November 26, 2024 • 33 mins
Traveling for the holidays/ Lonely Senior Americans living alone. Downtown Los Angeles skyscraper loses 2/3 of value and Elon Musk on working remotely. Remarkable global progress: HIV cases and death declining/ health crisis. Masamitsu Yoshioka, Last Pearl Harbor Bombardier. Doug and Tim spent Labor Day together in 1994. Goodbye history, the importance to talk cultural events to keep the history alive.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's k I AM six forty and you're listening to
the Conway Show on demand on the iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
App kf IM six forty live everywhere in the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Dog Maagutary in for Tim Conway Junior.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Tim mayll be back after the holiday is over, Moe
Kelly at seven o'clock and it's a birthday boy, Mo
Kelly his birthday to day. We're here for the remainder
of this hour. Will be back tomorrow as well, and
then I will release you back to your regular K
five programming.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
In the meantime.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Lots to talk about this hour, including I have genuinely
good news we will get into, and a kind of
interesting historical milestone that I noticed that we'll talk about.
Elon Musk wants you to go back to the office,
and he may be able to force you since he's
got the President's ear, so we'll we'll get into that
in just a bit. I saw the story in the
La Daily News couple maybe about a week and a
(00:54):
half ago, and I flagged it because it's pretty interesting.
I went through both My parents are no longer with us,
but as they aged, they were living in assisted facility
assisted living facilities, and we were fortunate to be able
to do that for them otherwise. You know, my mother,
(01:15):
she outlived her her husband by a number of years,
and she would have been living three thousand miles away alone.
My brothers passed away, and my sister lived about seventy
five miles away from my mother and had to you know,
hop in the car and drive over a bunch of
bridges to get to my mom every time something went wrong,
(01:35):
which was unfortunately happening within increasing frequency. So we made
the decision that she really had to go into an
assisted living facility, and unfortunately, my sister found a really
nice place close to her and could see her on
an almost daily basis, so there was real contact maintained there.
But this new study says that sixteen million Americans are
(01:57):
living alone while growing older, and that this has jumped
significantly since nineteen fifty and nineteen fifty one in ten
older Americans were living on their own and now nearly
four and ten seniors are living alone. And of course
this becomes a huge problem for people. I mean, it
(02:18):
comes in age, comes in on muffled doors, it really does.
It just sneaks up on you like a cat. You know,
in the darken night where you're living your life, you're
not thinking about it, say okay, I see some gray hairs,
maybe a couple of wrinkles here and there, or maybe
you say oof a lot when you're bending over or
when you're getting out of the car. You know, twenty
somethings don't say oof when they get out of a chair.
(02:40):
That's always It's like, my house sounds like a calliope
anytime my wife and I are moving around.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
It's anyway.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
But all of a sudden you start to realize that boy,
when you drive at night, you don't see as well
as you used to or not hearing.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Is the TV is really loud? You know we all had.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
If you live in an apartment building, you know that
that old person down the hall, everybody in the building
can hear what they're watching. You can hear you know,
you can hear Jeopardy questions from three doors down because
they've got the TV so loud, because they have some
hearing loss. All this stuff comes over time. Young people
don't think this is going to happen to them. They
see those adult diaper commercials, and everybody does. Everybody in
(03:23):
their twenties makes depends jokes. Nobody in their seventies makes
depends jokes. Right, it stops being real funny, real fast.
But that's and I think that's why so many kids
are like a scared of Grandma and grandpa, you know,
because it's like foreshadowing. They don't know why it's scary.
They just know that something's happening to them that they
(03:46):
don't want to have happened to them, you know. But age,
if you're lucky enough, you grow old. But it is
significantly harder when you grow old alone, and things can happen,
Like every time I get sick and I get you know,
I'm such a baby when I get sill, like all
men are babies when we get sick. But if I
get the flu, and I think about, man, if I'm
(04:06):
alone and I'm burning up with one hundred and two fever,
I could barely get out of bed. And you're alone.
And now you're eighty and you're alone, and you've got
one hundred and two fever. And this happens all too frequently.
And of course, you know the old days when neighbors
were involved in each other's lives, maybe too much, perhaps,
But right now we're very very really, I know. Sebastian
(04:28):
Manakawska does a very funny bit on this about when
people used to come to the door at your house.
You go, hey, how are you, Charlie, come on in,
And now it's like the doorbell rings and we treated
like it's a home invasion. It's like, what the hell
is somebody doing in my house? How dare they ring
the darbell? This is my this is my personal sanctuary.
So we don't interact very When I lived in New York,
(04:49):
I lived on East fifty ninth Street, and I literally
I was there for two years in that building.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
I met my next door neighbor. The day I moved out,
I knew.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
There was so I could hear somebody moving around through
the wall. Never met that person, that made no effort
to meet that person.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
And then the day I.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Moved out, there was a woman holding the door of
the elevator, was a little lugging my crap down to
the curb, and I said, oh, yeah, yeah, I live here.
Go oh, I live right next to you. And by
the way, she never knocked on my door either. So
as a result, we it's very easy to become isolated.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
And now that we live digital lives.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
We have maybe a communion with other people, but it's
not in actual physical contact. And this, as people start
to have difficulties, can really be a problem.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
And you know, we all you know, don't understand.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Well, why is it that seniors are always being falling
victim to scams? Every It seems like every third story
on the news is about some new telescam, some kind
of digital scam. Well, the world continues to move on
and new technology comes along and it leaves them behind it.
Earlier on the show, if you listened in earlier, I
(06:00):
went to a McDonald's here in Burbank before I came
in and I had to leave because I didn't know
how to work the kiosk. And I felt like, this
is a real this is really embarrassing because now I'm
that person.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
It's McDonald's.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
I've been eating there for sixty years and I couldn't
figure out how to work the kiosk. And that's where
the big sign start your order at the kiosk. I said, well,
I don't have time to keep hitting the wrong screen
and the wrong so I'm becoming that person. So I
know it's just a matter of time before some you
know email comes in and I give my life savings
(06:36):
to Nigerians.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
I said, yeah, I'm hip to the Nigerians, Nigerian scammers.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
But something else will come along that I won't be
hip to, and I'm gonna handle. This is why my wife,
by the way, gives me none of the passwords to
any of our accounts. She knows, she knows far too
well to trust me with any of that stuff. So
it's pretty fascinating. And you know, one of the things
we can do is if you have an older neighbor
(07:05):
is knock on the door and introduce yourself if you
have never met that person. You know, A bunch of
years ago before, I was living in Burbank actually, and
I was living on and I'll do this now. I
was living on Lamer Street in Burbank. And where is
Lamer Street located. It's located right between Lame and lame
As Street. So I was in an apartment there and
(07:27):
there was an elderly man who lived below me, very
sweet guy. He passed me in the hallway one time
and he showed me pictures of his dead wife who
was grieving for endlessly. And I would listen to him,
and I thought it's very sweet. But that was the
extent of my relationship with him. And then one day
(07:48):
I came home and there were cops downstairs and he
was dead on the floor. And I still feel bad
about it, even though it's twenty five years ago, because
you know, maybe if I had been more in tune,
I could checked on him or something. And I don't
know how long he was dead on the floor, but
a lot of people end up dead on the floor
because there's nobody to check on them, and they become isolated.
