah.
That's awesome.
Yes.
Yes.
Exactly.
Anyway.
Well,
Justin Schmick, how you doing, buddy?
I'm living the dream over here.
I was like, I'm on the radio.
Tell everybody
who
you are and
what you do,
my
Yeah.
Well, my name's Justin Schmick.
I own the Schmick Freeman Insurance Agency.
I got offices in Amro and Oshkosh.
But you know, I'm so much more than that, right?
Not just an insurance guy, right?
I'm a dad.
I'm a husband.
I'm an exotic dancer for hire.
And Jay Long walks on the floor.
You may want to
that up.
But honestly, the exotic dancer part, it's by call only.
Because I'm 41.
I got to stretch beforehand.
I
I'm not just up there all day long.
I need some prep time.
You're
talking to somebody here, buddy.
I know I've been there.
yeah, I'm
Yeah, I'm more, you know, you know, from the rescue Rangers, the chip and deal rescue Rangers.
I'm more like the bigger guy.
Do
anything?
He's going to do a
you.
Stretching outside beforehand.
date night coming up here.
For me, with Waterfest.
Well, Waterfest is tonight.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm not going to.
You're one of the
biggest fans of Waterfest.
I am a huge fan of Waterfest.
I think it's it's a great.
It's an awesome concert.
It's always a lot of fun and hairballs tonight.
That's a huge huge.
Yeah.
That's
likes Amro because
It is.
Absolutely.
know,
The first time they did the freedom free fall was in Omro at the airport there.
Oh, really?
And that was so cool.
And the whole so many people from Omro came out to support the veterans for prevention of suicide.
It was really cool.
I used to live out there.
I used to watch
guys jump out of airplanes all the time.
Perfectly good airplanes.
It wasn't crashing or anything.
Just jumped right out of there.
So
you would not.
No, that's actually one of the questions is on the life insurance part of things is have you jumped out of a plane or are you going to be flying?
or anything like that.
Are you serious?
Yeah,
Really?
Think
So the first time you were in a plane, you just jumped right out of it?
I did, man.
So what's the first time you ever landed?
I don't know.
That's a good way to get over your fear of flying right away.
You just jump out.
It did.
And you get down safe.
You're like, OK.
Is
that really unlike the rider or whatever?
Yeah, absolutely.
That's one of the questions.
Where are some
of the other
things?
Are you going to be doing any long term foreign travel?
That's going to be another one that's on there.
Is this
for life insurance?
It's for life insurance.
OK.
Yeah.
I mean, if it's car insurance, nobody cares if you're jumping out of a plane or not.
Where are some of the other things?
Wow.
On the life insurance side, there's a lot of questions.
A lot of it goes, you know, it's more on your on your health records and all that kind of stuff.
What kind of crazy things do you do in your life?
You know, things of that nature.
So they're just making sure that you're not a risk to to pass away early.
OK, but this is a
Yeah.
Hey, that was like six episodes of Columbo.
Just one more thing.
Right.
questionable.
I haven't I haven't had to do any investigations on anything like that But I will tell you that like I've got to hit some numbers every once in a while for contests and things like that with my companies So I've got a lot of life insurance on myself I will tell you that my wife is very aware that I am worth more dead than I ever Unexpectedly pass you go first place you go.
Yeah.
Wow.
All right.
All right We'll do
let me ask us when it comes to life insurance so many people like I'm gonna put that off I'm gonna put that off.
I'm gonna put that off
If you go back in time with people, when would you tell them you got to do it?
Oh, before
you're 18.
Oh, honestly, if you have kids, get a full term, a whole life insurance policy on them as soon as possible.
It's inexpensive and it's convertible in a few different ways throughout their lifetime.
Well, for
though, for anybody listening that doesn't know, go
ahead and explain the difference.
Okay, well term life insurance is just for a term, it's for a short term time, right?
So you can get a 5, 10, 15, 30 year, 25 year, depends on the company, right?
But once it's expired, that's it, it's over.
And that money you put in, you don't get, it's gone.
Nope, you're rolling the dice.
Something might hold the dice.
You're
gonna die before
yeah, exactly much pretty much.
Yeah, that's a really fun thing to talk about on the radio That's great.
I think it's important though.
I really do I know a lot of people that put that off put that off and the guy catastrophe dies and
Mm-hmm, and then there's a go fund me page that we all there's a good one
me page and Jim and I both having been in real estate for closed houses
Yeah, those exact thing absolutely.
Yeah, so yeah, the term life insurance is the term
Whole life is last year, entire lifetime, and that can build cash value.
The
term life is- And you can cash
that in then down the road,
right?
Yep, and everything is situational in life insurance, right?
It depends on what you need.
For kids, like if you're a brand, like a newborn or two month old, get them a whole life policy because that number most of the time will lock in right there, and that's what they're paying monthly forever unless they upconvert it or put anything else into it.
As a parent, I would say, yeah, probably once you have kids.
get a get a term policy if you if you buy a house get a 30 year term policy for the amount that you owe on the house because if you pass the bank still gonna want that money like they don't say oh well you died so you don't have to pay us anymore don't worry about it somebody to pay them it's okay
oh, yeah The older you get the closer you are to dying so that's pretty much it it is so if you take it out when you're 20 It's much much less expensive because you're much less of a risk to pass away early at that point, right?
So the insurance every insurance company works on risk, right?
That's what actuaries do.
They say okay.
This person is We have this much risk on this person.
