The Boone Show
The Boone Show
The Boone Show - S6 E10 - John Benca, Anderson County Auditor, McGee's Irish Pub Owner
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We sit down with John Benca to trace a life that bridges public service and hospitality, from a physics degree and restaurant openings to the Anderson County auditor’s office and a downtown pub that survived downturns and storms. The story crescendos with adopting Sam, a family choice that reframes work, legacy, and leadership.
• education in Georgia and early career moves
• opening McGee’s Irish Pub and shaping a menu
• how property taxes work locally in South Carolina
• running an auditor’s office with integrity and service
• cross-training, staffing, and standards in teams
• resilience through recessions, tornadoes, and a pandemic
• the adoption journey and talking to a child about it
• Sam’s YouTube channel and family traditions
• favorite dishes, sourcing, and shrimp-and-grits tips
• leadership principles without micromanaging
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Thanks for listening! Direct all inquiries to jboone@mypulseradio.com.
Hey everybody, welcome again to the Boon Show on MyPulse Radio. I'm John Boone, the boss lady. Holly Harrell is here.
SPEAKER_11:Hey, good evening.
SPEAKER_03:Good to have you. Um Danica's here. Rattling, rattling into her seat over there. But uh she's here to assist. We appreciate that. And our special guest today is John Benka, known as uh a couple of different things in the Anderson County area.
SPEAKER_11:Different hats going on.
SPEAKER_03:He's uh an Anderson County auditor, which always scares me when auditors walk in.
SPEAKER_11:You hear them the word auditor.
SPEAKER_03:It's like uh but also he uh he owns McGee's Irish Pub, and we'll hear about uh both those jobs um coming up. Very very interesting uh combination there. Uh so John, how are you? Thanks for coming in. Great, thanks for having me. Uh happy Tuesday. Yes. Yeah. Tell us about um kind of uh you sent me a bio earlier about your your education history and and just kind of how you evolved into uh the jobs you have today.
SPEAKER_09:Well, it's um it's a long story, but I'll give you the abridged version. Okay. Uh I was born, I went to school, I got out of school and got a job.
SPEAKER_11:That's a good way to do it in South Carolina.
SPEAKER_09:You grew up in Georgia? My dad was a yeah, what my dad was a career army uh engineer, and um that's how I and because of that I wanted to be like my dad. So I said, one day I'm gonna be an engineer too. So um, of course, uh being the oldest of four kids, anything that was needing fixing, he did, and I had to hand him tools and hold flashlights, and eventually I was like, well, I can do this myself. But um he retired in Atlanta when I was in sixth grade, so that was his last tour of duty, and I went to middle school, high school, and started at Georgia Tech there on a Navy RTC scholarship. And that lasted about as long as Georgia Tech and I had a major disagreement on my academic prowess, and my parents had taken jobs uh with the University of Georgia, so I was encouraged strongly to follow them there and continue my education, which I did. I did, yeah, with the complete intention of going back to Georgia Tech for a second beating. Um it's a tough school, it's a very demanding curriculum. And um, if you're not prepared for that coming out of high school, where you're at the top of your class here, you're not necessarily at the top there. So um a lot more work involved. I did well, I just didn't do well enough, really for my standards, and and barely made the minimum for there. So Georgia, I I decided to go um pursue a Bachelor of Science in Physics, mainly because that's the one degree that every engineering discipline falls under in some capacity. And I it gave me the opportunity to decide if I want to go back to Georgia Tech or pursue a graduate degree. I've got a lot more options. So um that was my intent. Finished that, worked my way through school a couple of different jobs, restaurants mainly, uh, preventive maintenance for the University of Georgia over the summers. Uh that got me into athletic facilities, really just fixing air conditioners and and getting close to the athletes, but not actually being allowed to talk to them. And then uh, and that's where I met my wife. And I started graduate school actually in uh agricultural engineering.
SPEAKER_11:So you finished your bachelor's in physics?
SPEAKER_09:Kept going. Kept going. Yeah, on my dime, because my dad insisted either you get a scholarship or you're paying for it. So that's one of the reasons I had to work through school. And I met my wife um uh one of those opportunities where you're really not, nah, I'm gonna focus on my studies, and girls can take a backseat to that until a buddy encouraged me to go out one night, and I'm like, okay, fine. And um, I met her at this place called O'Malley's. And it's uh it was uh it's not there anymore, but at that time it was the the most popular dance club to go to, and I like to dance, so um, we met and talked because she was in the same situation. Her friends drug her out that night, and both of us didn't really want to do any of this, but they paid our cover charge. So for five dollars, uh you met your wife serendipitously, met my wife, and we I I I like to think we struck it off really well right away. Um and she she tells it a little bit differently. But um as the night wore on, I walked her back to her dorm room, and then the next day we got snowed in at Georgia, and I thought, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna call her up and see if she wants to go. Yeah, yeah, we'll we'll do something, grab coffee or something. And um I she didn't give me her phone number, and I searched my pants pockets and it was nowhere, and I'm like, what am I gonna do? So back in the day, they published phone books for the university of all the students. And so I sat down and opened it up and started, and I couldn't remember her last name, but I knew her first name was Dixie, and I thought to myself, how many Dixies could possibly be at the University of Georgia? Well, it would surprise you. There were at least seven by the time I got to the M's. And as our rotary dialed the previous six who hung up on me, she said, What? Oh, well, so uh we agreed to have a study date and went out, and um that that was that, you know. So that's funny.
SPEAKER_11:And how many years has that been?
SPEAKER_09:I call that pursuing and being persistent with that. Uh 36, 37 years. Wow.
unknown:Wow.
SPEAKER_09:So um and it was the 80s, and music was great, and Athens was a fun town to be in, and she was actually in home economics and switched to landscape architecture. But I found out uh shortly after we met that she was at Georgia Tech as well, just a year after after I had left. So and the same experience, that wasn't for her. So um you never know what brings people together, you know, uh what provides that opportunity.
SPEAKER_03:And a snowstorm in Georgia, though.
SPEAKER_09:And a snowstorm in Georgia.
SPEAKER_11:So what does your wife do now?
SPEAKER_09:Well, she's the general manager and executive chef at our restaurant. Which is the restaurant.
SPEAKER_03:I know.
SPEAKER_09:So that was um I would like to tell you that that was my lifelong dream, but frankly, it wasn't. Um I knew I had experience, plenty of experience in the restaurant business, having worked through it in school. But uh my first job out of out of uh college was at a local manufacturing facility. Because you got your degree in Yeah, they didn't hire me for that. Right. They didn't. I said, that's great and all, but really we hired you because you took German. Really?
SPEAKER_02:Oh wow.
