12.12: Velma Hagar Reflects on Past Christmases + Thanking Your Amazon Drivers and Star Wars Memorabilia

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I gotta tell you, I want to go back south
to Kabo Santa Lucas right now. As a matter of fact,
as we're looking at a snow covered Louisville, Kentucky from
a beach to this, people ask me all the time
because we go to Sammy Hagar's birthday party every single year.
Susan and I we celebrate our anniversary every single year

(00:20):
at his CANTEENA are you friends with Sammy Hagar? No,
never met the guy, but through fate somehow became friends
with his sister, Velma. I consider her a dear friend.
I consider her a role model influence on both me
and my wife. Bring her in right now, Valma, you there.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
I'm here and it's eighty two degrees here in Palm Springs, California.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
I could have done without that. We're covered in Oh beautiful, Velma.
We're covered in about five or six inches of snow
and I think it's about twenty eight degrees.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
I listened to your news and I was going, wow,
oh my god, No, I mean we can't even wear
sweaters yet, so jealous song? That song? Isn't Sammy write
that song?

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah? Him and Toby God rest his soul your brother
and Toby Keith wrote that song and put it out
a couple of years ago, A great song, and I
thought it was fitting because somehow, by twist of fade
I I can't remember, I know I had you on
because your book. The Witting Family has your books, and
I recommend them, by the way hidden treasures and secret places,

(01:38):
Hidden treasures and hidden treasure and then hidden uh treasures
in dark places. The Witting Family. We have them on
our coffee tables, but more importantly, more poorly, we read them.
My mother has them.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Her.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Isn't she great?

Speaker 2 (01:58):
I love her? Yes, my buddy.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Somehow or another, we became friends years and years ago,
and you've got a beautiful story that you shared with
me at one point and I asked you. I reached
out and I said, would you mind coming on and
telling that to the listeners again? And you were kind
enough to do so. We talked for like thirty seconds
yesterday on the phone, and we decided, Hey, we've known

(02:23):
each other for so long, I think we could wing it.
But it's such a beautiful story. Can you talk about
the humble beginnings that you and Bobby and Sammy and
all of your family had, But more important, how loving
your mother was with little means.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
I would love to share that story because I love
to hear it again myself. You know, it seems like
a million years ago, and yet it also seems like yesterday.
We were extremely poor, I mean, just dirt poor, and
yet we were never on welfare. I want you to
know that I'm not against welfare, but I don't think
it should ever be a way of life. You know,

(03:02):
it should be for those who need it, temporary. But
my mother, if anyone could have ever used welfare, she
could have, but she chose not to go on welfare,
which showed all of us another way of pulling out
of what we were in. But my mother was so
innovative and so positive about life. Even though our father

(03:26):
was a chronic alcoholic who was physically abusive. We watched
horrible things as children, and I'll just be honest, even
hear him raping her while we're right there, you know,
and awful things. But mother was amazing, amazing, And the
one thing I want to share with everybody is it
only takes one good parent. It's harder. You know, it

(03:51):
isn't easy with one parent, but she did it. Let
me tell you she had tenth grade education, she had
no way to make a living, and yet she provided.
And even at Christmas time, which we all find, we found,
Oh my god, that was our magical time, our magical time.
But first I want you to know the one thing

(04:11):
she taught us very clearly was it's going to be
okay because God's going to take care of us. She
had a very simple faith. God's going to take care
of us, and we will. Yeah, He's going to take
care of us. She would take us to a church.
She would go in to an empty church. We were
Catholic at the time, and she would say, wait out here,
I'll be right, I'll be right back. She'd put a

(04:32):
little kerchief on, she would go into the church and
kneel down in the pew, and she'd come out and say,
it's going to be okay. Now, God's going to take
care of us. Oh good, God's going to take care
of us. So Christmas, my mother would provide in a
way that was so precious. We sincerely thought all the
presents were made in Santa's workshop because everything was homemade.