So this is how much it's gonna cost We have way more risk on this person So it's gonna cost way more money because we're gonna have to fork that money out earlier than
then later
yeah
right yeah i can just cancel out right
it's not it's pretty
what what things do you see that people have a misconception on when it comes to life insurance
Everybody nobody thinks they need it like right nobody needs it until they need it And that's without with all insurance is like how we don't need that until you need it until until something catastrophic happens You know like well now what am I gonna do?
You know now I got to start to go fund me and see if I can beg a bunch of people for money Well in turn you could have been paying 50 bucks a month and get paid out a whole bunch of money right at the spot right now So that's one of the biggest ones like well we don't we don't really need it and nobody wants to talk especially on the life insurance Yeah, so
Yeah, that's one of the biggest things is it's really hard to get anybody to even talk about it or consider the fact that there's a chance that they're going to pass away at some point.
we do.
Auto, home, commercial, all of it.
Except for health insurance.
Health insurance makes no sense to me.
I can't wrap my head around health insurance.
Most people can.
It's
a whole different animal
these days, isn't it?
And my wife carries a health insurance, so I don't even have to talk or think about it.
So, yeah, that's a win for me.
Auto insurance.
Yeah, it is.
It's a law that you have to get it from me, too.
That is actually a statute.
I was
Well, that's you that's the thing about about having an agent compared to like going on Geico comm or progressive comm is I had to go through all the Education part I had to get certified I had to learn about what all these coverages mean and you guys don't have to do that so
The best choice for you when you're looking at it, not knowing all the information is whatever is the cheapest, right?
Well, the cheapest is the state minimum $25.50 for auto insurance, which means if you run into somebody, you have $25,000 per person.
to pay for their medical expenses and things like that, and $50,000 aggregate for the entire incident.
So if you've got a couple people in a vehicle that have some long-term issues, that have some rehab, some missed work, stuff like that, you're gonna hit that $50,000 like that.
Real quick.
Real quick.
And
door.
Yeah, then it's on you after that.
The insurance company will pay you, pay out up to the limit of the coverage, and then they'll say, well, we fulfilled our obligation.
good luck okay so
okay i'll be honest with you sometimes i i almost it seems like i'm an old guy because like i'll watch some of these shows in the afternoon like a gun smoke or whatever and the commercials will be about oh bob died and he didn't have life insurance oh he should call so-and-so are those i don't want to say the word scam but are those like less than repeatable
No, I don't know, it depends
on the company, right?
I don't know for sure.
But you know the commercials I'm talking about?
Yeah, I know what you're saying, but I think it's just the way that they're marketing it.
It seems kind of scammy, but it's just they're trying to get you.
They're trying to scare people.
They're trying to scare old people.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, and if you want to do that, there's a lot of.
I mean, I'll
be honest, I bought seven or eight policies.
Yeah,
smart.
mean, cover my butt.
We'll cover your funeral costs.
they may not pay for all your funeral costs.
There may be things that are exempt from that.
You gotta read the fine print on that stuff, whereas an agent, you go to you, you know all that stuff, you read it.
You tell us this is what you're getting, this is the difference between this one and this one.
What we do is we'll give you the best advice that we have and a few different options, but we'll give you what, here's what we really think you should do based on what we are seeing here and what we know, and then we'll let you decide.
I'm not a sales guy, I'm not really good at it.
I've got the product.
I'll show it to you.
Here's what it costs.
You want it or you don't want it.
That's pretty much it.
That's fair to them.
If you don't want it, that's okay.
We can still be friends.
Well, what's the highest amount that a person could get?
for life insurance?
Oh boy, I don't, I mean, that depends on the company.
It's a, it's a whole- Like millions?
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Wow.
Yeah,
absolutely.
Yeah.
I would be so nervous if I had like a $10 million policy on me.
Like he's just said, yeah, sleep is
This is this is interesting
Schmitt, Schmitt Freeman, insurance, Oshkosh and Omro back right after this.
Life I love is making music with my friends.
And I can't wait to get on the road again.
Going places that I've never been.
Seeing things that I may never see again.
I can't wait to get on the road again.
On the
again.
Like a man, the gift is we go down the highway.
We're the best of friends.
Consisting that the world can turn in our way.
In our way.
On the road
again.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website,
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Hey, welcome back.
It is summer.
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And this hour's
Welcome back.
We're coming your way from the WISS studios in beautiful historic downtown Oshkosh.
Yes.
Justin Schmink.
She's making a free-minute shirt.
That will never get
Letterman gave him a hard time though, because he came out and he talked about all the, he became real honest about what he did with the women.
I thought Letterman kind of supported him in that.
He did
first.
It's like, what are you doing this, Marvin?
He was like, I shouldn't have done that.
I bit her on the knock and I wore garners.
What are you doing, Marvin?
You should be more low defiant.
But he totally
little too honest.
I mean, that's, that's always been my problem.
Yeah.
Yeah.
what?
Hey, I'll tell
we'd
my thigh.
God bless
Yeah.
Schmidt Freeman insurance.
Justin, you OK?
A couple of quick things that these guys were talking about during the break.
I'd never heard of.
Pet insurance.
Yeah.
Pet insurance.
You know, it's one of those things that you do.
You do love your pets.
You you're worried about their medical part of it.
And I can understand.
I can understand getting pet insurance, especially if you if you're paying big money for it.
for a dog or an animal or whatever, because they're getting crazy expensive.
Me, I won't, like, 300 bucks is as much as I'll spend on an animal, on a dog, because I just, well, I don't have any money.