SPEAKER_09:So I went uh okay. So they had a plant over in Switzerland that was making a product and they wanted to bring it to the United States. So they hired me part-time to translate the blueprints into English so we could build our own internal competition. How about that variable speed drive?
SPEAKER_11:So how long did you work there?
SPEAKER_09:Uh well that lasted about a year, and then they hired me on full-time. So I was there seven years.
SPEAKER_11:Okay. And from there?
SPEAKER_09:And from there, um, I decided that we were gonna need to move our family, which was just her and I, and I said if I stay with the company, it was breaking up at the time, um, I'd have to move to Des Moines, Iowa. And we both agreed that was a no-go. Uh since our families were here. And my wife's family is originally from Starr and have been working the same land since 1795. So post-revolution type of a thing. They weren't going anywhere is what I'm saying. Right. Right. And if we were gonna go anywhere, we were gonna end up there. So I figured, well, why not just not have a series of job hops and buying and selling homes, and was just move in with mom and dad. So that's what we did. And um the intention at that time was to continue my graduate studies at Clemson, and I did get accepted there. Um and then they had a budget crunch and cut out all the fellowships that year, and I was back on my own again. I'm like, well, I don't I don't know if I really want to pursue graduate school. I'd always had this idea of being in business for myself. My grandfather was, and my father-in-law was, and it was just the other thing you could do. Right. So um I took a series of sales jobs. Um not a series, really two of them, but the the the most fun one was selling car phones.
SPEAKER_03:Back in the day when you were giant. Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_09:Yeah, so they put me out there because I was I had done uh door-to-door sales in in college as well, and um they hired me to go ahead and be the outside sales guy and go to all the companies in the Seneca Clemson Pendleton area. And and so I did, and the first phone they gave me to sell was the old brick phone Michael Douglas had, and yeah, that movie.
SPEAKER_11:Wow.
SPEAKER_09:And then they just come out with the flip phone, the very first flip phone. So it was an exciting technological um time, it was an easy sell. Um, it was either that or pagers. Right. So everybody that had a pager all of a sudden wanted a phone. Yeah, and I did that for about a year and then decided I think I wanted to get back into doing something that's a little bit more fun. So they were building the Chili's restaurant on uh Clemson Boulevard, and the parking lot was graveled, and it said no hiring, and I pulled right in and said, You need a bartender. And they hired me on the spot. So I helped them open that store. My wife joined us there a couple months later because she was one of the best waitresses I'd ever worked with. And we made a great team there in the in the restaurant and opened up a few more around the southeast, and then I said, I can do this for myself. And that's either a great idea or a very bad one. And it depends on what you're getting into. So we just um knocked around a few ideas of what what was Anderson missing, what was it needing, um, what did we like? Was there any place around here that we like to go? Greenville was just kind of starting its renaissance in its downtown. And um, so that led us to to thinking about what type of restaurant we wanted to open, and then where are we gonna do it and start looking at properties. So that took about a year and putting together a business plan on really small salaries and wages and figuring out how to put together a down payment. But we did it and um it's been going strong. Now we're in our 29th year downtown in the same location. The building itself was um uh uh built in the in the 40s, late late 30s, early 40s, and it was originally a um sales place for case tractors, and then right after World War II, Jeep Willie's. And then it became the uh Sullivan and Buick Pontiac dealership until about 1978. And that's when he said, I'm moving out to Clemson Boulevard, Belvedere Plaza, and um Gerald Shore had a photography studio, moved it into the front half of that building, and his son Greg Shore, who's our coroner now, started his ambulance service out the back door. So um yeah, I we bought it in 1996, um, and the owner of the foundry in Steele um bought it from from Gerald. Yeah so at some point there was a newspaper printing shop in there as well. Um the Anderson Examiner, I think, for a little while. But it's uh it's a solid building, which is good, but you know, when you buy something old, you gotta make it new again. So we literally gutted the building and put in a restaurant that wasn't there. So that's a it was a big undertaking in a short period of time.
SPEAKER_11:But so how did you get from there to being an auditor?
SPEAKER_09:Yeah, that's um I had I'd actually run for county council in 2010 and 2012 almost successfully. And then decided for district one and decided now it's just I don't think I could do it again, and I'm not gonna run if the person that's actually in office is doing a good job. There's no point in doing it, and plus it's difficult to beat an incumbent. So I put I put that off and said, maybe maybe the State House one day or something like that, but I'll focus on my business, which is what we did. So um in 2021, uh I have a couple of customers that would come in and eat dinner and just bother me with the question, you think you're gonna run for office again someday? And I said, I don't know. And he said, you know, you might want to think about the auditor's position because he may retire. And I'm like, Well, what's that do? And he we talked about it, and he worked next door in the assessor's office. And so I said, Well, I'll consider that. I'll pick I'll pick his brand, I'll make an appointment and talk to Mr. Mr. Hunter and and see if if that's a shoe that fits. Because at that time I had my days free. We weren't doing lunches at the restaurant. Okay, and um I was at home with Sam, who was our son, who was two years old at the time, and I'm like, well, if I get him into a preschool program, I still have my days free. I need to do something productive, I just have to. And um unfortunately I didn't get the opportunity to talk to Mr. Hunter because he passed in early February.
SPEAKER_06:He did.
