The Bloomdaddy Experience with Otis & Sam December 11, 2025 Hour 2

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The number one TUCH show in the Ohio Valley. This
is the bloom Daddy Experience. Your host, bloom Daddy. His
goal inform, entertain, and tick people off. The bloom Daddy
Experience on news Radio eleven seventy WWVA starts now.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Eight six on your Thursday.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Welcome. If you're just.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Joining us, you're listening to the bloom Daddy Experience. Sam
and otis news Radio eleven seventy WWVA. Just a reminder
coming up, we have more chances for you to win,
so stay tuned for all the details on that. But
I want to jump right into this conversation. As I
mentioned to you earlier, I'm very excited to have doctor
Norman Wood joining.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Us this morning.

Speaker 4 (00:47):
Good morning, good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Okay, So if you're not familiar, doctor Norman would very insightful.
As I said earlier, I have been reading a lot
of your commentary on social media. One of the biggest
topics here in the Ohio Valley right now, if not
in Wheeling, of course, in Wheeling, is the shuttering of
the Wheeling Homeless Encampment and the issue in general that

(01:10):
has been going on now for multiple years. I reached
out to you because your commentary really captured my attention because,
as I've said, there's a lot of keyboard warriors out
there who have judgment, who have criticism.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
But have no ideas. You have ideas, you have thoughts.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
So first of all, before we get into all of this,
give us a little bit of background. You have a
very interesting professional history. So if you could kind of
just give us a quick background on your accomplishments.

Speaker 4 (01:46):
Well, I started out as an iron worker, as I
told you earlier, and I helped build the I for
seventy bridge here and wheeling cross the High River, and
I did that for several months. After that, I joined
the West Virginia State Police out of state trooper for
not quite ten years. During that time, I was on
the original swat team. I was on the original swat
team members. I was on the pistol team. And after

(02:09):
I left the State Police, then I was recruited out
of Fairmont State College and I was taken to the
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia, and from there
I was asked to go to San Francisco and look
for a smuggling organization and I was able to find
that and in nineteen eighty eight I made the largest
drug seizure in history of the United States. It was

(02:30):
fifty six tons of narcotics, and the Russian military and
the KGB was bringing it into the country to try
to accumulate one hundred million dollars. They were going to
use that towards the coup and Mikyle Gorbachev in nineteen
eighty nine, that coup was postponed. The sub subsequent coup
in ninety one. Felt and I left the government in
earlier of ninety two to come back go to med

(02:52):
school at Louisbourgen. I've been a family doctor for now
thirty years.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
So through all of these, I guess we'll say adventures
or all of these accomplishments, you have had the opportunity
to when it comes to this particular issue with homeless,
you have had experience with it on law enforcement and
medical treatment, both correct correct.

Speaker 4 (03:18):
Law enforcement obviously was on that side. The medical side,
I had foraging care centers of my own here in
West Virginia and Maryland. Went through a divorce and I
stepped away from that and I was recruited by the
Veterans Administration, so I was the medical director at their
clinic near Seattle. I did that for a couple of years,
and then I was recruited to help run fourteen urgent

(03:40):
care centers in Seattle, and we were dealing with a
homeless population off anywhere from six thousand to eight thousand.
In all of West Virginia, we only have a homeless
population of about two thousand. So we had fourteen clinics
and we would see eighty to one hundred patients a day,
and most of those were just right off the street.
So I have treated what I call the MIDA mentally ill,
drug addicted and homeless, and I have treated thousands of

(04:03):
those people.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
And that's what I was going to ask you in
your writings that you use MIDA a lot, so repeat
that again for OUs.

Speaker 4 (04:09):
Ecor m I d AH mentally ill, drug addicted and homeless.
I coined that phrase a couple of years ago when
I started using it.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
And this is a compounded issue of those you know,
multiple topics in MIDA that has led to where we
have gotten with the homeless crisis.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Correct.