So that's really weird.
Jim spends
that to get his dog's toenails
clipped.
Yeah,
Right.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Yeah.
But if you're putting big money in and it's a big investment, I think that's probably a smart thing to do.
They don't have pet
life insurance, do
they?
I don't know about the life insurance.
I don't just health
insurance, right?
Yeah.
The main thing is it covers those big medical bills.
Like if they swallow a toy or they have cancer or any kind of thing that comes up
That's awesome.
Craigslist.
I gotta say
people might have the stereotypical thing of an insurance salesman from, you know, back in the days of, you know, the TV shows where everybody's dad was an insurance salesman.
I bet you're the only insurance.
You are the only insurance salesman I know that has his own brand name flip flops.
Oh,
is that insurance agent,
yeah.
But you know what that reminds of that just remind I got a bad pain.
You ever get look at something.
It's like, oh, why do I just get a bad pain?
And it's because from yesterday, I had to go get my checkup for my skin cancer, which by the way, all good.
Nothing new.
Okay.
But he's got to go back next week.
scared.
I couldn't sleep the night before I went for my checkup He told me I was gonna be completely naked and they're gonna be he told
I
have to be like my
hands and knees and they're gonna be checking certain
every crevice you're
nervous about going in that sounds like fun Well, the thing is so I put they said you want a guy or a woman doctor.
I'm like, I don't care I don't what said it's a doctor and then I started thinking whatever whatever Well, it wasn't that bad, but I literally couldn't sleep the night before
because of what Todd put in my head, okay?
So I took like six showers, I did whatever, put on my greatest whatever action or biker shorts and whatever,
Actually, you know the only
Man-scaping
little man-scaping before, right, right, right.
No, I
should have, because he said, oh, you got a little bit of a rash down there.
I'm not joking.
I
said
yeah, it's working out too much, but you want to know the one thing that I just thought about seeing you in flip-flops It's like oh crap the one thing I forgot you didn't clip your toenails.
I did not clip my toenails Yeah, and they are gross
screen And it's okay for guys to do it.
Oh there it is and they do a great job.
I got
a fetish about somebody touching my feet
I mean,
Jeff Schmidt Schmidt, Freeman Assurance, Oshkosh Nonro.
Give yourself a plug.
Tell people why they should give you a call.
Listen, insurance is boring.
It really is.
Nobody wants to talk about it.
So talk about it with somebody that's fun to talk to.
That's us at Schmick Freeman Insurance.
And the thing is, you're not doing it for yourself.
You know what I mean?
The person that's going to come to talk to you about it,
to benefit from it nearly as much as somebody that they love is going to benefit.
we take all kinds
Yeah, absolutely
need to promote your social
things.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Find me on social media.
I do tell daily dad jokes to my friend Stephanie.
So you can find me on Facebook and Instagram and Tik Tok and YouTube and all those things.
It's just you're there.
Yeah.
But stuff like that.
No, I'm not.
I have no idea how I got any kind of following on Instagram.
I'm not supposed to be on there.
I'm too old for that.
I have no no clue how that happened.
It just did give us one dad joke.
All right.
Guy walks into a library says I'd like to order a cheeseburger and fries.
Librarians like dude, this is a library.
So the guy's like, okay, sorry, sorry.
I'd like to order a cheeseburger.
Yes!
All the ones you told me.
One more time.
Tell everybody where they could find you.
Schmick Freeman Insurance, Amro and Oshkosh.
This is great.
This guy is cool.
This guy is fun.
This guy is awesome for you.
Absolutely.
All
right.
Thanks
Justin.
All right.
We got set a quick break.
We come back.
We're attacking little pickle and bags.
Back after
this.
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Schmidt.
Hey, thank you very much.
Welcome back.
Man, that was a lot of fun to have Justin Schmidt from the Schmidt Freeman Insurance Company here in Oshkosh and Amra in the house.
Now we've got Jeff Urquay, Pickle and Bags, which is a great thriving place right here in Oshkosh.
Jeff, how you doing, buddy?
It's good to see you again.
It's been a while.
I'm doing good.
Good morning, guys.
I think last time we were here is about 14 below and windy.
It was different.
This is nice.
Tell me a little bit about your place.
How's it going?
Going good.
Winter was busy, obviously.
Not many things to do around here when it's 10 degrees below.
So yeah, it was great.
A lot of people coming in just to pick up games.
We had some tournaments, we had some bands, lots of events where people would rent it out, whether it was a birthday party or a retirement party, even had a wedding.
Yeah, you name it.
It was great.
Yeah, they they rent
the whole facility.
I would think that'd be like a great bachelor or bachelorette party.
Oh, yeah, those two.
Oh, yeah.
And
tell everybody what you the facility itself, though, first.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What's all in it's just not pickleball courts.
Nope.
Nope.
We're a venue.
So we have four pickleball courts, but those four pickleball courts, we can clear off, you know,
One of them, two of them, three of them, all of them, whatever.
Just take the net down, right?
Yeah, and just have a wide open place.
And we'll put up some bags from time to time, cornhole.
And, you know, when people are renting, sometimes they'll want like one court with five rows of cornhole on it and then three pickleball courts.
And then we have a lounge.
It's a large room.
We call it a VIP room, where that's.
A place where, you know, when people are rented it out, they'll have food catered into it or whatever.
And then we have the whole bar area.
So, yeah, yeah.
I mean, that's awesome.
Pickleball is
Oh, yeah.
Everybody plays.
I mean, I guess everybody plays.
