Allan Anderson and John Waters

[00:02] ALLAN ANDERSON: My name is Allan Anderson. I am 31 years old. Today is May 14, 2023 in Logan, Utah. I am here with John Waters, my grandpa.

[00:17] JOHN WATERS: My name is John Waters. I am 80 years old. Today's date is May 14, 2023. And we're in Logan, Utah. And I'm here with my grandson, Allan

[00:35] ALLAN ANDERSON: Raining today.

[00:36] JOHN WATERS: Yeah, of course. It's sunshine in Arizona at all.

[00:42] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah. We had the craziest winter in Utah. Did you guys have a crazy winter in Arizona or was it.

[00:52] JOHN WATERS: Yeah. More rain, more cold than I can remember since I've lived there. We even had snow down in the valley, which is very unusual.

[01:02] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah. And we had 850 inches in some of the resorts in Salt Lake.

[01:10] JOHN WATERS: So we had a dusting by our house. That's it.

[01:14] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah. Now they're worried about flooding and it keeps raining. So we'll see if that comes true or not.

[01:21] JOHN WATERS: Well, we got that. We've had flooding, but the flooding with our flooding is the lakes are overflowing, which is good. We need it. All of our reservoirs.

[01:31] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah, we needed it too. And just like that, they filled back up. So it's.

[01:36] JOHN WATERS: But bad for fishing, though. Age fishing was bad.

[01:40] ALLAN ANDERSON: Fishing goes bad when there's too much water.

[01:43] JOHN WATERS: Lakes are muddy.

[01:45] ALLAN ANDERSON: Mm hmm.

[01:45] JOHN WATERS: It's, it's rough, but it's clearing up now. It'll be better.

[01:49] ALLAN ANDERSON: You going to do your Canada fishing trip this year?

[01:53] JOHN WATERS: Yep. We are, uh, June 17 or the 24th every year.

[01:58] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah. How many guys are going to go up this year?

[02:01] JOHN WATERS: Four.

[02:02] ALLAN ANDERSON: Four of.

[02:02] JOHN WATERS: Yeah, four of us. We're going to drive this year.

[02:05] ALLAN ANDERSON: Driving.

[02:06] JOHN WATERS: And it'll be a long drive, but I enjoy the scenery.

[02:09] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah. Arizona to, to Canada.

[02:13] JOHN WATERS: Yep.

[02:14] ALLAN ANDERSON: Long drive indeed.

[02:16] JOHN WATERS: A little over 2000 miles.

[02:18] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah. When did you, when was the first year you did the fishing trip?

[02:26] JOHN WATERS: I believe it was 1968 was the first year I went up there. And I've been going up ever since. Missed a few years here and there, but been going up there ever since. Beautiful country. Love it. Catch a lot of fish. It's a good week.

[02:43] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah. You still got with some of the same guys who you went up at the very beginning?

[02:49] JOHN WATERS: No, no, it's all, all new guys. I gotta find younger guys. My friends are vanishing.

[02:59] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah. You're still hanging in there, though?

[03:02] JOHN WATERS: Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm still hanging in there.

[03:07] ALLAN ANDERSON: Enough to, that you can travel 2000 miles, go fishing still?

[03:12] JOHN WATERS: Oh, yeah, yeah. I, uh, the guys I go with, they, uh, they help me out a lot. Uh, I can't do what I used to do. I used to do all the cooking last year. I designated one of the younger guys. Younger guy? Yeah. He's in his fifties, but he does the cooking now, and I don't do too much of the carrying of the stuff. They do most of that for me, which is good.

[03:39] ALLAN ANDERSON: Hang out on the boat.

[03:40] JOHN WATERS: Yeah. Once I get in the boat, I'm fine, but I might need a little. Well, I do need a little assistance getting in the boat, but once I'm in there, I'm fine. I still out fish them all.

[03:53] ALLAN ANDERSON: Did you grow up fishing? Where'd you, where'd you learn to fish? At?

[03:58] JOHN WATERS: First time I fished was in Chicago. In Chicago, there's just about every few blocks there's a park, and a lot of the parks have lagoons. And I started fishing when I was probably seven or eight years old. In the lagoon for bullheads. Used to walk in the inner city. We'd walk with our fish and pole. Well, I was only lived about three blocks from the park, so we'd walk down there, sit there and fish for bullheads. I've been fishing ever since. Yeah, you didn't know that, did you?