SPEAKER_09:And that was um big loss for the county. But I did in the meantime learn a lot about the job itself. Um so I filed in March and uh won my primary in June, and then was appointed by the governor first of July to take over and get started because you really can't work unless you're appointed to that. That's right. I would have had to wait to the following July first without his intervention. But to to John, to to answer your angstful question about auditors, uh I feel the same way. Being in business, I don't want to be audited. I've been through that one time and it's no fun, but that's not the job. The title is kind of uh it's an ancient holdover from really the 1920s, 1930s, when the offices were first established in the state to actually provide oversight for land management transactions to ensure that somebody wasn't owning a piece of property that wasn't theirs or paying taxes on a piece of property that they shouldn't have been. So, um, more or less it was designed to be an oversight function and then work in conjunction with your treasurer, and in our building is on one side, and the next office is the assessor's office. So anything that's real estate connected in Anderson County begins and ends in that building. So when you sell a property or buy a property, you get a deed for it, it's recorded in the Register of Deeds office, and then it goes electronically down to the assessor's office, and he puts a value on that. Or I sold it for$120,000, that's the new basis for it. And then that creates a property tax record that gets transmitted to my office once a year. So we collect all of that information from him as a value. I assign the millages to it, and basically we become the billing department for local government. And then you pay that bill next door at the treasurer's office, so he's the collections department. And um it's like in business, nothing happens until you make a sale. It can't. And in local government, nothing happens until a bill's created. Right. So hopefully people will pay them.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_09:Um but that's that's essentially a job in a nutshell. So Bob handles anything real estate, and I'm talking about Mr. McLean, um, real estate connected. Everything else that's personal property is also subject to tax in South Carolina, and that includes cars, trucks, boats, planes, uh mobile homes, uh, or rather motor homes, uh, business personal property, manufacturing property, manufacturing personal property, utilities, railroads, and I'm probably missing something else. But there's a lot more to that that we bill. If we don't do it monthly, most of those are annual bills that go out. Why that's important, that has to be accurate. It has to reflect the millage for that particular district that that person is either residing in or the property is located. And then um it's very regulated by state code. There's on there's some things we can do and some things we can't do. There's not a lot of latitude, it's either late or it's not, so pay on time or pay early. Um but really it makes me the most um at times uh disliked person in in all of Anderson County. But I'm fortunate that I have 45 other auditors that you know we can commiserate about that a couple times a year. Um so my name is on your bill. Uh my contact information is there. If it's not correct, of course we'll we'll be happy to fix it and make it right. Um human error is still a part of our process, but it's a process and it's something that uh, you know, if I'm not there tomorrow, it still has to continue. You know, somebody has to do that job, the wheels or the wheels come off. So elections are are important things to making sure that the process of government continues. And um we could probably, you know, if you open up the phone lines and take 10 phone calls, you'd have 10 different opinions about maybe what isn't right about what we're doing with it, but at least you have the confidence to know that the process is honestly run. We put a lot of integrity and pride into that. And our number one goal is 100% uh customer service. It's a customer service-driven job at the front windows. So um you might imagine um it takes a certain kind of person that can say that can handle different personality types and different emotions. Um but it doesn't necessarily have to get to that point where our goal is to to fit if there's a problem, let's let's work with the taxpayer on how to fix it. Um the other part of that job is legislative. And one thing that um I've found is I knew less about local government than I thought I did. And I paid attention to politics most of my life. But you know, you've got you've got the national budget and you've got the national politics of it at the state level. But at the local level, anything that we're doing with Ad Valorum or or value added property value tax is it's levied locally, it's collected locally, and it's spent locally. So none of that goes, none of that that we collect here goes to the to the state in any way, shape, or form. Or or anywhere outside of where it's allocated specifically in the budgets that your school board, your county council, your city council, your town councils, they they decide what you're saying. So it's I'm a numbers guy, so it fit me in the customer service business, so that did as well too. Um I like working with people and I've got a fantastic office. Um I've got 28 employees in you know, seven days a week, and I've got 12 awesome professionals the other five days a week who were there before I got elected, and we're out they're actually doing the work of running that office. But uh you have to have a good right-hand person, and I do. And um one of the things I noticed right away, because I'm not a let's just clean house, that was a question that did come up. Are you gonna fire us all? No. And bring in your own people. I'm like, I don't I don't have people. Um and then um let's work with what we got and see if if we have opportunities for improvement. Let's focus on those. Otherwise, if it's not broken, let's not fix it. But one of the things that was glaringly obvious to me, um, being in business, noticing that you you know this this person only knows how to do this, and nobody else has to know how to do what she does. Well, that's no good. Because if she goes on vacation, somebody's got to backfill that. So we began um and and are still doing it continuously now is cross-training.
SPEAKER_03:All right. Great explanation. Now we know we know. Uh, when we come back, much more with John Banka. We'll be talking about uh McGee's Irish Pub some more and his media star son. Look at his story uh coming up. It's the Boone Show on My Falls Radio.
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SPEAKER_03:Welcome back to the Moon Show on MyPulse Radio. Our special guest tonight, John Benka, and he is the owner of McGee's Irish pub. Been there a long time. Yes, it has. And you know, I've never been there. I've gone by it a hundred times and I've never stopped in. But now I I have to. Yeah, I am smiling at you.
SPEAKER_09:Inside I'm saying, I hear that a lot.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, really? Oh, good. Because uh I want to stop by because I I was reading about the menu and it's like, yeah, that sounds like a lot of stuff I like.
SPEAKER_11:Yep.
SPEAKER_03:But I just haven't, for whatever reason, have never stopped in before. Um, so you told us about some of the history, that that building that has just about every kind of business has been in there at one time or another. Um, the name comes from your wife, right? That's her maiden name, yes. Maiden name McGee.
SPEAKER_11:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:That is talk about a country name now. Come on, Dixie McGee.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it was she's a country girl, isn't she? She is. Yeah. Um, and how did she be? In a good way. Um, hey, I married a country girl too. I know what you're talking about. Um, but you said she had, you know, um, what was it? Uh lawn what was her degree? Landscape architecture. Landscape architecture, that's right. But now she's the chef at uh at the restaurant. How did that come about?
SPEAKER_09:Well, it we it it was actually well, we had a third partner uh originally um for about a year and a half, and we're still friends, but it was what do you want to do? Well, I'll do this, and okay, well, I'll do that. No, I was a numbers guy, so I said I'll do the bookkeeping and um we'll split the bartending duties and then we'll all rotate. But after a few weeks, it got to the point where somebody really has to focus on what happens in the kitchen. She says, I'll just do that because honestly, I'm not as good out front. Or I'd rather not, if unless I have to. Now, don't get me wrong, she's got a great dynamic, outgoing personality when but but it's it's not what she wants to do.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_09:So let's gravitate to the things that were were strongest and kind of go from there. What what she does now is it fulfills a bit of her creative side. So she hasn't lost that opportunity. I mean, when I met her, she was designing ball gowns and things like this, and that's just I'll design it, I'll do this, and that's what I'll wear in that pageant, you know, that kind of thing. So um with aspirations of going to New York and going to one of the fashion houses. And I'd like to tell people that I didn't dissuade her from that, or she just didn't have you know a taste for that anymore. She's got other outlets to be able to be creative with now. Um so that from a culinary standpoint, I mean, the world is essentially your oyster. You just pick the ingredients and then figure out something to do with them. Or I'd like to say anybody can follow a recipe, but they really can't. And um creating something from scratch and have it taste good, look good, and have somebody want to come back and try that again is a is a great deal of joy and satisfaction in that. So uh she took it upon herself, like she does everything. If she wants to go ahead and learn something, she just dives in a hundred percent and just it's immersion, learning by immersion. And that led to well, if we're gonna go eat someplace, we should eat someplace we're gonna learn something at. So almost every time we go out to eat is an RD trip. You know, if we go out of the country, which we do from time to time, um, it's with purpose. You know, so we line something up or find we we get restaurants at a uh reservations at a restaurant with a set chef that we want to meet or try their cooking. Not with the net necessarily the idea of coming back and then putting that on our menu, but learning a technique. It's all about technique and feel and touch and smell and sound. It's really uh all senses on deck type of an opportunity if you're gonna be a chef. Um so you've got chefs that manage restaurants, you've got chefs that actually manage restaurants and cook in restaurants, and she's very hands-on, but along the way, she developed systems that make our restaurant run profitably and our kitchen run well and efficiently. So it's allowed me to be able to focus on the other stuff. The other thing that she does do for us is our social media and our marketing, and it's you know, she's not doing that, she's sitting down there, like, what event do we have to come up with next, you know? And believe it or not, we're already talking about St. Patrick's Day and have been for a month now. Oh yeah. Um, so it's a it's a one-off um once-a-year thing that can last an entire weekend like it did last year. But um after it's uh all said and done, and 2,000 people have left your building, you're like, oh, I can't wait to just get back and cook a order of fish and chips as far. Get back to normal. But it's it's not why we did it. Um she's Scot Irish, and um most of the heritage of this part of North of South Carolina and North Carolina's Scott-Irish by descent. And that's different than Irish, and it's different than a 100% Scotsman. And no, it's not a mashup of the two. It's actually a group of people who migrated from Scotland to Ireland to Northern Ireland, and then from Northern Ireland to the United States when it was a con when they were colonies, and then migrated down through the Appalachian Mountains and up from Charleston into this part of Appalachian in the foothills. So a lot of the names, if you open up, if you had a phone book to open up, you'd see the Murphy's and the McGee's and the O'Malley's and the, you know, it's it's quite I think I'm Irish, is what I hear a lot.