Speaker 4 (04:24):
Yes, and it's not only the homeless crisis. The MIGHTA
includes even the functional addicts and the people that are
mentally ill at home that families are trying to deal with.
So it's all encompassing, not just the homeless population. And
the homeless population obviously is an issue here and Wheeling
and throughout this state. But the biggest issue is we

(04:45):
have like two hundred and fifty thousand functional addicts in
the state and others that have mental illness that the
families and loved ones are trying to deal with well.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
And there's a lot of folks, okay, So taking it
to Wheeling here locally, the city and the council and
the mayor are receiving a lot of criticism for shutting
down the camp. Do you feel it's warranted or they
released the pictures over the weekend in the drone footage,
I mean, it was a very It looked like a dump.

(05:19):
I mean, I hate to say it that way, but
it was. You know, is that an environment human beings
should be living in. And should the council and mayor
be receiving this type of criticism.

Speaker 4 (05:28):
They should be praised for what they did. And I
have been to the homeless camp with doctor Mercer that
everybody knows who and Wheeling, and you cannot allow human
beings to live in a tent in freezing whether you
know people think, well, it's a tent, They're fine. No,
they're not. If anybody has ever slept out very long
in a tent in the wintertime, they're going to find
out real quick what they have to deal with. It's

(05:48):
survival every day. And I spent two weeks by myself
up on top of Dolly sids in the winter. One
time I slept out at nineteen blow zero. I know
what sleeping out in the cold really is. And these
people suffer every day, and with their mental illness and
their delusional thought processes and as well as their drug addictions,
they don't make good decisions because that prefrontal cortex, so

(06:11):
the brain is actually turned off by the narcotics, and
that's where our reasoning and our logical thought comes from,
and our inhibitions and those areas of the brain are
actually turned off and they actually shrink with addicted brains.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
That's an interesting angle, and I saw your post about
that is the physical and the medical angle that you
bring to the conversation. A lot of people don't discuss.
I have been told by multiple people there are certain drugs,
and correct me if I'm wrong. There are certain drugs
that when used long enough will physically change the makeup

(06:46):
of somebody's brain. It does, so then they are no
longer the same person that they used to be, where
family members will say, you know, I want such and
such back. Such and such doesn't exist anymore.

Speaker 4 (06:58):
That is very true. That is very true. True. Narcotics
will make a sane person after a period of time,
appear to be insane. They are not the same person.
Their personality will change, and families have to deal with
this all the time with not only with the meli
il side of somebody, but if somebody is addicted to
the narcotics and that does change their personality. However, we

(07:18):
have now proof that we can bring that back. We
can now show that recovery by the brain, but it
takes two to three years. And that research of being
done by doctor Rita goldstein Ow of the Nikam Medical
School in New York, or She is the national and
the international leader in neuroimaging of the brain of addicted people.
And we can now show that that recovery can start

(07:41):
after abstinence. It takes an average of fifteen weeks, so
between three to four months after abstinence, and they have
to stay off the narcotics you know, you can't be
going back on and coming off and going back and
coming off like they do in the local rehab centers.
That's the reason that the local rehab centers will never
work because that by the time releasing them, their brain
is just starting to begin to recover. In that recovery process,

(08:05):
like I said, it takes three to four months, but
the full recovery takes up to one to three years
after that.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
And you have traveled all over the state of West
Virginia talking to different council mayors, you know, government officials,
because this is not just happening here and Wheeling. You know, Honey,
I've heard, and I don't want to disparage Huntington, but
I've heard Huntington has a very large drug problem across
the state of West Virginia. What is the most predominant

(08:35):
narcotic that folks are dealing with, not only just homeless,
just narcotics in general.

Speaker 4 (08:40):
Well, just about everything the whole spectrum. You're talking about, cocaine, heroin,
you know, a lot of that is laced with fentonil
of a lot of marijuana obviously, And I want to
tell people, marijuana now has been shown to be neurotoxic
to the brain as well. So even when people think, well,
marijuana doesn't hurt anybody, actually it really does. And we're
now actually being able to measure that that damage with

(09:02):
all the narcotics. But when you're talking about street drugs,
you're talking about everything.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
We got to jump to a quick quick break. Can
you hang with us longer? Absolutely, we were just kind
of scratching the surface when it comes to this conversation.
And I'm sure we're not even gonna cover everything this
time around, but we're gonna jump to a quick break
and we're gonna get a little bit more into the
details of what's happening here and wheeling, the costs to
the resonance of wheeling and so on. So hang with