(08:11):
And it's very easy to do when you're older and
you don't have your gang anymore.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
You don't have your gang.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
And by the way, because especially in California, a lot
of people moved to California from someplace else. It could
be another state, it could be another country, and it's
very easy for them to be completely isolated in their dotage.
And as a result, it would be a great act
of compassion if you see that you have somebody in
(08:37):
your orbit, in your immediate vicinity who might be isolated,
just say hello, give them a phone number, and say hey,
if you need some help, get into the doctor, getting
home from a doctor, you need medicine, when you're sick,
you need some night quil so you can sleep through
the rest of the night. Little things like that. The
numbers have accelerated, and it's particularly a little old lady problem.
(09:00):
After age seventy five, forty three percent of women live alone,
compared with only twenty four percent for men, and that's
largely because men have the decency to die. That doesn't
sound very compassionate, but nonetheless that's my out.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
You're listening to Tim Conway Junior on demand from KFI
Am six forty.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
In a bit, I'll tell you some actual, genuine good
news from the news, which we don't get that much
that frequently. And Mo Kelly coming up at seven o'clock.
So Elon Musk, you know Elon Musk and Vivic Remaswami.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Remember that guy ran for president, nobody voted for him.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Well, he and Musk have been picked by Donald Trump
to be in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency.
And one of the things that they say is that
they want to cut two trillion dollars from the federal budget. Now,
how they going to do that is going to take
some real well I don't know if it's going to
be surgical or just take a battle acts and just
(10:02):
start whacking away. But one of the ways that I
think Elon wants to identify who should be fired from
the federal government is to make them come back to work,
because he wrote, actually, the two of them, vivik Ramaswami
and Mosque co authored an op ed in the Wall
Street Journal that said he wants they want federal employees
(10:24):
back in the office five days a week, and that
if they don't want to do it, this will start
a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome. If federal
employees don't want to show up, American taxpayer shouldn't pay
them for the COVID error privilege of staying home. Now,
this is going to be a flashpoint for a lot
(10:45):
of people, not just for federal workers, but for private
sector workers. And we're seeing it in some companies where
they're requiring people to come back into the office.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Amazon is one of them.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Not in the warehouses and things like that we always
had to be, but in the big office buildings filled
with Amazon bureaucrats, they want people back in the office.
And we'll follow up on this tomorrow because there's kind
of an amazing story that in downtown Los Angeles skyscrapers
have lost two thirds of their value. Why because nobody
(11:16):
wants to work in a skyscraper anymore. They're not filling
up the offices with employees. Everybody's working remotely. So why
in the world are companies paying for these giant, expensive
buildings And the building owners are going to have to
address that. In fact, a lot of them you're going
to start to see converted into living space because this
might be a solution to the housing crisis. But the
(11:40):
demand of employees versus there are requirements of employers. Employees
right now have an upper hand because you talk to
anybody who's trying to fill vacancies in their staff and
they have a tremendous difficulty finding people who can do
the I mean, look at KFI.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
They got me, all right, that's a cry for help.
But one of the.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Perks of this have that employees have been able to
leverage ideal working conditions for them. For folks who have
childcare issues, working from home and working remotely has been
a blessing. Some people like to stay home in their
pajamas with their pets. Oh, they really like it. It's
a great lifestyle. And you know, to quote actually one
(12:27):
of my favorite Tim Conway junior quotes when I was
working with them decades ago in Canada on Boogie's Diner,
this terrible show we were working on. God we had
fun though, but we're working on this show up in Canada,
and Conway had an office in the studio, but he
also worked from the apartment that we were living in.
And Tim coin a phrase that I've always remembered. He said,
(12:49):
if there's two places you could be, there's a third neither.
And that was usually the track, which is where mister
Conway spent a lot of his time. But that's one
of the things that goes on with remote working, that yeah,
you're working, but you could also be at the dog
park with one of those things that flings a tennis
ball while Barfie runs off and chases it, or whatever
(13:12):
you're doing. Some people like to be at the beach,
some people like to be wherever. But now the ogre
the man is dropping the hammer. If you're a federal employee,
you got all musk coming in here saying, look, I
fired eighty percent of the people who work to Twitter.
I won't hesitate to fire eighty percent of the people
a department of education if not one hundred percent. And
(13:36):
one of the ways that they may try to get
people to just quit is to make them come back
into the office. Now. I gotta be honest with you.
I noticed that John cobbol comes in here every day.
He came in every single day during COVID.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
I like going in.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
I like going to the radio station because here's the thing.
When you're actually in the radio station, you get to
go through all the sales guy's desk drawers and see
what they're taking because they're all especially when you work overnights.
I worked overnights or mornings for years. They just go
through their drawers and say, oh, there's some of those
pink pills. Those are good. But you know, you kind
of get to get all the gossip and you get
(14:09):
to feel like you're part of something. I don't, you know,
I don't want to hang around the house all day.
My wife begged me, beg me to please go to
home depot and get a job. Put that orange apron on,
get out of my life, please, because you see what
I'm here.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
She can turn me off. When I'm home.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
I got all that yaking and she can't stop it.
But you know, this is going This is a genuine
thing COVID. This was a COVID reality. But years before COVID,
we used to talk about telecommuting, and this was one
of the reasons why, Oh, we didn't need to build
more highways or a mass transit because in the future,
(14:47):
everybody's going to be working from home. Well, in some
cases that's absolutely true, but I gotta tell you, I'm
not convinced that career wise, it's the best thing for
you to be working remotely because out of sight, out
of mind, and when the broom comes. When that when
corporate says, lose three hundred people and no one's ever
(15:08):
met you, no one's ever seen the picture of your
kids on your desk, it's a lot easier to fire
you than it is the person that they've actually interacted with.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
So I don't know. It's it's a changing landscape.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
I think remote working is always going to be with us,
but there's going to be pushback, and it's coming from
the federal government, and it's going to be coming from
the Trump people, mostly as a way to find out
who they can fire.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
You're listening to Tim Conway Junior on demand from KFI
AM six forty and.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
We talked about Zeppa today. Tomorrow we'll talk about Shimp
so Stooge fans. Oh what a dream day that will
be Shimp Talk. You're on kfive, So the fourteenth Daniel
Kfi Pastathon is here. Chef Bruno's charity, Katerina's Club, provides
more than twenty five thousand meals every week to kids
in need in Southern California. Your generosity makes it all happen,
(16:02):
and there's three ways to help. You can donate now
at cafim six forty dot com, Forward Slash Pastathon, shop
at any Smart and Final store and donate any amount
at checkout. Head into any Wendy's restaurant in Southern California,
donate five dollars or more and get a coupon book
for Wendy's Goodies. Cafe I's All Day Live broadcast from
the Anaheim White House will be on Giving Tuesday, That
(16:25):
is December third, Tuesday next Come on out see everybody
from five to ten pm and donate on site and
drop off pasta or sauce donations. One percent of your
donation goes to Katarina's Club. It's a great charity. It's
a great thing to do. This is a pretty great story.