SPEAKER_02:My mom tells me I am.
SPEAKER_09:But Irish cooking's very much home cooking. Um, and we've been to Ireland several times and I'm like, yeah, we we're doing it right, but we're doing it like our grandparents cooked. Like Irish stew is not Irish stew everywhere you get it, or shepherd's pie certainly isn't, but fish and chips is probably The thing that keeps the roof on our over our head.
SPEAKER_11:Your shrimp and grits are on spot.
SPEAKER_09:You see, that's why I have to go secret lunch. And I'll tell you that probably the biggest secret to that is the grits themselves. Do you do local grits? Um sometimes we do. We use so much of it. We've done Tim's Mills. But um so when we can we do. Um and we source uh products from local farmers. Um we get beef from one of her cousins who's got uh an Angus farm and uh short horns, and we'll get a cow or two a year, which is a lot of meat, and getting specific cuts, then we'll use those for featured specials for for beef because we're a meat and potatoes country. That's right, and this is a meat and potatoes county. Yeah, so everything on our menu is not just Irish. We have what we call the big five that have to be on any Irish pub menu anywhere in America. And um, so we have those, and that includes the Shepherd's pie fish and chips, the Irish stew, bangers and mash. Um so those and then beef, I would assume, too. Corn beef and cabbage.
SPEAKER_10:I never get anything but a shrimp and grass, just saying. But then uh we have oh they do have these chips with uh um stuff on top of them, um like cheese and yeah, the the loaded cheddar. Okay, that's it.
SPEAKER_09:We have things that aren't good for you too. Yes, those two. But we do offer vegetarian options and gluten-free options and things like that. We've evolved as the culinary landscape has, and um, she's been front and center with with making sure that we're approachable to people that may have certain allergy or diet dietary.
SPEAKER_08:Um I've seen some of the reviews, uh, some were complaining about not many drink options options. Have y'all changed any of that?
SPEAKER_09:Wow, Danica, because that's a first for me, but uh well, understand when when when we opened, um the only other Irish pub in the entire state was down in Charleston. And uh I called those guys up and said, Hey, I need to get Guinness. I'm thinking about opening an upper Irish pub here. And it took me a year to get the contact and get them to believe that this was happening to actually get Guinness beer out of Charleston and up to the upstate. So we started with Guinness and Bass and a couple of other um Irish and British um offerings, and then the domestic things, because that's what people were doing at that time. We didn't have to be a whole lot of flavors, but we've grown our whiskey selection, we've grown our um the beer selection to 17 taps, and for a while there we had the most taps in in Anderson. Um, and for a while the only Guinness you could find anywhere outside of Charleston. And creating that market and that when people would come in and say, hey, you know, that that's interesting, or I, you know, I had that in Atlanta, I want to try it here, you know, or here it's different here than it is in Ireland, it's the same product, okay. But okay, it's context, right? In Ireland, of course, everything's gonna taste better there. You know, if you go to France, it's gonna a French meal is gonna taste the best, right? Sure. So we imported um a culinary culture into this part of the state, and now you find it everywhere. Yeah. And I'm like, well, you're welcome. But um, we practically had to drive to Charleston to get that first keg for St. Patrick's Day.
SPEAKER_10:So what's your favorite meal there?
SPEAKER_09:Uh there, oh wow. I had something new today. She did a um, oh, it was corn chips and chili. It's like a Texas chili thing. It was nuts. Um, I'm like, yeah, I'll have that in a salad because I'll feel better. But I love our I love our French onion soup. Um, I'll always get a salad. And then um I like our Irish whiskey steak, which is which is a marinated um New York strip. Medium, medium rare, loaded mashed potatoes on the side, and whatever the vegetable day is.
SPEAKER_07:Okay.
SPEAKER_09:Okay.
SPEAKER_07:What would what would you write the loaded fries? Because I've seen them, they look really good.
SPEAKER_09:The loaded fries, I think that's our probably our number two best-selling um appetizer next to the fried mushrooms.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, I love them too.
SPEAKER_09:Yeah, me too. Um so it's been it's been a it's been a journey, I'll say that. And to be able to to figure out that we're the kind of people that just don't quit. You might call that stubborn, pig headed, or dumb, but uh um we've had a few recessions we've we've lived through. Um nobody saw this pandemic coming, so that was new. Um a hurricane and uh a tornado in the same year. Right. Um it's I don't want to ask the universe what's next. But each one of those things, if if you work through it, I don't want to say live through it, if you work through it and you uh you put your head down and say, you know, we're not gonna quit, we're gonna figure out how to make this work differently now and evolve as you go along, you're a little bit stronger and a little bit better prepared to handle the next thing that may come along. So let's hope nothing else does.
SPEAKER_03:Um restaurants can't say that they've been around for almost thirty years.