(09:29):
us again. We're talking to doctor Norman Wood about the
homeless camp in here and wheeling and of course across
the entire state of West Virginia. You're listening to the
bloom Daddy Experience on your Thursday morning here on news
radio eleven seventy WWVA. Welcome back. He's eight twenty one

(09:51):
The bloom Daddy Experience. Sam and otis News Radio eleven
seventy WWVA continuing the conversation with doctor Norman Wood about
the homeless here and Wheeling and the issues facing the
entire state of West Virginia. So again, doctor would thank
you so much for your time this morning, and you
know joining us, I want to get back into this.

(10:11):
I want to bring this back more into Wheeling. So
the most recent cleanup we saw images over the weekend
were released by the city and also the cost which
was over forty thousand dollars for just this first this
one cleanup dating back from September of twenty three to
twenty four, the city spent over seventy seven thousand dollars

(10:33):
on cleanup then, plus seventy five thousand dollars given to
Life Hub and other organizations to help with this crisis.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
Going on and Wheeling.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Those numbers are adding up and the taxpayers are paying
for it. Yes, some people don't believe it. Some people
don't believe it costs forty thousand to clean that up
over the weekend.

Speaker 4 (10:52):
Well actually it did. I saw the same report and
the thing about closing that homeless camp, and I had
talked to the mayor and city council several times and
I told them you need to close that in the
wintertime or close it forever, because that is not compassionate care.
That you know, we are turning a blind eye to
our most needy in this state, and those people will

(11:13):
end up in these homeless camps. At least by closing
that homeless camp, we are forcing them indoors, or we're
forcing them someplace other than maybe in a cold environment.
They may be going south, they may be going to
the west coast, but that is not compassionate care. Leaving
people out in a tent in sub freezing weather. It's
it's just crazy. I mean, these people don't make good
decisions in warm weather. Just think what their thought processes

(11:37):
is or are in the cold. I mean, they don't
make good decisions. We have frostbite, we have deaths. You know,
that's just we're just we're just ignoring the problem if
we keep homeless camps open.

Speaker 3 (11:48):
Out of sight, out of mind. Yes, okay, so let
me ask you this.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
So there are, as I said, the keyboard warriors, those
that want to judge and criticize those that shut down
the camp. But when those images came out, there were
tense blankets. My first thought was how much of those
items were donated by good people of the Ahiah Valley
who want to do a good thing, every all of them,

(12:13):
and it's not treated well, it's not respected, and it's
treated like trash.

Speaker 4 (12:17):
It's treated like trash. And I have been in the
homeless camp.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
And that's discouraging. That's unfortunate to see.

Speaker 4 (12:22):
Well, these people can't help it. You know. People want
to say, well, they need to have more personal responsibility.
If you think that, you don't understand the pathologies that
they're dealing with, the mental illness or the drug addictions.
Because once that the mental illness or the drug addiction
takes over their mind and especially the nucleus incumbents and
pleasure centers of the brain, they can't help it. This

(12:45):
is just the way they are. And people think, well,
we just have we need to have housing. Well, this
has never been a housing issue. These people had housing
before they left with their mental illness or their drug
addictions to end up in the homeless camps. These people
all have families and if you talk to those families
what happened to their loved ones, They're like, we tried
everything we could. We tried to get them help. We

(13:06):
had them in and out of detalk centers, nothing worked,
and here they are, they're living in a squalor condition
in a tent and freezing weather.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
Well, and that's what a lot of arguments are that
people say, you know, take some of the empty buildings
and Wheeling and move them into there. That's not going
to work exactly, and that doesn't solve the It.