(04:54):
Everything was homemade, and wherever we lived, she had somehow
gotten a little a beard and a hat and a
glove that looked like Santa. She would come to the window,
these little cracked we even we would live in converted
chicken coops even but she would come with this glove
on her hand and knock on the window. We would

(05:15):
scream and she'd way with her little hand, and then
she would run and we would see, oh, you know,
the visions in our head. We would see the sleigh
going up over the you know, we would see it
all even though it was in our heads. But the
and then we would say, did you did Sanna come
to your house? No? We never went to anybody else's house,
which made us feel so special. And I remember one time,

(05:38):
now you cut me off if I go too long,
because you give me a mind. I run with it anyway.
And so she one year she told us this story.
She had started making these dolls for Bobby and I,
rag dolls, big tall, they as tall as we were.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
And of course they had dresses on that were dressed
like us, you know, had our clothes looked very familiar.
She would use rags, you know, to make them with,
but she didn't have the money for the yarn and
for the hair. She used yarn for the hair, and
she did my hair dark and Bobby's hair blonde, because
that's how our hair was. And she had prayed and asked, God,

(06:19):
I don't know how I'm going to be able to
get that yarn. And the yarn was like fifty cents
or something, you know, it wasn't expensive. She said she
was walking down to just walking on the street, wondering
what am I going to do? And she saw this
little purse in the gutter, and it looked like a
toy purse, and she stopped and picked it up, and
when she opened it, it had fifty dollars in it.

(06:41):
Now in these days, fifty dollars was like finding five hundreds.
Oh my god, she said, I went and I bought
the yarn, and I bought the boys. I had two brothers,
Sammy and and Bob. And she bought the boys little guns.
And she said it was the best Christmas. She found
that money in a little purse. And she always said

(07:03):
to us, God did it he put that purse there
for me to find. She told us there's years later
that she had found that purse, and those dolls were
so precious to us, and that was just one of
the things she made. And then I'd seen this little
doll lay at one year, and I wanted it so bad,
and of course she couldn't buy it, but she bought
these little rubber dolls. She cut out little pieces of

(07:25):
towels and she crocheted around the edges. She did little
hanker little face cloths and towels, and she took little
bars of we had Lye soap that we used that
she'd make the Lye soap. She cut a little square
and she wrote soap on it, and she got big
cardboard and put those dolls that when you fed them
the bottle, you had to squeeze them to make them peet.

(07:49):
The water would come out the other ends. But oh
we were so and mother put those all on pieces
of cardboard and made them look so beautiful. Mine all
in pink, Bobby's all in blue. I mean, she did
an amazing She'd make guns for the boys, carve them out.
She was very innovative and create. I mean, I could

(08:11):
not even do this today if I had to, but
you know what, you do it when you have to.
She had four little children, she had to make a way,
and she made Christmas so magical for us that after
I grew up, it was almost like Christmas. I don't know.
It was never the same. My sister and I just
said the other day, here we are in our eighties

(08:32):
and we're still crying over this going. You know, nothing
was ever the same. She made it so magical, and
I want to encourage people that don't have the money
maybe and they think I can't do this. Mother would
get a tumble weed and we would decorate it, and
we would decorate it with things like in those days

(08:53):
they had coffee where you would you would put the
little key in there and you would twist it and
turn it around, you know, that would open the can,
which is how old I am. And then we would
pull those things down and make little hang them on
the tree. And she used to take the eggs all year.
She'd put a pinhole in the bottom and in the
top and blow the egg out of the pin out

(09:16):
of the shell so the shell would stay intact. And
have you ever seen how Sammy paints those Santa Claus
heads at Christmas? Yeah, he still does it. Sammy still
does it.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
Know where we got it from.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
That's where we got it. And then mother would take
us door to door and we would sell those for
ten cents apiece. She would make Santa Claus heads out
of those eggs and put a little string on top
crepe paper and paint the face. And we would sell
the little Santa Claus heads to put on the Christmas trees,
three for a quarter or ten cents apiece, and we

(09:48):
would earn a little money to buy the stuff. You know,
I mean, mother was. I just want to encourage people.
You can do it, you can do it, and please
do you know we all grew up, we're all successful.
She encouraged us. She would always tell us things like,
you have a certain amount of bad and a certain