SPEAKER_09:Not with the same owners.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_09:No, well that's true, nothing with the same owners. And I'll tell you, it it could be a marriage killer. It really can. So um to the the the fact that somebody said, Well, how do you how how do you work with your wife? And and I'm like, why is that a strange question? I went into business because I wanted to spend more time with her. And if we were doing the same thing, I already enjoyed working with her in other people's businesses. So I'm like, no, this is this is what we want to do. And if she had said no at any time during the you know, the initial process of it, we probably would have just hung it up and moved on to something else or go to work for Bosch or I'd go back to doing that. Um I should mention as well, too, that you know, talk about hats you wear, when the when the market was going through its correction in 2011 and 2012, when everything was upside down and you know, the bottom fell out of this, that, and the other thing. I went and got my real estate license. Oh wow. Because I thought, what if nobody wants to come out and eat anymore? You know, somebody's gonna have to sell the properties. So I've kept that now for 13, 14 years. And that's been real helpful just from a knowledge standpoint with what I deal with in the auditor's office as well. So there's some crossover there. Also, my experience in business and what you need to do in the state of South Carolina to start a business and the forms you need to fill out and the taxes you need to pay. I I'm better equipped to be able to help those business owners you know, chart those waters, you know, if they want to do things on the up and up.
SPEAKER_11:So, really, the most important question to this entire statement and your entire history, professional history, are you a yellow jacket? Are you a bulldog?
SPEAKER_09:He's a bulldog, or are you a tiger? I'm afraid I've I'm the I'm a bulldog 100%.
SPEAKER_11:Okay, okay. Yeah. Wasn't sure, you know, since you're not sure. I'm a rabid bulldog.
SPEAKER_09:It's it's better if I watch Georgia at home than any place public. Okay. And and Sam likes him too. Sam's a whole different story, but he's a bulldog. We're coming out to talk to Sam.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, we're gonna do that right now. That's a good segue.
SPEAKER_09:Good segue.
SPEAKER_03:Tell us all about Sam.
SPEAKER_09:Sam. Sam's uh, yeah, as I mentioned to you, uh, you know, off the air, it's um we're older parents. We spent 25 years building a business, always wanted to have a family and start a family. That's part of our we agreed on that on the front end. And fortunately and unfortunately, it just never happened for us the way it conventionally does. And after a fashion, we said, well, you know, what we went through meeting with doctors and whatnot, and the news wasn't positive, and we went, well, you know what? Still there's kids out there that need a home. So we got in touch with the lawyer and uh an agency over in Spartanburg that does good work at placing um infants, babies, kids with appropriate families. I say appropriate because he takes it a step further. He'll ask a birth mom, what what are your needs and wants? Where would you want? You know, but they they approach him and say, I'm in school, this is my story, and and this is just too much, and I'd rather have a child in a good home. And then they do that with prospective birth parents as well. So they draw up a uh basically a matrix, and when um a mother comes to the agency, they sort the most likely ones that meet her needs and vice versa. So that was a process. And it it took about a year to get off of or to get onto the wait list.
SPEAKER_10:Oh wow.
SPEAKER_09:And then about another year to get off the wait list to an active, what he calls an active list, where he's only shopping a smaller pool and he's got a really good a really good system, and very successful with with how things turn out. So he's like, Well, do you know what you want? I'm like, I don't care, as long as ten fingers, ten toes. Happy. And so we forgot about it. And um, I got a phone call, literally forgot about it because life just moves on. And he called me up on a Friday night, and that Sunday was St. Patrick's Day that year. And I went, Who's this? And he says, It's Jim. And I said, Do I owe you money? He says, No, no, no, no, no, just check it in. I'm like, Well, we're we're doing fine, what's up? Got a busy weekend. Yeah, just want to let you know that if you're still interested, a birth mom picked you.
SPEAKER_02:Wow.
SPEAKER_09:And I went, what? So um I said, hang on a second. And I made Dixie get in the office and listen to that as well, too. And I had to think about it, I said, Do we still want to go through with this? Because now we're we're really the business was picking up and all this. And she says, Yeah, we're in for a penny, we're in for a pound. So um we said, yeah, when when's this happening? Oh, next Wednesday. Great. I can get through this weekend, and um, and I'm thinking, how much am I gonna owe them on the back end, you know? Because it's there's a cost to it. And he said, Um, don't worry about it, they'll do this on Wednesday. Just come down to Columbia and get a hotel room and we'll bring you in to meet. You can meet them if she wants to meet you guys. But first, if you could talk to her on Saturday, and I'm like, how am I gonna do that? I'm like, okay, absolutely, you just name the time. So we did that, and it was a lovely conversation, and sure enough, she was on her own, you know, not a great family support system, in school and doing well, taking care of her younger brother and paying for an apartment, doing all of that, and so um I'm like, great, we'll see you. We'll see you Monday. Hung up the phone. And then had you know, record breaking Friday, record breaking Saturday. I'm like, this is and we're beat. And Sunday is St. Patrick's Day, and I'm leaving the house, and the phone rings again. It's a social worker going, you guys are still planning on coming Monday, right? And I'm like, Yeah, is there something wrong? She goes, No, no, no, everything's fine. I'm like, good, okay, yeah, no, I gotta get to work. And she goes, Well, the baby came last night. And I went, I'm shutting the pub down. So I said, Hold on to that thought, and um, and let me call you back because I live about two minutes from the pub. So ran over there and grabbed Dixie, and that made her mad. I need you in the office and shut the door.
SPEAKER_10:And you don't have time for this.
SPEAKER_09:Exactly. And I said, You have time for this. And I called it up. I said, Okay, tell her what you just told me. And she did, and um and then she said, It's a boy. You know, tears are flowing, and is he okay? Yeah, the boy's okay, she's okay, but um I said, I'll come down there right now. No, no, no, no need to do that, just be here in the morning. So we drove to had a great St. Patty's Day. And after all was said and done, the um the um, and you never know the the you know, God works the way he works, right? Not the way you plan it, not the way you think about it, even the way you pray about it, or when, right? But um we got down to Columbia and uh spent the entire day there, got to spend time with her one-on-one while they were cleaning Sam up. And then a few hours later we're in the car.
SPEAKER_11:With Sam?
SPEAKER_09:With Sam. I had to buy a car seat. And you should have seen us go through Walmart that morning. I bet. It was like this shopping carts, she's catching things in the shopping cart, and wait, we need baby wipes, which are the greatest invention ever, by the way. Um, so and got down to Columbia and five o'clock, traffic in Columbia is nothing, it's no fun. And we're pulling out of the um hospital there, and I said, No, now what do we do? How do we do that? And she's like, just drive. She sat in the back seat with them, and we drove back. I said, You think it's a good time to call our parents and let them know what happened? So, um, and that's what did you get to name him? Yeah, well, we you know, we hadn't thought about names since um 1989. Um so on the way down, um, we got about down to Lawrence, and I'm like, you know, we we've got about one hour to think of a name. We gotta put on a birth certificate. And she's like, You're right. And so uh then you go blank.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, of course.