You were
Oh, no, we have leagues.
You're round.
Is your.
The leagues are definitely busier in the winter for obvious reasons.
You know, like we were talking before, you get about three good months in Wisconsin.
So people like to be outside.
But yeah, we still have leagues, evening leagues.
So yeah, we're still filling them up and still having a great time.
Just not as many leagues.
OK.
Do you offer lessons for
like.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
You wouldn't need any.
Yeah, we have lots of lessons going on.
I'm one of the instructors, a buddy of mine.
His name is Zach Connering.
He's actually a professional pickleball player.
He gives some lessons.
We're staying busy when you
said that you don't throw out that term loosely professional
I mean I know
that in the span of what five years at the most it went from hey this seems like kind of a cool thing for older people to do to Professional extremely competitive leagues with a lot of money involved.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it's it's it's popping and It's only continuing to grow
you know, watching professional pickleball players play, you know, on TV.
I watched money on the other night.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And I've been watching them for about five years now since I started right right around covid.
Right.
And thank you.
And it was it was a different game.
Yeah.
You know, it's kind of Patty cake back then.
Now it's yeah.
Yeah.
It's it's speeding up.
They're still a slow part of the game, but it's it with so many more people playing.
the sport, you know, things change a little bit.
But, um, and like I said, last time I was on here, I mean, you're seeing people play from, I mean, 10 years old all the way into 70s, 80s.
And, you know, the way the game is played, depending on, you know, those ages does change a little bit, but.
They're all having fun.
70s,
closer than I am.
If I make 80, yeah,
we'll have a party.
That'll be the biggest surprise in the world.
That'll
be the biggest upset
of all
time.
We'll have
it at P&B's
for you.
Absolutely.
Well, let me talk a little bit more about this whole thing.
How did it evolve to become?
I would think it's because.
anybody can kind of do it.
And for the real good pickleball players, I'm sure they're like, they get a little offended by that.
But the rudimentary fundamentals of it, anyone at any athletic level can do.
Yeah, that's what's great about it is because it has so many different levels.
Right.
All right.
Even when you go to these big tournaments, they have different.
Different levels for skill different levels for age So there's a place for everybody to fit in and to play against people similar to them Which keeps it fun, right?
You know if you go and you play against somebody that's just way worse than you That's not gonna be as much fun if you play against somebody that's way better than you That's not gonna be as much fun, but the thing with pickleball Especially now that there's so so many people playing you can always find a competitive game
Right.
I mean, that's the cool part.
Absolutely.
From time to time, we'll have tournaments.
Basically, what's happened with that is we've rented out the facility to some groups of guys that throw big tournaments.
So we don't have.
We're really not running those.
We're just letting them use the facility.
It all started.
I had a buddy who.
what's very active in having weekly tournaments and His organization would come in and then run those weekly tournaments as it turned out my buddy ended up moving to to Washington so some of the guys kind of picked up where he left off and The bags definitely haven't been is busy is the pickleball, but there's
Every every graduation party
Wisconsin.
We'll have that.
It's it's very popular.
I mean, you see that on a ESPN too.
Yes.
Yes.
That was on the other night.
Yeah.
The elevation those guys get
and
dropping it down is incredible.
And some of the best players are like 15 years old in the country.
Yes.
Oh, yeah.
Thank you, Tom.
You know what you need?
You know what I think is going to be the next one, though?
And I think I'm going to start bringing it back as it would be just by bocce ball.
You're playing bocce ball.
That's a great idea.
Yes, right?
Oh my god That's all we play my uncle nachos camp all the time was bocce ball.
Yeah, it really competitive bags and
I mean there
We'll
add it.
He'll be your bocce manager.
Yes.
Yeah, we'll have to bring in some grass and some hills I know even my brother we have our big he does is what every year as this big party It's a bocce ball tournament up at UP.
I used to play with some buddies with that
In college, we'd play a buck of balls.
Yeah, it's really cool.
It's
really competitive.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You ever play botchy Belgium?
I don't think so.
Is
No, you throw it.
It's a bunch of balls, different size balls.
No.
Oh.
And you have
the one ball you got to get closest to.
You throw that one out and no.
fun.
It's almost like a shuffle ball with balls.
Is it
not croquet.
Do you have my wicket?
No, the
Donna, that is not
Okay.
Well, you can play it on any kind of lay of the land.
And it's got your ball.
But it's more fun if it's a little bit more of it.
Yes, exactly.
play, you know, how the balls play the role, play the hill, play the whole thing.
OK.
many, we're almost two years into the show, the first I've ever heard.
So what do you think
of Croquet?
I just wanna know.
I don't know if I've ever played it.
That hurts.
right, all right, okay.
How about Polo?
Okay.
Wow.
Wow.
I wanna know, Textress, who plays Croquet and what's the last time you played Croquet?
How do they text us, Todd?
I wanna read this one.
surprised.
Yeah, we'll be surprised.
You bet.
or no?
Yes.
Or no.
game.
Yeah, absolutely.
By the way, we're going to throw this out there.
Text in came in.
The Freedom Freefall.
We're talking about the Veterans Freefall in Amro.
But this weekend, it's in Pulaski.
Vinny just texted.
Oh, that's right.
So thank you for that.
It's in Pulaski this weekend.
The Freedom Freefall, which is a great thing.
to help bring awareness to veteran suicide.
There's
that.
I get asked that a lot.
I bet you do.
But, you know, since we've opened up, there's actually been other spots that have opened up through the valley here.
I mean, you got a place in.