[04:35] ALLAN ANDERSON: No, I didn't. You taught me how to fish, though.

[04:39] JOHN WATERS: I did, I did.

[04:41] ALLAN ANDERSON: I remember when we first would go to the part of the Jordanel reservoir, right?

[04:47] JOHN WATERS: Yep. You caught a nice bass there.

[04:49] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah. All the big old speed boats cruising around.

[04:54] JOHN WATERS: Oh, yeah. That's a big problem with when you're a fisherman. Some lakes, most lakes really pleasure boats, jet skis. It's not a paradise for fishermen. That's why Canada is so nice. There's nothing up there but fishermen and only a few of them. The remote areas we go to.

[05:14] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah. What made you choose Canada for your fishing trip? How did you find that place?

[05:24] JOHN WATERS: I found Canada at a sports show in Chicago. They used to have. I don't know if they still do. I haven't lived in Chicago in a long time, but they had sports shows every year and loved going to the sports shows, go to sports shows. And a lot of resorts from Canada have a representative there or the owners of the resort promoting their resorts. And that's how I found this place I went to. It was called Viking island in Red Lake, Ontario. It was a fly in resort and talked to the people and decided, well, we're going to go up there. And I started going up there with a friend of mine and his, two boys and one of my sons. So that's how it started and been going up there ever since. Last time, my friend, that first, the fellow I went with, the first time he came up with. Well, he come up with me. He met us up there about six years ago, and it was the last time he went. He passed away a year after that. But he brought his two boys with him. And so it was great. It was a good time.

[06:42] ALLAN ANDERSON: Pass it on to the new generation.

[06:44] JOHN WATERS: Yeah. Yep. Yep. Hope to, anyway. Yeah, we'll see. You've never been up there with me. I brought Peter up there.

[06:53] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah, Peter went up. Yeah. I never made it up there yet.

[06:56] JOHN WATERS: He keeps telling me he wants to go back, but we'll see.

[06:59] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah, life gets in the way sometimes.

[07:03] JOHN WATERS: Yeah, well, yeah, you fall in love and I. The girlfriend says, oh, you can't go away for a week.

[07:11] ALLAN ANDERSON: Especially to Canada.

[07:13] JOHN WATERS: Yeah, Canada is a little ways away. But when I first started going up there, there was, of course, no cell phones and communication back home was very difficult. You didn't talk to anybody back home for a week. But now with all this technology we got now call every day back home. Call your grandmother every day. Cause she wants to know what's going on.

[07:48] ALLAN ANDERSON: She would like that if I. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[07:50] JOHN WATERS: She likes it. So how about you? How was your trip? You just got back from Japan?

[07:58] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah, that's right. I was in Japan for two weeks. It's pretty incredible. It was very different than here, so it was cool to just experience another culture.

[08:13] JOHN WATERS: What cities were you in?

[08:14] ALLAN ANDERSON: So I was in Tokyo and Niko, small town in the mountains north of Tokyo. And I went to Osaka and Hiroshima and Issei and Kyoto.

[08:31] JOHN WATERS: Nice. Yeah, nice.

[08:35] ALLAN ANDERSON: Issei was probably my favorite. And that's in the mi prefecture. And the most sacred shrine in Japan is in Ise, so that's why I was there.

[08:50] JOHN WATERS: Very nice.

[08:51] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah. Have you ever traveled to Asia at all?

[08:55] JOHN WATERS: Never to Asia. The only european country I've been to is Ireland.

[09:03] ALLAN ANDERSON: Ireland, yeah.

[09:05] JOHN WATERS: Yeah.

[09:05] ALLAN ANDERSON: You went with grandma?

[09:06] JOHN WATERS: Yeah, yeah, we went there about four or five years ago, I think.

[09:12] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah, yeah.

[09:15] JOHN WATERS: Enjoyed it. Loved it. People there. Extremely friendly. Very nice. Food was excellent. Pastries were outstanding. I didn't like driving on the wrong side of the road, though, in the wrong side of the vehicle, but got used to it.