Speaker 4 (13:29):
Does not solve the problems. And those buildings will be
caught on fire. There's lots of fire they had. When
I was talking to the Marion Parkersburg here recently, they
told me about about how many fires they had in
their vacant buildings where the homeless would go in there
and they'd be you know, starting fires in trash cans
and things like that, where you know they're trying to survive.
They're in survival mode. These people are in survival mode

(13:49):
and catching a building on fire may be accidental by them,
but they're trying to survive.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
Let me okay.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
So I have said this to a couple of people,
and some people have said it's hard the way that
I asked this. But for organizations or groups like street
Moms or Catholic charities, Wheeling is full of charitable organizations
that continue to give and give and give, But at

(14:16):
what point in time does this empathy and this continue
giving actually become the fuel that intensifies the issue that
we have. Well, are they not enabling this problem at
this point?

Speaker 4 (14:31):
They are a lot of times they are. But you know,
most of these people are doing it from the goodness
of their hearts. You know, most of them are have
the goodness of the hearts. But if you peel back
that onion several layers, a lot of times you will
find fraudsters and scammers that are just trying to make
money off of the backs of the misery of our people.
And these are all our people, you know, most of them.
You know, there are some probably that's from Mona State, Columbus, Baltimore,

(14:54):
you know, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, But a lot of these are
West Virginians and a lot of people in these organizations,
these NGOs and these other organizations, they're just making bookoo
bocks off of this issue.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
And you're not saying any of the organizations that I mentioned, No,
not at all.

Speaker 4 (15:12):
But as a special agent I used to be involved
with lots of investigations like this that we would be looking.
We would have the rs pull all their bank restords,
pull all their financial records, and we'd start looking and
see where this money was coming from and who actually
was controlling it. So a lot of these times, you know,
it's nefarious at best, and it's criminal sometimes.

Speaker 3 (15:31):
Yeah, and you have we.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Got about two minutes left, unfortunately, but and you have
been all over the state. It's known, you know, send
them to Wheeling. You know, people say that's not true.
But from your travels across the state, what have you
heard about Wheeling in general when it comes to homeless
an addiction.

Speaker 4 (15:50):
Well, actually, Wheeling was known for being able to have
a lot of resources and a lot of handouts. And
that's the reason that that Wheeling has drawn a lot
of people. It's the option in Parkersburg. Parkersburg, they had
shut down several homeless camps and when I was talking
to the mayor, they're not allowing them to open up.
So they have much a much less issue with the
homeless problem because they're not allowing any of it. But

(16:12):
the thing is here in the state is we don't
have a state hospital to put these people in. Governor
Morrisey is closing what state hospitals we have these closed
for who he sold for he's going to sell the
other three, but none of those buildings would have been
big enough to be a state hospital. We need a
new thousand bed state hospital. I used to be the
physician director of the West Virginia Division of Correction Rehabilitation

(16:35):
as well, and we have twenty four facilities. We don't
need half of those because our number of inmates is
skyrocketed because of the opioid epidemic.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
Can you hang out with me for just a little
bit longer because I want to hear about what your
ideas are. Sure, we've kind of covered a lot of
things right now, but that's the main thing I want
to hit on. So it's eight twenty eight. You're listening
to the Bloomdaddy Experience. Samon Otis News Radio eleven seventy WWVA,

(17:10):
eight thirty six. Welcome back to the bloom Daddy Experience,
News Radio eleven seventy WWVA.

Speaker 3 (17:16):
Before we get back into.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
The conversation with doctor Norman Wood, want to remind everybody
it is a Thursday. So getting your registration for a
free half gallon of ice cream from of course, our
dear friends at Kirks. All you have to do is
go to our text line seven zero four seven zero.
Start the message off with bloom Daddy, just need your name,
phone number, and how about an ice cream emoji? So
I cannot decipher between that, and of course are stuffed

(17:40):
stalking Spectacular, which is full of all kinds of goodies
for the holiday season. We've got gift certificates from all
of our friends, River City, Pike, forty Dot and Cattle.
What else we got in there? We've got a gift
certificate from Deluxe Toy thanks to Randy and his team
at Lalini and Sons. We've got Jacob and Sons gift certificate.

(18:02):
Oh and yeah, how about this a pair of Jody
Messina tickets for her show here at the Capitol. So
we've got it covered. You have to go again to
our text line seven zero four seven zero to register
for that. We need your name, phone number, email address,
and Asanta emoji.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
So there we have it.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
I got all that out, So a lot to cover there. Uh,
doctor Doc, I'm gonna call you doc, how about that?