Up in Appleton, there's a place up in Green Bay, the Pickler.
And I've heard about some of those coming to also Appleton.
The Pickler is very popular across the country.
So you're seeing more and more pop up, which I mean, part of the reason I did it here was because there was really nowhere besides like a Y setting, you know.
So the idea of
expanding into a spot that already has places.
It's hard enough doing it when nobody else is doing it, let alone people.
Give a little
bit about your background though, as far as Jeff, when you decided to make this leap, I mean, you've always been into sports and physical fitness.
I mean, your personal accolades, all American and track and football and all these kind of things.
And how did you take that athlete and turn it into this?
Well, I'm an idiot.
And I thought, oh, let's do another business.
Now, I've ran a small business for 15 years now, a jet fitness here in town, and really enjoyed playing pickleball.
Like we talked about last time where I started during COVID, it just gave you something to kind of look forward to every day.
So it was good for physical health, but also mental health.
And I was like, you know what?
More people need this.
to look forward to something that's actually healthy, that's addicting.
There's not too many of those.
And think about
the other part.
So it's not like golf where you have to take 127 lessons and pay 100 bucks every time you go out.
It's not like tennis, which can be really got the whole big court and you got the whatever, whatever.
You know what I mean?
It's
a
type of thing where it's really user friendly.
Very, very.
And that's another reason why it's so popular.
Yeah.
So with all that being said, I was like, you know the demand is growing so much and the supply just isn't here Especially like high Like really high level cords that are just super nice and nice gnats and all that, you know, and so I looked for about a year Just because you want to find a nice spot to you know, make sure it's it's fun to be at it's a good absolutely those type of things so
Once I found it it was you know, then it was just a matter of Construction and getting it how it needed to be at putting in a bar, you know just for the you know bonus afterwards And
gives more opportunities to rent it out for other things though, too, right exactly.
It's a great idea and it's a very social sport So people get done playing pickleball and they don't just go home They sit around and they shoot the breeze and you know that it's it's it's a very very social sport then
Another reason why it's so popular, you know,
absolutely
Absolutely,
everybody where you are and what you do my
man, uh
2211 Oregon Street, unit Z, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Pickle and Bags.
Come on down, have some fun.
Graduation parties, bachelorette parties, the whole thing.
The
50-year-old birthday parties.
Very,
very nice venue for multiple things.
My
And we get Justin Schmitt there as the adult dancer.
Oh, there you go.
That's right, he's Schmitt's friend.
Let's
It's always great having you on.
Thanks for being here, man.
We love coming down.
Thank you, fellas.
I appreciate
it.
I'm looking forward to it.
We'll
be
there.
Thanks, buddy.
Thanks
Back after this.
of the mayor coming your way for the beautiful offices in downtown Oshkosh at WISS.
It is Trucker Thursday.
Special thanks to Jeff Erky Pickle and Bags.
We're going to be stopping over at his place, 2211 Oregon Street in Oshkosh.
Special thanks to Justin Schmick, Schmick Freeman Insurance, Kate Steele and Bill Wyman, Oshkosh Area Community Foundation, Mike Dempsey, Waterfest in Oshkosh, and we've got some more great guests coming up.
Also, I want to say that our poll, our poll, croquet, yes or no, we've got no, 85%.
We've got yes, 10%.
And we've got big fat, no, 5%.
So we got for a croquet so far.
Yeah, I don't know.
I'll tell you why, John.
We did.
Not
Actually, I will say this.
Super
Um, there's collectors old, really old croquet sets or like a collector's item.
Yeah.
Because they're really old with the old wooden.
Balls and stuff.
I remember seeing a set around.
Oh,
Yeah, absolutely.
Lawn.
That was right in my air in the 70s.
Yeah, that's that was.
That's amazing that got on the market.
I know, right?
and just at launchers.
Some of them are drinking their head.
they put on those
come down.
And they impale your head.
Right.
Written your skull.
They did.
off the market.
I know, right?
Well, you know, the other
And
metal,
like plastic.
Yeah, no.
Those things were heavy.
And they were weighted.
Yeah.
The other thing that were dangerous was the slip and slide.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
One of those
Right.
Did you still
Absolutely.
Well, I've got that scar on my knee from the Lazy River at the Dells.
River.
And she's
She's seen it before, though, didn't she?
No, no, no, not that, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
And it's this little general store.
Wow.
And it's the greatest.
When you walk in, it smells so delicious from these fresh baked pasties they have in there.
It's unbelievable.
And I tell people, there's a slice of the UP that ought train area around municing.
It is the most beautiful place in the Midwest without question.
It's like a bigger Nechoto Beach.
Nice.
I feel like 10 times the size of Nechoto Beach.
and you can walk out to Lake Superior for like a hundred feet.
It's unbelievable how beautiful that area is up around Autrain, Michigan.
If anybody ever thinks about where can I go for a, you know, more than a weekend, like a four day vacation type of thing.
Autrain, A-U-T-R-A-I.
a lot of
French Canadians up there.
They were all the
No, no.
Different parts of the U.P.
are all like anywhere near the water.
It's a lot of Native American and French Canadian for all the fishing, commercial fishermen.
That makes sense.
So, Sault Ste.
Marie, Escanaba, Launce, Barriga, Munising, those are all French Canadians.
Yeah.
So, in the mining area, it's all Italians and Finns.
In fact, there's a lot of towns up there.
I bet our 90, at least used to be 90% Finnish because all the Finns used to come over, which was great.
Cool.