So many news stories are just awful. I mean they're
(16:47):
just with nuclear saber rattling in Europe and just wars
and just you know, terrible stuff, all the political haserai.
But here's a story that gives one hope. The number
of new HIV infections and deaths has fallen across the world,
marking significant progress in the fight against that disease. During
(17:11):
the twenty tens, a number of HIV infections across the
world declined by a fifth. According to the lands At
HIV Journal, Deaths related to HIV, which are generally caused
by other diseases, during late stages of AIDS, fell by
about forty percent to below a million a year now.
The improving rates are particularly a significant in Sub Saharan Africa,
(17:32):
which was by far the hardest hit region in the
entire global pandemic.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
It didn't go down everywhere for whatever reason.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
In Eastern Europe and in the Middle East, HIV numbers
are still increasing, but the world has made remarkable global
progress to significantly reduce the number of new HIV infections.
According to a new study that came out from the
Institute of Health metrics and evaluation. More than a million
people acquire a NEWV infection each year, and of the
(17:59):
forty million people living the HIV, a quarter are not
receiving treatment. So there's still a lot of work to
be done, but progress, and really remarkable progress has been made,
and that's obviously a really good thing, you know, despite
the fact this is one of the.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
I think it's one.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Of the saddest aspects of today's world that, yes, there's
a war in Ukraine, and there's terrible things happening in Gaza,
and the October seventh attext into Israel, that massacre that
took place, and all the troubles there, and there's spots
around the world that are still bubble up, and you know,
(18:41):
you can read about these things you go, oh my god,
it seems horrible, But this is the truth. The world
has actually never been more peaceful. I know that that's
hard to swallow that, but it's really true. I mean,
my parents were born in the early nineteen thirties, and well,
(19:02):
my father's born in thirty one, my mother's born in
thirty two, and in their lifetime they went through the
Great Depression, the dust Bowl, World War two, and the
worst of the Cold War, and even though we went
through Vietnam and things like that, the Boomers generation and
there were lots of people killed. Who are fifty thousand
(19:24):
Americans killed in ten years of war and we don't
know how many Vietnamese were killed and people in Cambodi, etc.
So nothing compared to one year of World War two.
Don't even want to go before World War two into
the death toll from World War One followed by the
Spanish flu pandemic that killed might have been one hundred
(19:45):
and fifty million people, all right, one hundred and fifty
million people.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Just staggering.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
And that's just where we're talking about mass wipeouts from
disease and war. I'm not even talking about the difficulty
of what like to be alive in an earlier time
and when you read history and you get into the
nuts and bolts, the nitty gritty of how people actually lived,
and we're complaining about we're raising people to think. And
(20:14):
part of this is because you know, advocates for various causes,
as well intended as they might be, whether it's climate
change or AIDS prevention or stuff like that, but what
you do is we've ended up terrifying younger people into
thinking that their life is ruined, that we have screwed
the pooch, to use an astronaut's term about a rocket
(20:35):
that explodes, and the world is a terrible place. And
it's exactly the opposite. That life expectancy has soared, even
despite the fact that we're fatter than we've ever been
and we've got fentanyl in all these kinds of ways
that were often ourselves in school shootings, and guess what,
(20:56):
we're still living longer.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
It did dip a bit during COVID.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Because a million people got wiped out from that disease
before we got a handle on it with the vaccines.
But the bottom line is that human existence has accelerated.
Starvation has almost been totally eliminated. We now have an
obesity problem. We went the other way. Where there is famine,
it's almost always political. It's because some military junta or
(21:25):
gang is holding the food supply hostage to wipe out
their enemies. This was actually a weapon of war, a
tactic of war that was taught by the Soviet Union,
mostly in Africa. It was using famine as a weapon
of war. Stalin starved the Kulaks to death by the
(21:45):
millions in the nineteen thirties in Russia. He wanted to
collectivize the land. The problem was the farmers were attached
to the land. It was, you know, for centuries, their
family land that they work. So the one way to
collectivise it was to kill the farmers. They starve them
to death. They starved the farmers to death, send soldiers
(22:06):
in to collect all the seeds and literally cart them
off as they died by the millions. So you know,
that tactic of using famine as a weapon was taught,
and it was. Unfortunately, it's still practiced in some corners
of the world, much less so than it used to be.
But we've largely beaten the supply chain. Now can get
(22:28):
food to people where it's needed, and if anything, we're
getting too much of it. I know this week is
a tough time to talk about that because there's going
to be several pies in front of me on Thursday.
Somebody might want to step on that food supply put
a kink in that hose as a chocolate pudding pie
comes my way for the third time.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
But we really do.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
If you talk to you know, you talk to younger
people and a lot of people, Well, we had this
conversation earlier. A lot of people are choosing not to
have kids because they think they can't afford them and
or it's bad for the earth. You know, kids pull oute,
don't bring more people in. They're gonna buy things, they're
gonna just you know, they're gonna be more plastic in
(23:14):
the ocean. And yes, that's a problem. There's too much
plastic in the ocean. And you know something, we can
absolutely solve that problem if we decide to. It's a
totally solvable problem. It really is. There's five major rivers,
two in China, three in Africa, and eighty percent of
(23:34):
the plastic that ends up in the ocean comes from
these five rivers. And we know what the rivers are.
It's not like we got to look at the map
and start going river by river. We know which ones
they are and they can be dealt with. And there
are people out there that are figuring out how to
scoop the plastic out of the oceans, and blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
These things are solvable.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
So that's and that's why I wanted to do the
HIV story because we're making progress on these things and
maybe they don't get. For some reason, bad news is
the only news we seem to spark to that that's
what gets our attention, whereas good news a lot of
time we just like, oh that's you know McIntyre being Pollyanna. Well,
I've accused of many many things in life. Being Pollyanna
(24:16):
is not one of them, because I generally see the
world as life as the glass is half empty and
it's cracked and I'm gonna get shards in my gums.