Speaker 4 (18:28):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (18:28):
Doctor Norman Wood of course has joined me joined us
this morning talking about everything going on with the homeless
and the drug addiction for problems that we're facing here
and wheeling and of course all across the state.

Speaker 3 (18:40):
So when I.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
Introduced you, I mentioned, you know, reading your commentary on
social media about these topics, and you bring an idea,
you have plans, and you've had conversations with leaders across
the states. So tell us listen, tell our listeners about
what your idea years are.

Speaker 4 (19:01):
Well, what needs to be done is we need to
have a new state hospital. Since the year two thousand,
we had In two thousand, we had approximately four thousand
inmates in the Division of Correction Rehabilitation, and I used
to be the medical director for that organization. By twenty fifteen,
we had grown up to eight thousand inmates and now
we're twelve thousand inmates and eighty percent of those inmates

(19:21):
are in their serving time for drug related defenses. And
that's the worst place in the world for us to
put drug addicts because when they're in the prisons or
the jails, they never get clean. You know, they have
drugs that are smuggled in to some of those facilities.
And then what we're taking in drug addicts, we're releasing
drug addicts and within the first month, sixty percent are

(19:42):
going back to crime and drugs. Within the first year.
Ninety percent are already back to crime and drugs within
the first year. So we have to break that cycle.
And the only way to break that cycle is to
have those people in a state hospital for one to
three years to where we can get them to help
get them actually dry out, and we can then do
the functional mriyes of the brain to see how much

(20:05):
of the brain has recovered after abstinence, and it takes
it takes anywhere from two to three years for that
recovery to begin. It takes three to four months just
for the brain to start the process of healing and recovery.
So putting them back out on the street is the
worst possible thing. We're right now West Virginia spending three
hundred and fifty million dollars every year for corrections, three

(20:28):
hundred and fifty million. We have twenty four facilities. We
need to bring back our state hospitals, and then we
can eliminate a lot of our federal or state prisons
and jails because we're not going to need those beds
because we're going to be able to turn those people's
lives around. They're going to be able to get out
of that hospital eventually, and they're going to be able

(20:48):
to have a job, pay taxes, buy a home, be
a contributing member of the state of West Virginia instead
of of being a burden on it.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
So in your in your plan or your idea for
the state, for the hospital, who funds that, Who pays
for that, because that's one of the biggest arguments is,
you know, the taxpayers are tired of footing the bill
for all of this, not only here again here and wheeling, but.

Speaker 3 (21:13):
Across the state.

Speaker 4 (21:14):
Well, we won and Governor Morrisey did this as Attorney General.
The United or the West Virginia won over a billion
dollars with the opioid settlement from the drug manufacturers. We
need to take part of that money and build a
new state hospital because that money was earned on the
back of the miseries of all of our families and
our loved ones who were mentally or drug addicted. That's

(21:36):
where all that money was supposed to go to. We're
not spending it towards that. We're spending it right now
towards the same old stuff like it's never ending, and
we need to change our mindset. We need to start
a new state hospital. That way we won't have to
be spending three hundred and fifty million dollars a year
on our corrections department because we can send we're going

(21:56):
to be sending others people through the hospital system, and
then that stops that evolving door.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
What about people who then argue and say, if the
individual doesn't want to make the change, the states and
officials can't force them to make that change to clean
clean their lives up.

Speaker 4 (22:14):
Well, that's partly true, but we're talking about inmates. We're
talking about people that are in the criminal justice system already,
and we need to change the laws where of our prosecutors,
in our circuit court judges have the ability to send
those people. Maybe all depends. Say if there is a
sentence for five years four to five years, say they
have to spend their first year maybe in a prison

(22:36):
or a jail someplace. But then they should have the
ability to be able to say, you're going to finish
your last two to three years in that hospital, and
we expect you to come out clean and be a
contributing member of society and get away from the drugs
into crime.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
How would you what advice would you give to city
leaders county leaders when talking about this particular subject. How
does somebody in a position of decision making, whether it's
allocating money towards this or possibly opening an encampment in
another city in West Virginia, what advice do you give

(23:11):
them when it comes to balancing the human side of
the issue and also making sure they put the taxpayer first.