So, yep.
We got a very special guest coming up in a couple of minutes, ladies and gentlemen.
Talk a little bit about our veteran saluta that we always have with one of our great sponsors.
yeah.
And Nate
you
check that out.
Just to watch.
Absolutely.
I mean, if you don't jump, it doesn't matter.
No, no, right.
Exactly.
So watch that, and they do all tandem.
And the one time, the very first year we had it, and it was in Pulaski, I believe, that year,
had a guy that the last time he had jumped out of an airplane was on D-Day.
Wow.
D-Day.
And he came back.
And he did it again.
How cool is that?
They had Korean War vets, a lot of Vietnam vets, a lot of Iraq, Afghanistan vets that take part in it.
But it's all tandem.
Really, it was that?
That's unbelievable.
It's so cool.
It's great.
It's a wonderful organization.
And I've talked a little bit about how that all started with a young lady, a great friend of mine.
where she took up skydiving and she used that to help guys with posture and women with post traumatic stress.
So really, really cool thing.
And if I didn't have an artificial hip and a back problem and stuff, you've been doing it
Absolutely.
I want
So that'll
Great.
Well, we've got a gentleman coming up here, Mike Robinson from Oshkosh, just a few minutes.
I'm halfway through his story for writing it for my book.
And it's just, it's unbelievable.
I mean, I've heard so many different experiences in wars from, you know, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, everywhere.
But his story is one of the most unique I've ever experienced in my entire life telling these stories.
And we've got Mike coming on in just a minute.
It's our veteran spotlight.
Yep.
Brought to you by Olsen legal group and we're going to give him a nice welcome
Hey, Michael, you just lost some credibility.
Michael, we know Johnny.
esteem until just now, Michael.
In the club.
Just now.
We guess they're a quick break.
We'll be back with our veteran spotlight right
after this.
When a long came a semi with the high and can was covered low Hey,
welcome back.
I'm under the
mayor coming away from the WSS
studios in downtown Oshkosh on trucker thirst and a little jottie cash
taking us into one of our favorite segments actually my favorite segment of the entire week our veteran spotlight who's it brought to you by Todd Olson legal group in Berlin and Oshkosh just down the block from us in a beautiful location a fire station built in like 1910 it's fantastic a very good friend of mine right now a Vietnam vet Mike Robinson joining us and Mike tell you what
You talking with you again a little bit later and then for my book and your experiences in Vietnam.
And when you walked in and I told the guys here, it's like, Mike, how in the world are you sitting here with us right now?
Because knowing your story, it's almost a miracle that you're alive.
And I don't throw that out there loosely.
Wouldn't you agree?
Oh, I would definitely agree with that.
As a matter of fact, you know, when the one grenade did.
Popped on over and it was three feet away from me and I couldn't reach it and it didn't go off But I did get hit on that operation But not seriously.
So, you know, you got to remember that The NVA we were in a triple canopy jungle and the NVA did completely surround us without us knowing it after the first initial ambush so KC Kevin Cahill
which is a super great Marine.
Lieutenant Nelson was carrying him and then he got hit for the third time, Lieutenant Nelson did.
But KC, he did get killed and he was our point man.
Pretty much a miracle that anybody came out of that alive.
And then like fast forward, if Delta caught money when it got to us when we did,
Even five minutes later Charlie company and I wouldn't be here today.
I
mean you guys already talked to yourselves.
Let's save one bullet for ourselves, right?
Well, I don't think any one of the Marines would have killed themselves Well, one of the guys in the book that talked about that.
It's like he wasn't gonna be taking so what if you when you read the blog you guys were out of ammunition We were we were odd.
I'm just let me back up.
They were on it.
They were on a patrol.
They had to get to a destination.
They got
heavy pressure from one of the higher up officers who wasn't there to see what you guys were facing.
The NBA had it planned incredibly well, had you on all sides.
These guys were walking along, all of a sudden the NBA's above them dropping hand grenades right down on top of them.
These guys could not even see them to fight back, battle went on and on.
basically were down to their last couple of rounds of ammunition and to the point where they started singing the Marine Hymn just for inspiration and started throwing rocks at the NBA hoping the NBA thought they were grenades and would back off.
Go ahead, Mike.
Yes, and that was Lieutenant Jack Ruffer that started singing the Marine Corps Hymn and this is
we were getting our butts kicked and you know it was a pretty amazing that all of a sudden that song at the time the Marine Corps hymn got louder and louder and this is over the gunfire this is over the grenades that are dropping on top of us and we couldn't figure out how they were so accurate with the grenades but what they did is they tied themselves to the trees and the trees
you couldn't even see the sky.
That's how the triple canopy jungle was.
You just couldn't see the sky.
So that's how they were so accurate with their grenades.
And then like I say, you know, when he was singing Marine Corps, him, it got louder and louder.
Now, can you imagine what the NBA is thinking at this time?
And because they're very well trained.
So it was a pretty much a miracle that
We even survived that.
And then, like I say, after the initial ambush, we sent out helicopters.
We had helicopters come in, but we had to blow trees down.
And then when the first one of the helicopters came in, there was this one tree in the way, and he took his tail, and it's just a perfect hit, and he knocked the tree over.
Otherwise,
they couldn't have gotten out the
wounded or bring in
ammo, right?
Right.
And they could not land because of the stumps.
And so then just as the last helicopter was taken off, this was about dusk.
That's when the second ambush or the second time that they attacked us happened.
And the rest is history.