So I'm not a Pollyanna person. But objectively, when you
read history, it's one of the things that is so
invaluable about it is that it not only gives you
some channel markers for what might happen or how you
(24:36):
can react in certain circumstances, but it also gives you
a context and perspective on how we're living now, because
you know, I see a lot of people grousing about
their lives. And aren't you driving a Lexus? Don't you
have leather seats and dual climate control? Don't you have
a pool at your house and someone else cleans it?
(24:58):
If you got somebody clean your pool, life is pretty cushy.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
I mean it really is.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
I mean it's just it's just simple things like look
out the window. Have you got a homeless encampment across
from your place? That's not so great, And if you're
living in the homeless camp, it's even worse. But for
the vast majority of the billions, we're doing okay, especially
if you're blessed enough to live in the United States
(25:26):
of America. I mean, it's it's pretty sweet. That's why
all those people are walking across the Sonoran Desert. They're
trying to get in here through any means necessary, because
it's better here. It's just better, you know. I mean,
we need to have border protection.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
You can't.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
You can't having keep having people who have nothing pouring
in by the millions, literally, because that puts downward pressure
on the people who are struggling. You got poor people
competing with even poor people. But the bottom line is
it's also a reminder that if you go to other countries,
there's a line around the block at the US Consulate
(26:06):
to get visa applications. You know, whether it's not go
to the Russian embassy or go to the North Korean embassy.
There's no lines to get to get a visa application
at the North Korean embassy. I promise you that you
know they don't want to get that pajama boy haircut anyway.
(26:27):
That's as good as I can get to being positive
on when you're stuck in traffic. You know, it's the
best I can do.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
You're listening to Tim conwaytunire on demand from KFI Am sixty.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Mo Kelly coming up in just a few minutes on
his birthday. Look at that. Unlike Deborah Mark, he came
to work on his birthday. Deborah Mark was home just
stuffing herself with cake. She didn't bring us any exactly.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
You know. I was just talking about history last segment.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
And one of the things I always these stories they
show up in the paper, they always jump out at
me because I just think they're profound in their own
odd little way. But this could just be me. Rest
of you may think what a geek this guy is.
But I saw this piece in the La Deily News
quite a while ago. Now a couple of weeks ago
that Masa Meetsu Yoki Hoka yoshi Oka has died and
(27:26):
he was one hundred and six years old.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Now that's a life.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Huh, one hundred and six years and why is in
the paper because he is the last known Japanese attacker
of Pearl Harbor. He was one of the seven hundred
and seventy airmen who attacked the US fleet at Pearl
Harbor on December seventh, nineteen forty one.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
He was not a pilot. He was a bombadier.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
He was a twenty three year old bomba deer dropped
a torpedo that helps sink the battleship Utah. And he
rarely spoke publicly about the fifteen minutes of Pearl Harbor
that he spent on that day of infamy. And when asked,
he did an interview I guess last year in Japan
and said, I'm ashamed that I'm the only one who
(28:10):
survived and lived such a long life. He also was
asked if he'd ever gone to Pearl Harbor, and he hadn't,
and he said, I wouldn't know what to say. If
I could go, I would like to I would like
to visit the graves of the men who died. I
would like to pay my deepest respects. And he went
through the whole war. By the way, he didn't end
up as a Kamakazi pilot because the plane his plane
(28:33):
was grounded because of a shortage of spare parts. So
that's how he made it to one hundred and six.
But you know, by the way, speaking of history and kamakazis,
one of the reasons that the kama Kazis flew into
the ships is the cockpits were welded closed, so you
couldn't get out of the plane once you went off,
so you pretty much had no choice but to go down.
(28:55):
But I mentioned this because when I was a kid,
you know, and I look back on it now. When
I was born twelve years after World War Two ended,
and my uncle Jack Reed, who lived near my grandparents.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
He was an Ebo Jima vet and my.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Cousin Dennis said, we used to play in the backyard.
We'd play army Man, except we'd use actual stuff from
the battle. We had Japanese swords, and I remember my
uncle Jack getting so madness. We had a couple of
Samurai swords who were running around the backyard. Give me nos,
We're twelve years old, you know, like you know, someone's
losing an arm here you go down the block at
Joe Ledeger had helmets that he got from you know,
(29:31):
dead Nazis.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
So World War two was very real to me. It
was very real.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
We were living surrounded by people who were World War
Two veterans, who who would you know, come back from
that experience and had shaped their worldview.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
And now they're all going.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
They're going so fast, to so few of those battle
veterans of World War two. And like I said, there
are no more. All of the Arizona, the survivors of
the USS Arizona from December said, they're all gone. Now
there's nobody left on earth who remembers World War One.
They're all gone. I mean, it's one hundred and twenty
years ago now. In fact, you know, it's funny because
(30:10):
I'm sitting in for Timmy Tim and I spent Labor
Day in like nineteen ninety two or three, whatever year
the north Ridge earthquake was at his family's place up
in Erio on the Canadian side of Lake Erie. And
there was a guy who had a house next to
Tim's mom who was a Canadian World War One veteran,
(30:31):
and he was like ninety three when I talked to him.
He had been in the First Battle of the Psalm
in nineteen fifteen. And he rolled up and I spent
an hour talking to this guy, listening to him, really
and you know, he rolled up his sleeve to show
the scar that he had this huge zipper going down
where his arm was nearly severed from the rest of
(30:54):
his torso by a machine gun round in nineteen fifteen.
And I remember sitting there talking to him, and what
sticks them ahead is said, this is like talking to
a Civil War veteran. You know that this is so
in the past, and these guys are vanishing, you know,
a Canadian soldier, I mean the US didn't get into
(31:15):
that till nineteen seventeen. Was really nineteen eighteen by the
time any US serviceman really started to see action, but
he was a Canadian, so he was in it from
nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
All gone now, every one of them. And this is
a sobering thing to think.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
But someday the last of the nine to eleven people
will be gone. And by nine to eleven people I
mean us, I mean the people who saw nine to
eleven happen on their TVs and experienced what that was
like and looked up in the sky for three days
and there were no planes for the first time since
before the Wright Brothers because everything had been grounded, and
(31:51):
there will be nobody to tell what it was like
to the next generation of people or the generation after.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
And that's what happens.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Because you can study history and you can read it,
and you can now we have all this video and
you can watch it.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
You can get the horror.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
But there's still something about talking to somebody who lived
during that period of time that's magic. It's really a
magical experience to talk about somebody. And if you have
at Thanksgiving an opportunity to talk to your grandparents or
your dad or your mom and ask them these questions,
because I'll tell you when they're gone, they are gone,
(32:26):
and they take that stuff with them forever. I mentioned
earlier in the show that my mother died in twenty
twenty three, my dad a few years before, and now
all of those stories about growing up during the depression
and their experience are gone forever. They're gone forever. So
mister Yoshihoka, the last of the Japanese attackers on Pearl Harbor,
(32:50):
is gone, and there are very very few veterans left
who are at Pearl Harbor in a US uniform.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
That day Conway show on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
Now you can always hear us live on KFI AM
six forty four to seven pm Monday through Friday, and
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
It's k I AM six forty and you're listening to
the Conway Show on demand on the iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
App kf IM six forty live everywhere in the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Dog Maagutary in for Tim Conway Junior.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Tim mayll be back after the holiday is over, Moe
Kelly at seven o'clock and it's a birthday boy, Mo
Kelly his birthday to day. We're here for the remainder
of this hour. Will be back tomorrow as well, and
then I will release you back to your regular K
five programming.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
In the meantime.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Lots to talk about this hour, including I have genuinely
good news we will get into, and a kind of
interesting historical milestone that I noticed that we'll talk about.