Speaker 5 (23:21):
Two.

Speaker 4 (23:22):
Well, they have to enforce their laws a lot of times,
and possibly even Wheeling was doing this. We were not
enforcing the vagrancy laws for a long long time. Part
of that was because in twenty eighteen the Ninth Circuit
rule that arresting people sleeping in public spaces was cruel
and unusual punishment. Right. Well, the Supreme Court last year

(23:44):
overruled that and said, no, we can enforce our vagrancy
laws now and grants pass versus somebody, so we can
actually enforce our vagrancy laws. And I would say to
all of the city officials any place in the state
of West Virginia, enforce your laws. Do not be relaxed,
because when you're laxed on those laws, it just invites
this type of problem. So you have to be able

(24:05):
to enforce your laws, and that way people are going
to actually be enforced, be forced indoors, and be actually
these organizations that are giving a lot of resources and stuff,
they will actually see more business that way.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
And again, doctor Norman would we got about a minute
left when talking about this and traveling.

Speaker 3 (24:27):
Across the state. What reaction have you received.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
From people with your plans and your desire for the
state run hospital.

Speaker 4 (24:36):
I've never met anybody it's been against it. The problem
is we have to have the right support in Charleston,
and we have lost fifteen thousand people since two thousand
two drug overdose deaths, and we're treating it like it's
a perse snatcher. I call it, you know, it's a
serial killer in the state of West Virginia. It is
West Virginia's leading problem. Right now, West Virginia labor co

(25:01):
participation is only fifty four percent. The national average is
sixty two. We are the lust in the nation. We
have the most overdosed deaths in the nation. We have
the least healthy population in the nation. And that all
stems from our drug use and our mental health condition
that we're not addressing. And we have not done the
right thing in forty years.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
And it just feeds one another.

Speaker 4 (25:23):
It does. I mean it's just getting worse. Nobody can
say that we're better off today than we were back
in the seventies. Nobody can say. And of course I'm
not defending the Western State Hospital. It was a horrible
place when I was a state trooper, but it served
a purpose. And we need to have a new, state
of the art hospital where we can get our loved
ones who are mentally or drug addicted or both the

(25:45):
proper help that they need and learn not doing that.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
And we can learn from the past.

Speaker 4 (25:49):
Also, well we should.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
Yes, absolutely absolutely well again, doctor Norman, would thank you
so much for coming in this market. This has been
a wonderful conversation, educational conversation, and hopefully people out there
learn more about this topic because it isn't just black
and white.

Speaker 3 (26:08):
It isn't, you know, just cut and dry.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
There's more layers to it than I think we know.

Speaker 4 (26:14):
Yeah, and these people can't help it on this Once
your mental illness or their drug addiction takes over their brain,
these people can't help it.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
And you're please come back anytime. Would love to have
you back and let everybody know to read a lot
of what you have written about this.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
They can follow you on social media. If you want
to throw that.

Speaker 4 (26:31):
Out there, they can find me on Facebook.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
Okay, wonderful And is it okay if I share your page?

Speaker 5 (26:36):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (26:36):
Absolutely, okay, wonderful.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
Again, Doctor Norman would thank you so much for your
time this morning. Again you're listening to the Bloomdaddy Experience.
Sam and Otis News Radio eleven seventy WWVA.

Speaker 3 (26:54):
Welcome back. It's eight fifty.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
On this Thursday, The Bloom Daddy Experience Salmon o Otis
News Radio eleven seventy WWVA. Just a reminder, we're gonna
have another chance for you to win this morning. We've
got one more pair of tickets today, just one more
for today for a Taylor Family Christmas that is coming
up here very shortly. That show is December twenty first
at the Wheeling Park Performing Arts Center.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
So we have a pair of those for you.

Speaker 2 (27:21):
And then, of course, this is the last call to
get in your registration. For a free half gallon of
Kirk's ice cream, go to our text line seven zero
four seven zero. Start the message off with bloom Daddy.
Just need your name, phone number, and an.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
Ice cream emoji. That's it.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
Seven zero four seven zero. Started off with bloom daddy name,
phone number, and an.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
Ice cream emoji. Otis do we have the man?