SPEAKER_09:And then I'm like, you do what my family did. When you got four boys, you start with all the apostles' names, and then you start, then you go through the let's go through the prophets, you know. And she goes, I so part of it was she she wanted to have him to have a name, to be the kind of a guy when he walked into a room, he can just go up to you and say, Hey, I'm Sam. Yeah, it's an easy, short, easy to remember, and it's friendly. And so Sam, yeah, that's good. But we hadn't come up with Sam. It was Zach, we went with Zachariah, that Zach, you know, and and so on and so forth. And um, and I said, What about Sam? What about Samuel? Samuel was a prophet, right? Pull it up on your phone, let's read up on that. So, Samuel, if you know the story, was was born to Hannah.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_09:Hannah was beyond her years of having a k of a child of her own. Gave him up. Gave him up. But the name Samuel means more or less uh God heard my prayer. Right. So I'm like, that's it. He shall be John Samuel. So he's got my first name.
SPEAKER_11:But you call him Sam. Yeah. Very cool. That's awesome. And how old is Sam now?
SPEAKER_09:Sam is now six and a half.
SPEAKER_11:And he probably runs your house.
SPEAKER_09:He believes he does. This morning was a challenge getting up and going. But uh it it is for me too, some mornings. But everything changes. And when we came back from Columbia, we're like, okay, we'll figure it out. We figure everything else out. But our you know, just the schedule's gotta change, dot dot dot. So I was um Mr. Mom for for the first two years for a couple hours a day, and she'd go in, do some stuff, and then come on over, and um it was awesome. But um, but we had thought about you know, now we gotta save for college, now we gotta think about schools, now we gotta do this, and now we gotta, oh my gosh, there's T-ball. And uh so he's right now he'd be here tonight as I as I told you, except for the fact he's got karate now. That's his latest thing. But he took two years of dance, t ball, soccer. And I wanted him to try. And I encourage parents to do that, don't fixate on it necessarily one activity, let them gravitate to the thing that is gonna interest them, and they'll be the most successful with. Uh it doesn't mean he won't change his mind.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_09:But somewhere along the way, when he was one, he grabbed a phone and then started figuring out the phone. And uh so he's my tech wizard now. And uh we um have gone through all of the Paw Patrol and you name it things, and now he's on to the superheroes, etc. And uh so I'm I'm the filter police. I'm like, no, no, no, no, not that version, that's when you're 13 version. But um so to try to make it constructive, my wife said, Hey, why don't we do this together and start filming some of the trips we take and put segments together? And they came up with the name of this YouTube channel himself, and it's Sam Can. Now there's a lot of Sam Cans do this and Sam can do that.
SPEAKER_03:Looking up the channel.
SPEAKER_09:So he came up with that. And what we try to do was take snippets of where we're at that if another child his age was watching it, it would be instructive and fun and interesting for them as well, too. And that was his goal. So it's in a in a sea of so much not great stuff for kids to consume, um, he wanted to put together something that was wholesome and good. Yeah, and those are my words, not his.
SPEAKER_03:I will I will say, Holly, I I've watched several episodes. He's a natural. He is. I will tell you the uh the pulling the tooth one was a little cringy.
SPEAKER_09:Yeah, it was oh and then it was like he was he was such a trooper. I'm good.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, exactly. But it's cool to have mom and dad both there, you know, you're filming, mom's helping him with whatever he's doing, or vice versa.
SPEAKER_09:She's the director.
SPEAKER_03:Uh yeah.
SPEAKER_09:So she'll give him the dialogue and he'll change it.
SPEAKER_03:But you're you're growing corn, I saw there, and uh had him pick some corn off the sticking the stalks and um And then we went brought it inside and cooked something with you.
SPEAKER_09:Yes, yes, yeah, and uh he's done he's been cooking since he's been three. You know, not with sharp objects, but he wants to be wherever you're at and he's absorbing that like I did with my dad, under you know, changing brakes on a car. And um he's very hands-on and he's very wants to try to do it all himself if he can. And then he asks for help.
SPEAKER_03:How long do you think he'll have this channel? I mean, it it could go on forever. It could.
SPEAKER_09:So am I. I'm like, why not?
SPEAKER_03:Um I saw him celebrate his uh 50 subscribers.
SPEAKER_09:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:His first little monetary.
SPEAKER_10:He's got a lot. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_09:It's it's we've actually took a little bit of a sabbatical from that for the last several months, and then we realized we really need to make something else. We've gotten so busy with once school started. But um the daddy spaghetti's act, that's actually something I make every Thursday at home. Pro tip, dad's if you're looking to make your spaghetti something and and fast, saute up a hot dog and throw that in there.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_09:And that's a daddy spaghetti. Okay. But he had all the ingredients set out, you know, because he'll watch cooking shows with my wife and all, except he he's not a big fan of uh who's the old lady. Uh joy of cooking. I just drew a blank. Julia Child's. Oh, Julia Childs. Oh my goodness. Dick'll be rolling through the old all the way the black and white ones. He'll roll his eyes and then uh grab your phone and then find a video.
SPEAKER_11:So it's not just Sam Kahn, it's Sam Kahn with an expedition. Exclamation book. That's what's at Sam Witch. That's what makes it easier to Sam with S C.
SPEAKER_09:Samwitch is also the morning hug. He's in the he's the middle piece, and we're the bread on the outside. That's really cool.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, that's and hey, if you want to bring him by the studio anytime, let him do a show. He loves microphones.
SPEAKER_09:He likes being in front of the camera. And he's he gave me an ask. He said, you know, I like Ryan Reynolds. I think I want to be an actor. And I'm like, well, if you want to be an actor, Ryan Reynolds is probably your model. He's a good-looking guy, and he's done a lot of great stuff, and he's pretty wealthy.
SPEAKER_03:I don't know about that one, yeah. But um, it that's that's really a cool story about the adoption. Um, as everyone knows, I was adopted myself as as a as a baby. And we adopted two, and one of them's name is Sam. And he was only, I think, two years old when we got him. Um one question along those lines I wanted to ask you is uh, when do you think you'll approach that subject with Sam?
SPEAKER_09:We already have. Oh, good. Actually, we can it's kind of been probably about a year or so. Um I mean, the books will tell you, and I've read them, you know, wait till they're seven or eight or that type of thing. And I'm like, the question's gonna come up in school. Sure. You know, what's your dad do? Where are you all from? You know, it's it's sooner or later. Um so Dixie handled it. We we discussed it, and I'd come home from uh closing the restaurant up one night, and she'd already she said, uh we had we had the talk, and I said, Okay, how do you take it? And uh she said, Well actually he asked me, Really? He goes, you know, when you pick me up is what he says. Um what was it like? And so she went into that with him. And then um she was very positive about it. It's a closed adoption, so um at 18 should he choose to, and and she wants to, they can meet, you know. But between now and then, she gets an annual update from us. We put together a letter and photographs and p a story for the past year and sent it through the uh through the agency to her.