Elon Musk wants you to go back to the office,
and he may be able to force you since he's
got the President's ear, so we'll we'll get into that
in just a bit. I saw the story in the
La Daily News couple maybe about a week and a
(00:54):
half ago, and I flagged it because it's pretty interesting.
I went through both My parents are no longer with us,
but as they aged, they were living in assisted facility
assisted living facilities, and we were fortunate to be able
to do that for them otherwise. You know, my mother,
(01:15):
she outlived her her husband by a number of years,
and she would have been living three thousand miles away alone.
My brothers passed away, and my sister lived about seventy
five miles away from my mother and had to you know,
hop in the car and drive over a bunch of
bridges to get to my mom every time something went wrong,
(01:35):
which was unfortunately happening within increasing frequency. So we made
the decision that she really had to go into an
assisted living facility, and unfortunately, my sister found a really
nice place close to her and could see her on
an almost daily basis, so there was real contact maintained there.
But this new study says that sixteen million Americans are
(01:57):
living alone while growing older, and that this has jumped
significantly since nineteen fifty and nineteen fifty one in ten
older Americans were living on their own and now nearly
four and ten seniors are living alone. And of course
this becomes a huge problem for people. I mean, it
(02:18):
comes in age, comes in on muffled doors, it really does.
It just sneaks up on you like a cat. You know,
in the darken night where you're living your life, you're
not thinking about it, say okay, I see some gray hairs,
maybe a couple of wrinkles here and there, or maybe
you say oof a lot when you're bending over or
when you're getting out of the car. You know, twenty
somethings don't say oof when they get out of a chair.
(02:40):
That's always It's like, my house sounds like a calliope
anytime my wife and I are moving around.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
It's anyway.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
But all of a sudden you start to realize that boy,
when you drive at night, you don't see as well
as you used to or not hearing.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Is the TV is really loud? You know we all had.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
If you live in an apartment building, you know that
that old person down the hall, everybody in the building
can hear what they're watching. You can hear you know,
you can hear Jeopardy questions from three doors down because
they've got the TV so loud, because they have some
hearing loss. All this stuff comes over time. Young people
don't think this is going to happen to them. They
see those adult diaper commercials, and everybody does. Everybody in
(03:23):
their twenties makes depends jokes. Nobody in their seventies makes
depends jokes. Right, it stops being real funny, real fast.
But that's and I think that's why so many kids
are like a scared of Grandma and grandpa, you know,
because it's like foreshadowing. They don't know why it's scary.
They just know that something's happening to them that they
(03:46):
don't want to have happened to them, you know. But age,
if you're lucky enough, you grow old. But it is
significantly harder when you grow old alone, and things can happen,
Like every time I get sick and I get you know,
I'm such a baby when I get sill, like all
men are babies when we get sick. But if I
get the flu, and I think about, man, if I'm
(04:06):
alone and I'm burning up with one hundred and two fever,
I could barely get out of bed. And you're alone.
And now you're eighty and you're alone, and you've got
one hundred and two fever. And this happens all too frequently.
And of course, you know the old days when neighbors
were involved in each other's lives, maybe too much, perhaps,
But right now we're very very really, I know. Sebastian
(04:28):
Manakawska does a very funny bit on this about when
people used to come to the door at your house.
You go, hey, how are you, Charlie, come on in,
And now it's like the doorbell rings and we treated
like it's a home invasion. It's like, what the hell
is somebody doing in my house? How dare they ring
the darbell? This is my this is my personal sanctuary.
So we don't interact very When I lived in New York,
(04:49):
I lived on East fifty ninth Street, and I literally
I was there for two years in that building.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
I met my next door neighbor. The day I moved out,
I knew.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
There was so I could hear somebody moving around through
the wall. Never met that person, that made no effort
to meet that person.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
And then the day I.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Moved out, there was a woman holding the door of
the elevator, was a little lugging my crap down to
the curb, and I said, oh, yeah, yeah, I live here.
Go oh, I live right next to you. And by
the way, she never knocked on my door either. So
as a result, we it's very easy to become isolated.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
And now that we live digital lives.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
We have maybe a communion with other people, but it's
not in actual physical contact. And this, as people start
to have difficulties, can really be a problem.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
And you know, we all you know, don't understand.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Well, why is it that seniors are always being falling
victim to scams? Every It seems like every third story
on the news is about some new telescam, some kind
of digital scam. Well, the world continues to move on
and new technology comes along and it leaves them behind it.
Earlier on the show, if you listened in earlier, I
(06:00):
went to a McDonald's here in Burbank before I came
in and I had to leave because I didn't know
how to work the kiosk. And I felt like, this
is a real this is really embarrassing because now I'm
that person.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
It's McDonald's.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
I've been eating there for sixty years and I couldn't
figure out how to work the kiosk. And that's where
the big sign start your order at the kiosk. I said, well,
I don't have time to keep hitting the wrong screen
and the wrong so I'm becoming that person. So I
know it's just a matter of time before some you
know email comes in and I give my life savings
(06:36):
to Nigerians.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
I said, yeah, I'm hip to the Nigerians, Nigerian scammers.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
But something else will come along that I won't be
hip to, and I'm gonna handle. This is why my wife,
by the way, gives me none of the passwords to
any of our accounts. She knows, she knows far too
well to trust me with any of that stuff. So
it's pretty fascinating. And you know, one of the things
we can do is if you have an older neighbor
(07:05):
is knock on the door and introduce yourself if you
have never met that person. You know, A bunch of
years ago before, I was living in Burbank actually, and
I was living on and I'll do this now. I
was living on Lamer Street in Burbank. And where is
Lamer Street located. It's located right between Lame and lame
As Street. So I was in an apartment there and
(07:27):
there was an elderly man who lived below me, very
sweet guy. He passed me in the hallway one time
and he showed me pictures of his dead wife who
was grieving for endlessly. And I would listen to him,
and I thought it's very sweet. But that was the
extent of my relationship with him. And then one day
(07:48):
I came home and there were cops downstairs and he
was dead on the floor. And I still feel bad
about it, even though it's twenty five years ago, because
you know, maybe if I had been more in tune,
I could checked on him or something. And I don't
know how long he was dead on the floor, but
a lot of people end up dead on the floor
because there's nobody to check on them, and they become isolated.