Speaker 5 (27:46):
We do?

Speaker 6 (27:47):
He's here with us, Kevin, good morning, good morning boy.

Speaker 4 (27:53):
Just wonderful, good just wonderful.

Speaker 5 (27:55):
It is wonderful. You know what I scored yesterday? What
zz Top tickets nice road. Yeah, we're gonna say yeah,
I got in on the the early failure yesterday at
the Capital.

Speaker 4 (28:10):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
So you're not one of the ones that reached out
to us to ask if we had free tickets yet.

Speaker 3 (28:20):
Well that's wait.

Speaker 5 (28:21):
I've seen them several times, but uh yeah, to have
them at the Capitol, that is going to be absolutely incredible. Yeah,
really looking forward to Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:30):
It's it's it's cool.

Speaker 6 (28:31):
Well, the last time they were in Wheeling, I actually
worked that show. They were a yeah.

Speaker 5 (28:38):
Yeah, they're a lot of fun. They put a phenomenal show,
very very very talented guys. Think about it.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
We've had the Beach Boys, now, we've had zz Top
Elvis Costello.

Speaker 3 (28:48):
I mean, it's not they're knocking it out of the
park there. So, so what's going on at strab O
tell you what?

Speaker 5 (28:55):
We're kind of winding I was kind of thinking about something.
There's a ridgeline truck parked right in front of my
office right here, that is absolutely overfilled with toys. Okay. Uh,
it's our Toys for Tots Drive and this may be
one of our biggest years ever, and so we just

(29:15):
want to thank you know, not only all of our employees,
because there's a there's a contest, okay, among all seven
of the dealerships as to which rooftop can get the
most toys uh in their rooftop. And that includes the
body shops, that includes all of our departments. So they're
working hard to try to fill, you know, fill these
vehicles up full of toys to try to help some

(29:38):
of the kids that are a little less fortunate to
have a great Christmas. And one of the things that
we're also doing is if if you mentioned this today
and tomorrow, because today and tomorrow the last two days
of the drive. Right, everybody, listen up, Okay, come in,
make you make your best car deal. Okay, all right,

(29:59):
and then at the end of it, say hey. Kevin
said on the radio that if I bring in toys
for the Toys for Tots programs, I get an additional
five hundred bucks off. Okay, don't tell them up front,
wait till the very end. Okay, right, wait till everything's
already done. And say Kevin ha said it on the radio.

(30:20):
And you can do the same thing in the service apartment. Okay.
When you come in for your service apartment and it
comes time to pay your bill, say hey, I bought
my toy for Toys for Tots. I get ten percent.

Speaker 3 (30:30):
Say fair enough, fair enough, that's not you know, that's
pretty good.

Speaker 5 (30:32):
Yeah, that's today and tomorrow, so the last two days
of it. So if you're out there shopping for that
vehicle right now and you're working that car deal and
you're getting dead where it's you know, decision making time,
and you know you just need that little bit of
extra to help you make that final decision. How you know,
run by Walmart or Target or you know one of

(30:54):
the one of the toy stores, the one over and
just you know, bring that toy in and get that
little bit extra month.

Speaker 4 (31:01):
I can't be dead. No, yeah, that's a good deal.

Speaker 5 (31:05):
If you even if you're not and even if you're
not shopping for a car right now, to you, if
you don't need service and you just want to help out, hey, please,
you know, bring those toys up here and let's see,
you know, let's try to make this the biggest toy.

Speaker 4 (31:18):
Drive we've ever had.

Speaker 5 (31:19):
And this is at all seven of the Strawb locations. Okay,
for the folks listening over in the Britshport, West Virginia
market over at Mountaineer, which, believe it or not, your
signal is pretty strong over there.

Speaker 6 (31:30):
We like that. We like to hear that.

Speaker 5 (31:31):
I know, I listened to it all the way there
when I make that drive. So you know, bring those
toys in and try to help out. You know, the
kids that you know might not have the best Christmas
ever and hopefully you can be a part of making
their day a lot brighter.