SPEAKER_11:Is that something you choose to do or is that a requirement?
SPEAKER_09:Um it's something they asked us if we wanted to, okay, and we've chosen to continue to do it.
SPEAKER_11:Gotcha. So what any time you can choose not to do it.
SPEAKER_09:Yeah. Okay. But we won't. We we gave our word and and uh whether she reads them or not, we don't know. Right. But we keep a copy of that and it's a nice chronicle of his childhood. So I need that because I forgot we did some of that stuff, you know. So yeah, it's uh and it wasn't too long after that, John, that that he's he sat he sat down in my lap and we were watching TV or something one night. He said, Um, yeah, I want to I want to thank you for picking me up and bringing me to your home. I'm like, Well it's your home now. He goes, Yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_03:So how did he how did he know though that that you picked him up? I mean she told him obviously he didn't remember.
SPEAKER_11:I mean, she said you're adopted. She said, We chose you.
SPEAKER_09:We chose we chose you. We went to a hospital and we we chose you, and somebody else chose us to take care of you for the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_03:And so, yeah, like me, when I found out, when I found out, no regrets at all. I was like, I'm in a great family. Yeah, I don't, you know, this doesn't matter. Now, of course, later in life I got to meet my parents. Um, but I thank my my adoptive parents every day for the life that they gave me. Yeah. Um, and I'm sure he will, and even when he's a big media star and has uh his monetized channel and that's right five million followers, and he's like the Truman show, and he has a whole life uh out on uh out on video that he started when he was uh what six or seven years old.
SPEAKER_09:So uh the the going I mean going to Boston was a lot of fun for me. That's that's my favorite city. Okay. So we broke that into three parts, and um, you know, I'm like I'm a Red Sox fan.
SPEAKER_03:Now, how did that develop? Did you have Boston?
SPEAKER_09:I started my my dad was stationed up there when I was like 10. And so when I started playing Little League, you were in the Red Sox. I was stuck, it was 1975. Yeah. And they were in the World Series, and everybody up there was just forget about it. That's what you do. That's who you are now.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And then you finally hit that good streak of winning a bunch of World Series after not getting at anything.
SPEAKER_09:Yeah, well, my dad's a Yankees fan. He was born in the Bronx.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so it's how do you guys coexist?
SPEAKER_09:Since 2004, a lot better, honestly.
SPEAKER_03:I bet he still says 27, 29. He does, he does. He told me that that year.
SPEAKER_09:I was like, what do you think of that, Dad? We just saw something that your dad never saw in his whole lifetime. Yeah. He moved uh from Europe to um the United States in um 1929. So, you know, the Sox were done by then.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_09:So um it was just all the Yankees, yeah, and the cards. But uh yeah, no, so moving to Atlanta, uh, it was a desolate wasteland for professional sports in the 70s and and much of the 80s, really, until the Braves got hot.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And I remember what they used to say about the Braves is that if you go to a Braves game down there, everybody gets a free foul ball. You did because there is enough for everybody, because there was nobody in the stands. But uh they've turned that around.
SPEAKER_09:They have. Well, they had a rough year this year, but uh I still follow them too. So I got my National League team and I got my American League team. But when he was six months old, I said, We're going to Boston. Yeah. So we flew up there and you know, in the stroller and all. And uh I'm a big stroller fan because you can stow things in a stroller stroll. Yeah, coffee and uh so yeah, we took him to a Red Sox game as quick as I could, and they lost.
SPEAKER_03:I've never been to Feds. I'd love to go to Feds.
SPEAKER_09:It's a treat. So we we we did it again um recently, and uh that's that was part of it. It got rained out. Um but we got four we got four innings in and they were ahead. So good fun.
SPEAKER_03:All right. Well, we're getting close to the time of wrapping things up. This has been great story time. Uh here with John Banka on the Boone Show. We usually at the very end of our show we get uh recommendations. Now you we're not gonna ask you to recommend anywhere else except McGee's, but uh I do have one more question because you brought up the shrimp and grits. I was just wondering what you don't have to give away any secret recipes, but everybody makes them a little different. What are the highlights of your shrimp and grits? What do you put in it?
SPEAKER_09:I I can't tell you what's different about the the grits. It's how you make the grits that's different, and it's off-putting to some people who've never had them before if they're not made right because they're just it they gotta be creamy.
SPEAKER_11:Very creamy.
SPEAKER_09:There's your hint and buttery. But with with the shrimp themselves, we do them tail-on, so you get 100% of the flavor of the shrimp itself. We saute them lightly in in butter, garlic. We use a uh Trinity, which is you know what you find in a lot of Cajun dishes, just a little bit of Cajun spice and white wine.
SPEAKER_03:Any meat you put in there? You put any sausage or okay, bacon?
SPEAKER_09:Yeah, you can put sausage in it too. Okay. That would be fine.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_09:You know, everybody does it, if they're doing it at home, puts the things in it they want to, and then it ends up being more of a jambalaya. Jambalaya, really.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_09:But it's it's it's fun to cook. And and just if you've never flipped a pan, it's fun to do that. Oh, there's one that got out, you know. Do it at home, have fun with it. A little bit of wo of white wine, it burns off. The alcohol will burn off. And then it's that just adds another layer of flavor to it. And mine, if I'm eating it, I like to squeeze a little bit of lemon on top.
SPEAKER_08:Do you serve the grits with anything else other than shrimp?
SPEAKER_09:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_08:Okay.
SPEAKER_09:Oh, yeah. And we do brunch on Sundays, I should tell you that. Saturday and Sunday from 11 to 3, we do a brunch, a series of brunch items in addition to the whole regular menu. Um, so right now we're seven days a week, lunch and dinner. So when do you all sleep? Right? Ten to six. I mean maybe twelve to six. I mean, I really I get my time in. I get my six hours.
SPEAKER_11:You know, you work all week, I would assume, Monday through Friday, and your eight to what, five, four job type thing. And then you go to the restaurant.
SPEAKER_09:Yeah, I like to I like to get into work at the office before everybody else does. So I like to be it helps me set the tone for the day mentally. And then um, because I know that at 8 30 the phones are ringing, people are coming in the door, and it's controlled chaos. Same thing in a restaurant when you open the doors and you're ready for that. But um, I've got a great team of people, well trained people at the restaurant, and we've we've taken a long time to build that and go through I hate to say going through is not the right word, but you know, there's people that just didn't like us, didn't like what we were doing. I didn't like our standard.