(08:11):
And it's very easy to do when you're older and
you don't have your gang anymore.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
You don't have your gang.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
And by the way, because especially in California, a lot
of people moved to California from someplace else. It could
be another state, it could be another country, and it's
very easy for them to be completely isolated in their dotage.
And as a result, it would be a great act
of compassion if you see that you have somebody in
(08:37):
your orbit, in your immediate vicinity who might be isolated,
just say hello, give them a phone number, and say hey,
if you need some help, get into the doctor, getting
home from a doctor, you need medicine, when you're sick,
you need some night quil so you can sleep through
the rest of the night. Little things like that. The
numbers have accelerated, and it's particularly a little old lady problem.
(09:00):
After age seventy five, forty three percent of women live alone,
compared with only twenty four percent for men, and that's
largely because men have the decency to die. That doesn't
sound very compassionate, but nonetheless that's my out.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
You're listening to Tim Conway Junior on demand from KFI
Am six forty.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
In a bit, I'll tell you some actual, genuine good
news from the news, which we don't get that much
that frequently. And Mo Kelly coming up at seven o'clock.
So Elon Musk, you know Elon Musk and Vivic Remaswami.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Remember that guy ran for president, nobody voted for him.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Well, he and Musk have been picked by Donald Trump
to be in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency.
And one of the things that they say is that
they want to cut two trillion dollars from the federal budget. Now,
how they going to do that is going to take
some real well I don't know if it's going to
be surgical or just take a battle acts and just
(10:02):
start whacking away. But one of the ways that I
think Elon wants to identify who should be fired from
the federal government is to make them come back to work,
because he wrote, actually, the two of them, vivik Ramaswami
and Mosque co authored an op ed in the Wall
Street Journal that said he wants they want federal employees
(10:24):
back in the office five days a week, and that
if they don't want to do it, this will start
a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome. If federal
employees don't want to show up, American taxpayer shouldn't pay
them for the COVID error privilege of staying home. Now,
this is going to be a flashpoint for a lot
(10:45):
of people, not just for federal workers, but for private
sector workers. And we're seeing it in some companies where
they're requiring people to come back into the office.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Amazon is one of them.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Not in the warehouses and things like that we always
had to be, but in the big office buildings filled
with Amazon bureaucrats, they want people back in the office.
And we'll follow up on this tomorrow because there's kind
of an amazing story that in downtown Los Angeles skyscrapers
have lost two thirds of their value. Why because nobody
(11:16):
wants to work in a skyscraper anymore. They're not filling
up the offices with employees. Everybody's working remotely. So why
in the world are companies paying for these giant, expensive
buildings And the building owners are going to have to
address that. In fact, a lot of them you're going
to start to see converted into living space because this
might be a solution to the housing crisis. But the
(11:40):
demand of employees versus there are requirements of employers. Employees
right now have an upper hand because you talk to
anybody who's trying to fill vacancies in their staff and
they have a tremendous difficulty finding people who can do
the I mean, look at KFI.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
They got me, all right, that's a cry for help.
But one of the.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Perks of this have that employees have been able to
leverage ideal working conditions for them. For folks who have
childcare issues, working from home and working remotely has been
a blessing. Some people like to stay home in their
pajamas with their pets. Oh, they really like it. It's
a great lifestyle. And you know, to quote actually one
(12:27):
of my favorite Tim Conway junior quotes when I was
working with them decades ago in Canada on Boogie's Diner,
this terrible show we were working on. God we had
fun though, but we're working on this show up in Canada,
and Conway had an office in the studio, but he
also worked from the apartment that we were living in.
And Tim coin a phrase that I've always remembered. He said,
(12:49):
if there's two places you could be, there's a third neither.
And that was usually the track, which is where mister
Conway spent a lot of his time. But that's one
of the things that goes on with remote working, that yeah,
you're working, but you could also be at the dog
park with one of those things that flings a tennis
ball while Barfie runs off and chases it, or whatever
(13:12):
you're doing. Some people like to be at the beach,
some people like to be wherever. But now the ogre
the man is dropping the hammer. If you're a federal employee,
you got all musk coming in here saying, look, I
fired eighty percent of the people who work to Twitter.
I won't hesitate to fire eighty percent of the people
a department of education if not one hundred percent. And
(13:36):
one of the ways that they may try to get
people to just quit is to make them come back
into the office. Now. I gotta be honest with you.
I noticed that John cobbol comes in here every day.
He came in every single day during COVID.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
I like going in.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
I like going to the radio station because here's the thing.
When you're actually in the radio station, you get to
go through all the sales guy's desk drawers and see
what they're taking because they're all especially when you work overnights.
I worked overnights or mornings for years. They just go
through their drawers and say, oh, there's some of those
pink pills. Those are good. But you know, you kind
of get to get all the gossip and you get
(14:09):
to feel like you're part of something. I don't, you know,
I don't want to hang around the house all day.
My wife begged me, beg me to please go to
home depot and get a job. Put that orange apron on,
get out of my life, please, because you see what
I'm here.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
She can turn me off. When I'm home.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
I got all that yaking and she can't stop it.
But you know, this is going This is a genuine
thing COVID. This was a COVID reality. But years before COVID,
we used to talk about telecommuting, and this was one
of the reasons why, Oh, we didn't need to build
more highways or a mass transit because in the future,
(14:47):
everybody's going to be working from home. Well, in some
cases that's absolutely true, but I gotta tell you, I'm
not convinced that career wise, it's the best thing for
you to be working remotely because out of sight, out
of mind, and when the broom comes. When that when
corporate says, lose three hundred people and no one's ever
(15:08):
met you, no one's ever seen the picture of your
kids on your desk, it's a lot easier to fire
you than it is the person that they've actually interacted with.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
So I don't know. It's it's a changing landscape.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
I think remote working is always going to be with us,
but there's going to be pushback, and it's coming from
the federal government, and it's going to be coming from
the Trump people, mostly as a way to find out
who they can fire.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
You're listening to Tim Conway Junior on demand from KFI
AM six forty and.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
We talked about Zeppa today. Tomorrow we'll talk about Shimp
so Stooge fans. Oh what a dream day that will
be Shimp Talk. You're on kfive, So the fourteenth Daniel
Kfi Pastathon is here. Chef Bruno's charity, Katerina's Club, provides
more than twenty five thousand meals every week to kids
in need in Southern California. Your generosity makes it all happen,
(16:02):
and there's three ways to help. You can donate now
at cafim six forty dot com, Forward Slash Pastathon, shop
at any Smart and Final store and donate any amount
at checkout. Head into any Wendy's restaurant in Southern California,
donate five dollars or more and get a coupon book
for Wendy's Goodies. Cafe I's All Day Live broadcast from
the Anaheim White House will be on Giving Tuesday, That
(16:25):
is December third, Tuesday next Come on out see everybody
from five to ten pm and donate on site and
drop off pasta or sauce donations. One percent of your
donation goes to Katarina's Club. It's a great charity. It's
a great thing to do. This is a pretty great story.