(10:09):
amount of good in your life. You're getting all the
bad out of the way now and when you grow up,
you're going to be so happy. And you know what
every one of us were. It was like, what an
amazing mama we had, our little Italian mother. Not only
that she taught us how to cook.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah, no way and right. And by the way, follow
Velma Hagar on social media because I have stole. I
have stolen a lot and I even stole your shrimp
scampy from you.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
I'm just good.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah, but it's now witting. I've stolen that I do
want to say, it's wit and scampy. I will tell
you that. I will tell you this though. It's amazing
that you and your siblings and your mother, you go
from living to say poor means would be an un statement.
I mean you're living in a converted chicken coup at

(11:03):
one point.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
And now now the Hagar Family Foundation, along with DWIGHTO
along with Dwight Whitten, has donated Yeah, four million dollars.
I say that because I spent a lot of money
at your brother's canteen and last week I'm there every
single day with the crew. But business though, almost four
million dollars the Hagar Family Foundation. That's important for you

(11:27):
all to get back, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (11:29):
And for abused children, Yeah, certainly was. We're very involved
in Olive Crest too, which is an organization that takes
children that were like us in a home. We had
nowhere to go to Whight. No one would take us
because my dad was a professional boxer and he would
beat anybody up that tried to help us, and so

(11:50):
we had nowhere to go. Even my grandparents were afraid
of him. Everybody was afraid of him, and so we
we slept in wherever we could. You know, we slept
in tunnels, we slept in under trees, we slept in ditches.
And when we got a car, oh my gosh, we
were so grateful. Then we had. Mother made the back
into a bed, and Sammy and and Bro and I

(12:11):
slept back there, and Mother and Bobby slept in the
front with no window on one side. She'd put a
cardboard in there at night. And I mean, you know,
we the way we lived, so we always said we
went from the outhouse to the penthouse. Literally, I will literally.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
I will tell you this though. The Hagar family has
provided so much joy for the witt And family. Of
course with your brother and the music, but also your friendship.
You've been by Susan and our side for years now.
You've prayed for us, you prayed for my mother, you prayed.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
For ye even with my boyfriend.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yeah, and even when I'm having a horrible damn on
Facebook cussing because I'm walking with luggage two miles to
a murder hotel.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
I was so bad that day.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
I was bad. But you sent me a note and
you said hey, hey, hey, hey, and you calmed me down.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
Thanks.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
But anyway, I want to say thank you for your friendship,
but thank you for sharing that story because it really
is uplifting and encouraging. And I want to hit the
books one more time because they're really good books that
can be used as devotionals or they just be used
as gifts. Hidden there's three of them. Hidden treasures in
plain sight, Hidden treasures in secret places, hidden treasures in

(13:27):
dark places. Christmas is right around the corner. Great stocking
stuffers or just great gifts in general. Right.

Speaker 2 (13:34):
I want to say that they're all five star two
on Amazon with lots of reviews, and everybody loves them.
And God wrote those through me, absolutely even bless me.
Every day I read it myself and I go God,
I didn't even know I knew that it's so good.
They're so good. And I want to tell you, I
want to say this publicly. You and Susan come to
the desert and stay at my house. I will show

(13:56):
you a good time, and I will make you the
best coffee you've ever had. Thank you, some nice Italian dinner,
a nice Italian.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
And we'll bring you some Kentucky bourbon and we'll probably
take you up.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
I would love you. I love that you're darn right.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
I love it, so we probably will take you up
on that. Listen, sister, vell Maahagar, it's so good to
have you on. I want to say thank you for
your friendship, and thank you for all the joy that
you and your family has brought mine Mom, even me
and Susan. And uh, give Guido a big old kiss
for me. Guido's he do that.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
Twito is my dog. He and I are roommates. I
just love it all right. You take care of yourself,
and thank you for having me on. I mean, thank
you for letting me tell my story.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
Of course, and we'll talk soon. Vell Maahagar, having Merry Christmas.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
God bless you, God bless you.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
There you go, vellma Hagar. Hey, Craigs best Cars dot com.
That's where I got my twenty nineteen Jeep Wrangler in
twenty nineteen, head of the new car Look new car
smell even had a factory new car warranty. You know what,
it didn't have thousands of dollars of depreciation the second
that jeep drove off the lot. Nuh, let somebody else

(15:04):
take that, did you know? The Craig and Landreth this
month celebrating fifty years. I remember seeing Craig and Landers
start right there at Blanton Lane and Dixie Highway. I
remember my family members going in there and buying a
pre owned car and coming out and being satisfied. You
get that same satisfaction, that same value today, fifty years later.