Like I say, it was a pretty dramatic you can from the book, I imagine you can
It puts tears in your eyes and it gave me nightmares.
I'm not even joking about
it.
I'm not sure if
you still have after
you tell me
that story.
I had dreams that night.
I bet you do.
That's just a couple of how many people were there?
184 men was in Charlie company.
I think there was like 25 that came out.
little
all the time.
Matter of fact, I go to two groups.
I go one in Green Bay at the vet center and one here in Oshkosh and that's run by the vet center in Green Bay.
So that's the only way.
And then I went to Tomah because I didn't want to live anymore.
We'll put it that way.
I won't say I didn't want to live anymore.
And then finally, the vet center says, well, you're going to Tomah.
So I went to Toma for 10 weeks in 2014 and that basically saved my life.
You know, Mike,
I had a friend
that Marine
Vietnam horrible, horrible situation.
He's got I want to put you in touch with by the way, we're going to get together with this.
But he went to Toma for six months.
He didn't say a word.
He just sat and listened.
And then he decided to open up.
And that just shows how tough of a nut it is to crack
gentlemen like
yourself.
It
is.
It takes.
Not not months years and and you know, you never really get over it.
So you're never gonna quit having the dreams and then you're never gonna I Wouldn't say fighting a battle, but you have to deal with it and and that's what we do So in the middle of the night if I have a really bad one where I I feel rather uncomfortable.
I'll call somebody from our group Support group.
Yes
The support group, you know, like sure from from the groups that I go to and boy they listen So,
you know, you know my guy get another good friend who was up around the rock pile, you know or the rock
we was at the rock pile Yeah, we was also the rock pile.
We also got into a battle there and in Kantien we got in a battle where actually Kantien we was out outside the wire and we were The difference between Kantien and case on is that kind
you got hit every day.
But we were outside the wire and the NBA had us pinned down and we had to call in an airstrike on our own position.
But it's one of those things too where around the 4th of July he has to leave and go up to his cabin up around Crandon because he can't deal with the fireworks.
Yes, yes.
Do you deal with that too sometimes?
Yeah, I do that all the time.
It's very hard to deal with fireworks or anything like that.
As a matter of fact, I can remember when I first got back, I'm driving down Grand River, which is a lot of lanes in the highway.
In Detroit.
In Detroit, yeah.
And so there's some car backfired, apparently.
And I thought it was a gunshot, and I was on the floor of the car.
Then I realized that I'm not a nom, and I almost hit a tree.
I came two inches from hitting this tree because it was in middle.
They had an island in the middle of the road.
So, you know, it is what it is.
And not only that, but I've done that many times just walking into the store.
And I have a hard time adjusting with people walking behind me.
It's just because just all of a sudden it strikes you that the enemy is behind you.
You know, my counselor said I'm not supposed to call them gooks anymore.
Well, let me ask you this though, Mike, we're talked a little bit about, you know, we talked about the Marines and all their training and everything like that.
And sometimes you wouldn't think it's the most gung-ho hardcore guy that would do something unbelievably heroic.
Talk about the photojournalist, the Marine photojournalist and what he did that was with you.
Yes.
That was Bill Perkins.
Bill Perkins was a photographer and he's the only photographer in any service and anywhere in any service that got the Medal of Honor and what he did is that like one of them grenades that was coming out from the trees landed in between these three and four Marines and Lieutenant, I mean Lieutenant.
Perkins corporal Perkins jumped on the grenade and literally his body just went you know up into the air about three feet and back down and To this day it was he saved all them Marines around him.
It was like just a miracle gave his life gave his life and they and the the funny part was is that
knew him and we talked and you know we always used to kid around you know well what is a how's this this Marine gonna shoot with a camera with the camera you know but he did photograph some of the events of that you know when we were first going into the jungle and there's he did do that and
And the amazing thing was is that somebody was smart enough to pick his camera up.
And there was actual footage on the camera that was saveable.
And it had bullet holes like galore on the camera.
So, pretty amazing Marine.
It is.
I mean, I
point.
I there's times that I don't leave the house.
You know, I struggle and then So then I'll either you know, sometimes I even have to call my counselor like I'll give you an example.
I May say kind of corny through you guys, but
What happened is that my daughter's dog, a big black Labrador died.
Well, when I took that dog in, I'm thinking he's a Marine.
Yeah.
And then I told her, I says, when you put this dog down, I can't be there.
It's like it shoots through my head and I have these flashbacks like that's a Marine that's dying.
And how am I going to save him?
You know, because when you're over there, what's the most important thing?
the Marine next to you.
You're not thinking about the glorious trying to save the USA or anything else.
You're fighting for the Marine next to you, and he's fighting for you.
And then when you lose that Marine next to you, then of course, you don't have time to grieve.
You have to move on.
But it is very hard.
It's very hard to adjust to stuff like that.
I talked about it in group yesterday about what happened and how bad it got for me.
And it sounds corny, but it's very true, you know, so you gotta put it in perspective.
When you did have one friend that even after you came back,
you
tried to help.
Yes.
As a matter of fact, uh, yeah, I didn't even get into that.
We just had a Marine that passed away and he was on Medina and he got severely wounded on Medina.
And so that Marine, George Bowles, this was just a couple, just last, what, about less than a month ago.
I went to Waterford, Michigan, and they did the funeral.
He got buried at Great Lakes National Cemetery.
And he was decked out.
He had on his Just Blues.
He wanted that.
I left a Marine Challenge coin in his coffin.
And then they had like a drawer that you could put it in.