So many news stories are just awful. I mean they're
(16:47):
just with nuclear saber rattling in Europe and just wars
and just you know, terrible stuff, all the political haserai.
But here's a story that gives one hope. The number
of new HIV infections and deaths has fallen across the world,
marking significant progress in the fight against that disease. During
(17:11):
the twenty tens, a number of HIV infections across the
world declined by a fifth. According to the lands At
HIV Journal, Deaths related to HIV, which are generally caused
by other diseases, during late stages of AIDS, fell by
about forty percent to below a million a year now.
The improving rates are particularly a significant in Sub Saharan Africa,
(17:32):
which was by far the hardest hit region in the
entire global pandemic.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
It didn't go down everywhere for whatever reason.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
In Eastern Europe and in the Middle East, HIV numbers
are still increasing, but the world has made remarkable global
progress to significantly reduce the number of new HIV infections.
According to a new study that came out from the
Institute of Health metrics and evaluation. More than a million
people acquire a NEWV infection each year, and of the
(17:59):
forty million people living the HIV, a quarter are not
receiving treatment. So there's still a lot of work to
be done, but progress, and really remarkable progress has been made,
and that's obviously a really good thing, you know, despite
the fact this is one of the.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
I think it's one.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Of the saddest aspects of today's world that, yes, there's
a war in Ukraine, and there's terrible things happening in Gaza,
and the October seventh attext into Israel, that massacre that
took place, and all the troubles there, and there's spots
around the world that are still bubble up, and you know,
(18:41):
you can read about these things you go, oh my god,
it seems horrible, But this is the truth. The world
has actually never been more peaceful. I know that that's
hard to swallow that, but it's really true. I mean,
my parents were born in the early nineteen thirties, and well,
(19:02):
my father's born in thirty one, my mother's born in
thirty two, and in their lifetime they went through the
Great Depression, the dust Bowl, World War two, and the
worst of the Cold War, and even though we went
through Vietnam and things like that, the Boomers generation and
there were lots of people killed. Who are fifty thousand
(19:24):
Americans killed in ten years of war and we don't
know how many Vietnamese were killed and people in Cambodi, etc.
So nothing compared to one year of World War two.
Don't even want to go before World War two into
the death toll from World War One followed by the
Spanish flu pandemic that killed might have been one hundred
(19:45):
and fifty million people, all right, one hundred and fifty
million people.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Just staggering.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
And that's just where we're talking about mass wipeouts from
disease and war. I'm not even talking about the difficulty
of what like to be alive in an earlier time
and when you read history and you get into the
nuts and bolts, the nitty gritty of how people actually lived,
and we're complaining about we're raising people to think. And
(20:14):
part of this is because you know, advocates for various causes,
as well intended as they might be, whether it's climate
change or AIDS prevention or stuff like that, but what
you do is we've ended up terrifying younger people into
thinking that their life is ruined, that we have screwed
the pooch, to use an astronaut's term about a rocket
(20:35):
that explodes, and the world is a terrible place. And
it's exactly the opposite. That life expectancy has soared, even
despite the fact that we're fatter than we've ever been
and we've got fentanyl in all these kinds of ways
that were often ourselves in school shootings, and guess what,
(20:56):
we're still living longer.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
It did dip a bit during COVID.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Because a million people got wiped out from that disease
before we got a handle on it with the vaccines.
But the bottom line is that human existence has accelerated.
Starvation has almost been totally eliminated. We now have an
obesity problem. We went the other way. Where there is famine,
it's almost always political. It's because some military junta or
(21:25):
gang is holding the food supply hostage to wipe out
their enemies. This was actually a weapon of war, a
tactic of war that was taught by the Soviet Union,
mostly in Africa. It was using famine as a weapon
of war. Stalin starved the Kulaks to death by the
(21:45):
millions in the nineteen thirties in Russia. He wanted to
collectivize the land. The problem was the farmers were attached
to the land. It was, you know, for centuries, their
family land that they work. So the one way to
collectivise it was to kill the farmers. They starve them
to death. They starved the farmers to death, send soldiers
(22:06):
in to collect all the seeds and literally cart them
off as they died by the millions. So you know,
that tactic of using famine as a weapon was taught,
and it was. Unfortunately, it's still practiced in some corners
of the world, much less so than it used to be.
But we've largely beaten the supply chain. Now can get
(22:28):
food to people where it's needed, and if anything, we're
getting too much of it. I know this week is
a tough time to talk about that because there's going
to be several pies in front of me on Thursday.
Somebody might want to step on that food supply put
a kink in that hose as a chocolate pudding pie
comes my way for the third time.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
But we really do.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
If you talk to you know, you talk to younger
people and a lot of people, Well, we had this
conversation earlier. A lot of people are choosing not to
have kids because they think they can't afford them and
or it's bad for the earth. You know, kids pull oute,
don't bring more people in. They're gonna buy things, they're
gonna just you know, they're gonna be more plastic in
(23:14):
the ocean. And yes, that's a problem. There's too much
plastic in the ocean. And you know something, we can
absolutely solve that problem if we decide to. It's a
totally solvable problem. It really is. There's five major rivers,
two in China, three in Africa, and eighty percent of
(23:34):
the plastic that ends up in the ocean comes from
these five rivers. And we know what the rivers are.
It's not like we got to look at the map
and start going river by river. We know which ones
they are and they can be dealt with. And there
are people out there that are figuring out how to
scoop the plastic out of the oceans, and blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
These things are solvable.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
So that's and that's why I wanted to do the
HIV story because we're making progress on these things and
maybe they don't get. For some reason, bad news is
the only news we seem to spark to that that's
what gets our attention, whereas good news a lot of
time we just like, oh that's you know McIntyre being Pollyanna. Well,
I've accused of many many things in life. Being Pollyanna
(24:16):
is not one of them, because I generally see the
world as life as the glass is half empty and
it's cracked and I'm gonna get shards in my gums.
So I'm not a Pollyanna person. But objectively, when you
read history, it's one of the things that is so
invaluable about it is that it not only gives you
some channel markers for what might happen or how you
(24:36):
can react in certain circumstances, but it also gives you
a context and perspective on how we're living now, because
you know, I see a lot of people grousing about
their lives. And aren't you driving a Lexus? Don't you
have leather seats and dual climate control? Don't you have
a pool at your house and someone else cleans it?