Speaker 4 (31:46):
Yep, yep, absolutely, yep.

Speaker 6 (31:47):
It's all about the kids, buddy, it is, man, all right,
it is for sure. Hey, well you can let us
know how it goes tomorrow.

Speaker 4 (31:53):
How's that.

Speaker 5 (31:54):
I well, we wrap it up tomorrow evening and I
think we do the final I think we have something
on it next week where media comes out. I think
we have a media day one day next week, so
we'll be able to kind of say, you want, we'll
see which you know, which rooftop one and see how
many toys you picked up.

Speaker 6 (32:11):
Sounds good. I'll keep you all right, we'll talk tomorrow.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
Wonderful, all right, guys.

Speaker 6 (32:16):
Merry Christmas. There he goes Kevin Cook.

Speaker 3 (32:19):
There's something.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
Just fun about participating in a toy drive. No, absolutely,
I mean we we did the big celebration luncheon yesterday
for Operation Toy Lift that we're a part of, and
it's so I mean, it's great. It's so much fun
to give as an adult. But what is also fun?
There were so many adults walking around some of the

(32:42):
toys that were brought yesterday, watching watching their.

Speaker 3 (32:48):
Faces light up. Oh did you see this?

Speaker 2 (32:50):
Look how cool this toy is. We didn't have toys
like that when I was a kid, you know, and
I have the fun.

Speaker 6 (32:56):
In buying toys for your own kids. This is fun.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
Yeah, you progress back to your you know, ten year
old self.

Speaker 3 (33:04):
So that was fun yesterday. What's also fun? You want
to do? What you want to do? Ice cream? Right now?

Speaker 4 (33:08):
Sure?

Speaker 3 (33:08):
Okay, give me a number we have we have let
me see her.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
We have twenty three one through twenty three.

Speaker 6 (33:16):
Well, let's just do it in the number generator. Okay,
but let me get there real quick, and we're also
going to be giving away be or the Taylor family Christmas. Yes,
would you say twenty three? Yes, So that's going to
be coming up very shortly, as soon as probably as
soon as we're done with ice cream number twenty number.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
Twenty, Okay that is Mike, Mike, I will be getting
a hold of you after the show about the ice cream.

Speaker 6 (33:44):
And you know, I don't know if you know this
or not. Power Ball was not hit last night, so
now it's worth Now it's worth one billion dollars. Yeah,
so it's going to roll over to Saturday's drawing and
the two dollars Parwaball tea. It could be worth a
billion bucks before.

Speaker 3 (34:02):
Tax, before tax, it all before taxes.

Speaker 6 (34:05):
Whoever wins can choose the entire amount over thirty installments,
or take the one time cash amount of about four
hundred and sixty Miliyeah.

Speaker 3 (34:16):
That's a stocking stuffer.

Speaker 4 (34:17):
Give it to me over the thirty.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
Maybe we should buy each other a Powerball ticket for Christmas.

Speaker 6 (34:21):
That's fine. I mean, if you that's what you're buying
for Christmas at two dollars a pop, then you're a
little cheap.

Speaker 4 (34:28):
You gotta buy at.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
Least five ten I mean that's not a bad no.

Speaker 6 (34:33):
I mean, I get it. I mean it's still a nice,
nice gesture. It's the thought that counts. It's not the finale,
you know.

Speaker 3 (34:40):
Yeah, so well, they also say that you shouldn't.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
My mom buys us lottery tickets every year for Christmas.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
We never win. My brother always wins. We never win.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
So okay, so let's do it one eight hundred six
too for eleven seventy one eight hundred six two four
eleven seventy for a tailor fan only Christmas pair tickets
one in hundred sixty two four eleven seventy. Let's go
a little bit higher this time. Caller number eighteen, caller
number eighteen, one in hundred sixty two, four eleven seventy.

(35:14):
We're done for today. Don't forget tomorrow. We're gonna go
a little historic. We're gonna go back in time. Reminisce
about the High Valley. Mall can't wait for tomorrow's show.
We'll talk to you then,