(15:26):
I don't care if you deal with Joey Craig, Larry Craig,
the Legend, my buddy, Jimmy Smith. All three owners are
as good as gold. You go and you ask to
talk to the owner, they'll be more than happy to
come out and talk to you. Craig and Landreth, You're
gonna love your Craig and Landorth vehicle. Check them out
of Craig's Best Cars dot com. Stick around more on
the Way news, RADYO eight forty whas Bernie Lovers. Yeah,

(15:52):
Bernie Lovers will be our guest next week and he
has a brand new updated Twelve Days of Lot Christmas.
That was a couple of years ago. If you remember John,
A bunch of cows got loose in Cherokee. I do
remember that. Okay, that's what that reference was. But look
forward to get Bernie in for another twelve days of
Louisville Christmas and if you have a I do a

(16:13):
lot of Amazon shopping, you know, yeah you do, Yeah,
I do my fair share of it. And I got
to think about our US Postal service. I was. I
was a UPS, I was Local eighty nine for years,
and I know how rough it is during like we
would have Super Sunday. And I know from this point forward,

(16:35):
all of the UPS workers, I feel your pain because
I've been out there on the ramp with it. But
as far as the Amazon drivers, UPS drivers are postal workers,
I feel for them because the workload they get Amazon has.
I think this is kind of cool. John. You can
now thank your Amazon driver for Christmas?

Speaker 3 (16:57):
Okay, how do you do that?

Speaker 1 (17:00):
First? I thought it was going to be one of
these deals where a company wants you to pay their
employees better for Christmas. See, I know certain companies that
do that, you know, but it's for I guess I
know so many companies that do that. Eraised my radar
and I thought, oh, great, crap, another one of this ones. Hey,

(17:22):
please tip our staff because we don't pay them. No,
it's not the case. I mean it's not a big tip.
But you could thank your Amazon driver this holiday season
when your package gets delivered on the Amazon app and
by on the Amazon website too. By the way, they're
gonna show an icon and it's just simply going to
say thank your Amazon driver. If you click on that icon,

(17:44):
a five dollars bonus will go to the driver. And
that's what I thought. I'm not gonna pay an extra
five dollars on. No, you're not paying for it. If
you click thank your driver, Amazon is going to send
that driver a five dollars bonus.

Speaker 3 (17:59):
Y yeah, baby, Rod, That's how it should be.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
That's how it should be at no cost. Did you
hear that? At no cost to the customer?

Speaker 3 (18:09):
Shout out to Jeff Bezos. I guess yeah, no kidding.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Uh, the it's gonna be you gonna top out the
one hundred dollars the most than driving.

Speaker 3 (18:18):
Okay, so they know some people could abuse this.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
Yeah, I mean because come on, I mean, hey, just
I don't know whether any system can be gamed, of course,
but still I think it's quite cool for them to
do it that way. I like these stories, so I'm
go ahead and do it. It always amazes me what
people pay for crap. It's memorabilia, is what I'm talking about.
But this one. You know it's gonna be high dollar,

(18:41):
John Auden, because it's Star Wars. Murph murp, move over
Darth Vader's lightsaber. It's no longer the most expensive piece
of Star Wars memorabilia ever sold at auction. If you're
wondering what that went, what did that go for? Okay,
they bought his lightsaber. That was the highest priced Star

(19:06):
Trek memorabilia. Star Trek.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
Oh, great, Now Star Wars fans are going to kill me,
so the Star Trek, not Star Wars.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
No, it's Star Wars Star Trek. Would you stop it? Man,
You're gonna get me in trouble with the Star with
the merbs. Up to this point, the highest Star Wars
memorabilia ever auction was Darth Vader's lightsaber. Okay, for three
point six five four million dollars. That has been topped.

(19:35):
Now there was an artist by the name of Tom
Jong and he came up. You're too young to remember
the poster, but there was a poster before Star Wars
came out, and you had like Darth Vader's head was
on one side, then you had X Wing fighters flying
towards it and all this other business. That original poster

(19:55):
just sold for three point eighty seven five million.