(24:58):
If you got somebody clean your pool, life is pretty cushy.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
I mean it really is.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
I mean it's just it's just simple things like look
out the window. Have you got a homeless encampment across
from your place? That's not so great, And if you're
living in the homeless camp, it's even worse. But for
the vast majority of the billions, we're doing okay, especially
if you're blessed enough to live in the United States
(25:26):
of America. I mean, it's it's pretty sweet. That's why
all those people are walking across the Sonoran Desert. They're
trying to get in here through any means necessary, because
it's better here. It's just better, you know. I mean,
we need to have border protection.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
You can't.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
You can't having keep having people who have nothing pouring
in by the millions, literally, because that puts downward pressure
on the people who are struggling. You got poor people
competing with even poor people. But the bottom line is
it's also a reminder that if you go to other countries,
there's a line around the block at the US Consulate
(26:06):
to get visa applications. You know, whether it's not go
to the Russian embassy or go to the North Korean embassy.
There's no lines to get to get a visa application
at the North Korean embassy. I promise you that you
know they don't want to get that pajama boy haircut anyway.
(26:27):
That's as good as I can get to being positive
on when you're stuck in traffic. You know, it's the
best I can do.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
You're listening to Tim conwaytunire on demand from KFI Am sixty.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Mo Kelly coming up in just a few minutes on
his birthday. Look at that. Unlike Deborah Mark, he came
to work on his birthday. Deborah Mark was home just
stuffing herself with cake. She didn't bring us any exactly.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
You know. I was just talking about history last segment.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
And one of the things I always these stories they
show up in the paper, they always jump out at
me because I just think they're profound in their own
odd little way. But this could just be me. Rest
of you may think what a geek this guy is.
But I saw this piece in the La Deily News
quite a while ago. Now a couple of weeks ago
that Masa Meetsu Yoki Hoka yoshi Oka has died and
(27:26):
he was one hundred and six years old.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Now that's a life.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Huh, one hundred and six years and why is in
the paper because he is the last known Japanese attacker
of Pearl Harbor. He was one of the seven hundred
and seventy airmen who attacked the US fleet at Pearl
Harbor on December seventh, nineteen forty one.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
He was not a pilot. He was a bombadier.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
He was a twenty three year old bomba deer dropped
a torpedo that helps sink the battleship Utah. And he
rarely spoke publicly about the fifteen minutes of Pearl Harbor
that he spent on that day of infamy. And when asked,
he did an interview I guess last year in Japan
and said, I'm ashamed that I'm the only one who
(28:10):
survived and lived such a long life. He also was
asked if he'd ever gone to Pearl Harbor, and he hadn't,
and he said, I wouldn't know what to say. If
I could go, I would like to I would like
to visit the graves of the men who died. I
would like to pay my deepest respects. And he went
through the whole war. By the way, he didn't end
up as a Kamakazi pilot because the plane his plane
(28:33):
was grounded because of a shortage of spare parts. So
that's how he made it to one hundred and six.
But you know, by the way, speaking of history and kamakazis,
one of the reasons that the kama Kazis flew into
the ships is the cockpits were welded closed, so you
couldn't get out of the plane once you went off,
so you pretty much had no choice but to go down.
(28:55):
But I mentioned this because when I was a kid,
you know, and I look back on it now. When
I was born twelve years after World War Two ended,
and my uncle Jack Reed, who lived near my grandparents.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
He was an Ebo Jima vet and my.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Cousin Dennis said, we used to play in the backyard.
We'd play army Man, except we'd use actual stuff from
the battle. We had Japanese swords, and I remember my
uncle Jack getting so madness. We had a couple of
Samurai swords who were running around the backyard. Give me nos,
We're twelve years old, you know, like you know, someone's
losing an arm here you go down the block at
Joe Ledeger had helmets that he got from you know,
(29:31):
dead Nazis.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
So World War two was very real to me. It
was very real.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
We were living surrounded by people who were World War
Two veterans, who who would you know, come back from
that experience and had shaped their worldview.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
And now they're all going.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
They're going so fast, to so few of those battle
veterans of World War two. And like I said, there
are no more. All of the Arizona, the survivors of
the USS Arizona from December said, they're all gone. Now
there's nobody left on earth who remembers World War One.
They're all gone. I mean, it's one hundred and twenty
years ago now. In fact, you know, it's funny because
(30:10):
I'm sitting in for Timmy Tim and I spent Labor
Day in like nineteen ninety two or three, whatever year
the north Ridge earthquake was at his family's place up
in Erio on the Canadian side of Lake Erie. And
there was a guy who had a house next to
Tim's mom who was a Canadian World War One veteran,
(30:31):
and he was like ninety three when I talked to him.
He had been in the First Battle of the Psalm
in nineteen fifteen. And he rolled up and I spent
an hour talking to this guy, listening to him, really
and you know, he rolled up his sleeve to show
the scar that he had this huge zipper going down
where his arm was nearly severed from the rest of
(30:54):
his torso by a machine gun round in nineteen fifteen.
And I remember sitting there talking to him, and what
sticks them ahead is said, this is like talking to
a Civil War veteran. You know that this is so
in the past, and these guys are vanishing, you know,
a Canadian soldier, I mean the US didn't get into
(31:15):
that till nineteen seventeen. Was really nineteen eighteen by the
time any US serviceman really started to see action, but
he was a Canadian, so he was in it from
nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
All gone now, every one of them. And this is
a sobering thing to think.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
But someday the last of the nine to eleven people
will be gone. And by nine to eleven people I
mean us, I mean the people who saw nine to
eleven happen on their TVs and experienced what that was
like and looked up in the sky for three days
and there were no planes for the first time since
before the Wright Brothers because everything had been grounded, and
(31:51):
there will be nobody to tell what it was like
to the next generation of people or the generation after.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
And that's what happens.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Because you can study history and you can read it,
and you can now we have all this video and
you can watch it.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
You can get the horror.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
But there's still something about talking to somebody who lived
during that period of time that's magic. It's really a
magical experience to talk about somebody. And if you have
at Thanksgiving an opportunity to talk to your grandparents or
your dad or your mom and ask them these questions,
because I'll tell you when they're gone, they are gone,
(32:26):
and they take that stuff with them forever. I mentioned
earlier in the show that my mother died in twenty
twenty three, my dad a few years before, and now
all of those stories about growing up during the depression
and their experience are gone forever. They're gone forever. So
mister Yoshihoka, the last of the Japanese attackers on Pearl Harbor,
(32:50):
is gone, and there are very very few veterans left
who are at Pearl Harbor in a US uniform.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
That day Conway show on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
Now you can always hear us live on KFI AM
six forty four to seven pm Monday through Friday, and
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
Tim Conway Jr. on Demand News
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