But this Marine was really, really good.
Yes, and
our quick break.
Stay with us.
OK, Mike?
All right.
Mike Robinson, incredible Marine Vietnam veteran.
Back after
this.
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listening to Civic Media.
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Hey, welcome back might know the mayor here on trucker Thursday coming away from the WSS studios in downtown Oshkosh WSS is where you find your Milwaukee Brewers tonight taking on those hated
Can I use where it hated?
St.
Louis Cardinals, 6-0-5 on WISS right here.
We're with a very special friend, Mike Robinson, on our slow to veteran segment brought to by Olsen Legal Group right here in Oshkosh and Berlin.
And Mike, you're telling some amazing stories and traumatic stories and all that.
But what's one of the things in regards to it and not to brand all the Vietnam vets together?
Because I think the media back in the day did a horrific job at painting everybody with that same brush.
But what would you like as a representative of the Vietnam vets?
non-veterans who amazingly survived, what would you like to get out to the people?
Well, just got to remember for one thing, anybody that fought in a battle, whether you were a, like, corpsman, medic, army has medics, you worked, I mean, you were a team, you worked together as a team.
You didn't work as an individual.
You never worked as an individual.
So everybody had to work as a team.
You never, you never left anybody behind.
I mean, we would lose lives to Marines to save another Marine.
And we even, even on Medina, we had to stay there an extra night because there was so much equipment and then we had to blow it all up the next day.
So, and then we lost a couple more or actually three more.
Marines the next night.
So that's the way you look at things.
But what's when you look back in this now, can you say, do you ever sit yourself?
How did I do that?
How in the
world did I do that?
Oh, yes, I, I, it's gone over my mind and probably a million times on how I ever survived.
You got to realize that I was a third platoon radio man, we were the, for the whole battalion, we were the lead platoon.
The lead I mean the lead company the lead platoon and the lead squad for the whole battalion So I was about the seventh Marine back or whatever and I'm right behind Lieutenant Nelson And what is the first thing that the NV takes out the radio man radio man, so you know cancel the communication get so out the communication so you know Yeah, there there's
It's incredible.
And, you know, even Casey, when we was going up that trail, he says, nah, this is bad.
He had some really bad vibes.
And he says, and they ordered us to go up that trail.
And we knew that it was very well traveled.
And then, you know, that's his history.
And you know
what?
You're talking about some of that Casey, just a good young kid.
And you see, you know, you think the movies always do it.
Hollywood doesn't miss justice.
to you guys, because they always have someone like a John Wayne, somebody 45 years old, who in real life would be 19 years old.
And the pictures of that Casey, young kid with freckles who looks like he should be, you know, maybe a freshman in college at the most, right?
Right, right, right, right.
And that's who the Marines were, these
really young kids.
I was a young kid there.
And you know, you'll grow up really fast.
And of course,
And if anybody ever tells you you're not scared to death, well, they wasn't in NAMM because we were scared to death every moment that we were there.
But you didn't have, you got to realize that when somebody got killed, you didn't have time to mourn.
You had to move on and save the next Marine.
You had to move on and take the orders as they come through.
And naturally, when you're in a real battle,
You don't get any orders.
You just gotta fight the enemy.
And I mean, you can't realize how many enemy was in our position the next morning.
I mean, they were like literally right in front of us.
And they dragged some of the NBA off that we had killed.
And then in this one picture that they portrayed, all these two officers and a couple of non-coms were there and they're looking down at the ground.
Well, it was NVA that was in our, in our perimeter.
And they says, well, what are we going to do with this NVA?
And then we're, we're supposed to bury him.
Well, there's no place to bury him.
Yeah.
So tell them what you did.
We threw him over the cliff.
That took
Absolutely.
A hundred percent.
I mean, Marine Corps all the way, baby.
Marines love Marines.
You know, it's just our greatest honor ever to wear that Marine Corps uniform.
And then, yes, I would recommend it because you not only because now you're at your as
You're, you're learning how to work together as a team instead of the name of the angel.
Do you not agree that you can accomplish a lot more with it?
Why be a you when you can be a team,
right?
And you, you said something a little bit earlier.
It's not the battle.
It's not the, you know, the politicians.
It's not the generals.
It's not the whomever.
It's that guy next to you, that guy
you
left and that guy in your right.
That's who you're fighting for.
Right.
Right.
And you gotta remember, you become numb of all the horror that you have witnessed.
You become numb of that.
And think about that for a second, man.
I mean, all these years, do you think it gets any better?
No.
But you have to learn how to, let's say, cope with it, or deal with it.
And that's why I go to group.
And if I didn't go to group and I didn't hear these stories from these other people, whether you were Army Marines or Air Force, whatever, what service you're in, they basically are saved my life because otherwise I'd be six foot under right now.
So you guys are still taking care of the guy on your left and the guy on
your right?
That's right.
Mike
Robinson, it's an honor that you're allowing me to tell your story in my next book and I look forward to talking to you again this afternoon.
Thank you for being here and
Man.
Gratitude isn't the right word for it and appreciation and just admiration.
Yeah.
Thanks for your doing.
You're incredible.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you, buddy.
All right.
Well, we're out of time.
Todd, thanks for having us down here.
They're beautiful.
What?
W.I.S.S.
Studios.
Yes.
And our girl Lisa Hale has been quiet today, huh?
Imagine that.
Imagine that.
That's unbelievable.
All right.
We got to go, everybody.
We're back into our morning back in Green Bay.
Might on the mare.
See ya.
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