SPEAKER_10:Sure.
SPEAKER_09:And uh we've got a standard. And um so a little bit more professionalism is what we're trying to teach and what we're trying to hire in. And so I don't have to be there. And neither does she. So there are some days, of course, we'll be there on Fridays for for the bulk of the volume. I like to see my customers and uh Saturday night I'll come by as well too. And so I'm there at peak times, but I'm not I've got some good, dependable, honest people. No ma'am. Good.
SPEAKER_03:Good to have good people.
SPEAKER_10:Gotta have that balance. It does yes. And it changes when you have a kid, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_09:It it does. I'll I'll go back to that real quick because I know we're set the end of it, but on day three, Sam, day day three of Sam, um, we had closed for Tuesday and gave the staff another day off after St. Pat's and then went right back to work on Wednesday. And I walked, opened up the bar and put them on the beer cooler back there, and I said, Don't move. We don't allow smoking or anything like that, but of course they sleep all the time. Oh, yeah. Beautiful. We gotta figure this out. Now I gotta now I gotta get gates and you know, it became a thing, and then now it's not appropriate to have them there all the time. But he knows it's his it's his legacy and it's his inheritance type of a thing. If he chooses to and he wants to, it's it's his. If not, you know, when the day comes, I'm not gonna care.
SPEAKER_10:Right.
SPEAKER_09:But uh I feel like it's our it's my duty and my responsibility to be a good steward of the talents that God's given me and do the best I can to provide for my family and their future. That's right. That's all right. I might enjoy all of it, but I want him to have options. That's right. That's what I'm saying. That's right. All right, and then let's go here. You provide and if you don't mind.
SPEAKER_03:No, go ahead.
SPEAKER_09:This has been an amazing experience for me as an elected official. Well good to be able to see what you do here, and you're doing you've got a good foundation you're offering the students of District 1 and District 2 to take advantage of and really put themselves in a position to succeed in life, and I admire that and I applaud that. So thank you.
SPEAKER_11:We appreciate it. We we do provide a lot of opportunities.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's what it's all about. Opportunities.
SPEAKER_11:And you know, you you said a key part earlier. You surround yourself with people that make you look good, and you're always going to come out on top.
SPEAKER_09:It takes a lot for me to look good in the morning then. But that is why engaged. That's exactly right.
SPEAKER_11:I surround myself with people that are passionate about what they do.
SPEAKER_09:And then and then let them do it.
SPEAKER_11:And let them do it. Do not micromanage them.
SPEAKER_09:Pay attention to the details, but don't micromanage them. Don't micromanage.
SPEAKER_11:That's right. Yes.
SPEAKER_09:It's tough. That's tough to do.
SPEAKER_11:It's a tough line.
SPEAKER_09:But in my office, it's the same way. I knew there's things I need to step in on because these are legal issues or these are regulatory issues we have to pay attention to and do things the right way in the right sequence. Sure. But by and large, we we've got latitude where it comes to things that are appealed come to me and I can make those judgment calls. And and and I'll leave you with this because it's funny. It's it's lonely at the top. Okay, and I knew that. The job is what the job is. I accepted it. I asked for it, and the people voted me in twice. So I'm gonna continue to to do the best job I can there for Anderson County and continue to progress it where we can keep taxes as low as possible, manage, manage what we have coming in responsibly, and help encourage legislation in the state house that does the same thing. Um and anytime they're wanting to gut funding, I've I've got to open up my mouth and say you need to understand what that's what kind of impact that's gonna have back at home. Because you represent 30,000 people, with all due respect, but I represent 225,000. And I hear all of it. So they may not call their representative, but they definitely give us an earful.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_09:So I don't mind passing that information on to those people so they can make better decisions, but uh they hear it too. Um but I think you know, I consider myself part of Team Anderson where we're all in this or hopefully to do to make the best decisions possible, and I'm a resource where I can give you the information that may help you make a better one.
SPEAKER_03:So that's it. Um now before we go, we still have to get one more recommendation. Yes, sir, yes, sir. The the entertainment recommendation, something that you've uh watched, you know, a movie, uh binged a series that's streaming or or a book or something. What can you recommend?
SPEAKER_11:Yeah, in your free time. Yeah, in all that free time you have where you're not sleeping, watching a kid, watching the kids, raising a son, Sam's not gonna be a running a restaurant, being an otter.
SPEAKER_09:Let's see. Um I I'm a big fan of historical dramas and docuseries, so um being in being in politics, um, I like West West Wing.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_09:Mainly because there's just good snippets of good speeches in there that I'm like, oh, that's a brilliant thought. You know, I may not disagree, I may disagree with their application of it, but I put it over here because one day I'll need that for a speech. So but but it was real time. It was real time drama. They were writing that as things were happening in the country at the time, and I I don't think we have that now. And I'm watching The American Revolution by Ken Burns. Yeah, on KBS.
SPEAKER_03:Anything by Ken Burns. But it's funny, a lot of people that you meet that like the West Wing have watched it several times. It's one of those things that you just don't get tired of watching, you'll just binge it again and again and again. It's one of those shows.
SPEAKER_09:That's the same with the with Cheers falls into that category. And that's on again right now at my house because it's funny. And um, I don't know, just you know you need something that's gonna give you a good laugh because sometimes that's all you need at the end of the day. Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_03:Well, John, thanks so much for joining us coming by. We're glad to have you in the studio. You can come back anytime and bring uh bring Sam with you. Bring Dixie with you.
SPEAKER_09:We'd love to, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Uh love to talk I got back with him later today. He sent me all his all his information. And I'm like, wait a minute, we should have the whole family on. Yeah, yeah. Because this is really a fascinating family. So we'll have to get Dixie and Sam on too at some point.
SPEAKER_09:We're we're working in the garden now, and now we're we're back on gardening. Winter gardening in the in a greenhouse. So and that's been that's rather successful, actually. Cool.
SPEAKER_11:Well, I appreciate all you've done for the Career Center. You know, we he he sets our millage based off of what our politicians, our local legislators approve. And um it certainly um could be different. And so I appreciate all you've done to support us.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you're welcome. All right, so uh thanks again to John Banka and as always Holly, Danica here. Um next week we have our Christmas show. So we get all in the holiday spirit. Absolutely. Merry Christmas to you and your family, John. Thank you. Uh the podcast of this show will be up uh wherever you get your podcast within the next uh 24 to 48 hours. So uh get a listen, tell your friends. You can hear the great stories John told tonight. And thanks for listening to the Boon Show. Like, subscribe, share, and all those things that get more people to see what we're doing. Like and subscribe. There you go. Have a great night.