Speaker 3 (20:00):
Dollars for a poster.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
For a poster, it was like a half page add
It was the original one that you know. I guess
they got photocopied and put into every magazine or whatever.
But almost four million bucks for that.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
I mean, you've got to be the most hardcore Star
Wars meat Martin Meeper.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
I mean, could you imagine the person's house has probably
got R two D two's run around everywhere bringing your
coffee dogs. You have two? Yeah? Right, yeah, you gotta
yo the gold rollerbike going? Who did sir? Is too
late for coffee? Butler? Look at me? I have moving
hands or whatever he says, you know, but I just

(20:40):
can't I understand the people with these. I guess if
you got more money than cents though, right.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
That's the thing though, because if someone say three point
seven eight million dollars whatever it might be, it makes
you wonder what does this man or woman do for
a living.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
I want to impress this squirrel. Would you like to
see my white samber? Oh yes, no, I mean my
actual lightsaber here. You gotta make the noise yourself. Let's
keep it on. People buying crap they shouldn't buy, and
I don't know how who would do this? To begin with,

(21:16):
there's a lawsuit being filed over the sale of the
conjuring house. Who wants to buy this crap? Man?

Speaker 3 (21:24):
Remember is that the same house that the Annabelle doll
lives in.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
That's what I'm talking about.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
And someone wants to buy that.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
The franchise is so successful, it's based on true stuff.
The guy carrying the anti bell doll round he winds
up dying. There must be something to this crap. I
don't know. I don't know either, man. It's a house
in Rhode Island. It was recently said to be auctioned
on Halloween. The most recent owner was Jacqueline Nunez. She

(21:52):
ran it as a tourist attraction, but defaulted on the
mortgage payments, partially because she lost her entertainment license over
allegations of mistreating the staff. But listen to this. Here's
why she says she was mistreating the staff. Specifically, she
started mistreating the staff after a spirit of the owner

(22:13):
of the home from the eighteenth century told her how
the staff had been robbing her.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
Oh, so the spirit was trying to act like they
were on the owner's side.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yeah, let me tell you, these ghosts they never lie either.

Speaker 3 (22:24):
We never do.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
No, if I don't want to thing about ghost they
are number one fiscally responsible for their owners and number
two they never lie.

Speaker 3 (22:33):
Yeah, never would trust a ghost every single time.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
Every single time. The guy I don't I watch the
show Jason Halls, he's from a ghost hunter. You've watched that.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
I've never seen that. Know, I've never watched it.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
Because all these ghost shows, every they're all the same.
It's the same that they'll be walking and bumping in
each other and dark, and all of a sudden, the
cameras starts shaking, it'll start running, Oh my god, oh
my god, and they cut the commercial.

Speaker 3 (22:59):
Plus now if now that I feel like the common
man knows a lot more about how editing works. He
can't really trick the viewer anymore the way he used
to be able to.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
Well, there's only so many times that he can say,
oh my gosh, oh my gosh, the camera starts shaking,
everybody starts running the screens, and then you go cut
to commercial, and then you come back and hold on,
it's just a coke, can you know? Or it's a
minchao aa and then it's but it's every episode the
same way. He wound up buying it for one point
three million dollars. Now her sisters filed a lawsuit claiming

(23:30):
that she was not well mentally. Duh, you bought a
Holley bought a hunted house. Not too well mentally anyway, right?

Speaker 3 (23:38):
I wouldn't think so.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
But who would want to live or even own in
some crap like that?

Speaker 3 (23:44):
I wouldn't want to.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
Even the Amityville Horror House. No, I said horror, Horror,
I said horror. I got a country I'm a country
redneck man. So uh, horror is what I said, not
the other one. It's been a fun week two days
for me. All Tony does is take off work. It
seems like he's never here.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
Man, What a lazy man.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
Lazy Jack almost got us in another meeting Join us
next week. Got several people wind up, including Will Wolford
from The Buffalo Bill's NFL Great and Great Louisvillion. Bernie
Lovers comes in with yet another Twelve Days of Louisville
Christmas song. John Alden had a lot of fun thanks
for running the beginning of the show.

Speaker 3 (24:25):
Though it was great it was the best part.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
Actually appreciate that man on the behalf of John William
All in the third, Dwight Witt and sang Tony Venetti
will be back with us next Monday and I Love
ya MA News Radio eight forty whas