[09:33] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah, Japan drove on the other side of the road as well. Yeah, it was a little felt weird to be in at a car, being on the left side road.

[09:43] JOHN WATERS: Very. Every time we stopped some place and I went to get back in the car, I was. Kept getting in on which in our country is the driver's side, so I was getting in the passenger side, so took a little getting used to doing that.

[09:59] ALLAN ANDERSON: I would be scared that if I was driving that I would just, like, turn and go into the wrong side of traffic.

[10:07] JOHN WATERS: It's very easy to do, especially they have a lot of turns there on the roundabouts, and the roundabouts were the hard part for me, going the right way in the roundabout, if you come to a regular t intersection, it was okay. But the roundabouts was, oh, boy, which.

[10:29] ALLAN ANDERSON: Way do I go?

[10:30] JOHN WATERS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we figured it out. It was Fine. But all in all, great trip. Loved it.

[10:38] ALLAN ANDERSON: It was ReALlY amazing how organized the public transportation was in JapAN. It was just like, so efficient and so cool to just explore TOkyO by just going on the subway and figuring it out.

[10:54] JOHN WATERS: Yeah. I wish we could have taken more PuBliC transportation in ireland because driving was a LiTTLE rough. But.

[11:04] ALLAN ANDERSON: Driving is a little rough in Arizona, too, sometimes, isn't it?

[11:08] JOHN WATERS: Yeah, it was a little rough coming into Salt lake the other night. When we came in, traffic was terrible. There was accidents. It was the worst we ever ran into coming this way. Yeah, it can be rough. Any of the big cities, traffic is rough. Rush hour traffic. Being retired, I don't have to worry about that anymore.

[11:29] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah. You can just wake up earlier or sleep through it.

[11:33] JOHN WATERS: Yeah. Yep, yep. I'm having supper when them guys are fighting their way home. Now.

[11:43] ALLAN ANDERSON: What do you like about living down in Arizona?

[11:47] JOHN WATERS: It's like being on vacation every day. Weather's perfect. Hot in the summertime, but you're indoors, air conditioning. But I golf all year round. Even in the summer. I golf 110, 112 degrees. You get. You get used to it. It's hard to believe, but you do get used to it. Weather is just perfect. Wintertime it's perfect, except for this past winter, but the weather's perfect.

[12:16] ALLAN ANDERSON: Does have some good weather when we've been there.

[12:18] JOHN WATERS: Yeah. It's not too crowded. Well, wintertime it's crowded. What, we get a lot of snowbirds that come down, but there are winter visitors, I guess would be the correct term to use. But it's crowded then. But summertime, it's. The town really empties out. You can get in the restaurants without the long wait. But I love it. I don't. Nowhere else I'd rather live, other than Logan. I love Logan.

[12:46] ALLAN ANDERSON: It is pretty up here.

[12:47] JOHN WATERS: Yeah, Logan's a nice town. People are nice. Yeah, they are very friendly. Very friendly town. I like it. We started coming up here when you were just a little kid.

[12:58] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah. Over what, like 20 years ago?

[13:03] JOHN WATERS: About that.

[13:05] ALLAN ANDERSON: Then we moved here.

[13:06] JOHN WATERS: Yeah. Yeah. I think you were in 6th grade, maybe?

[13:10] ALLAN ANDERSON: 6Th, 7th grade, 7th grade.

[13:11] JOHN WATERS: 7Th grade.

[13:12] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah, I started in 7th grade here.

[13:13] JOHN WATERS: Yep. Yeah, yep. I went through your. Or your grammar school, your grammar school graduation, your high school graduation, which, by the way, was the best speech I ever heard at a commencement. That was great.

[13:31] ALLAN ANDERSON: It was a good speech.

[13:32] JOHN WATERS: Yeah, it was good. Yeah, yeah, that was a good one.

[13:40] ALLAN ANDERSON: I was the senior class president, so I had to give a talk for my grade, and I mentioned all of the various activities that you could do at our high school. And the last thing I said was Saturday school, which was the, like, you'd missed too many classes or had too many tardies, so you had to go to that. And everyone just thought it was a funny joke.

[14:06] JOHN WATERS: Well, the mayor was up there too. You gave him.

[14:10] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah, mayor was up there.

[14:13] JOHN WATERS: Yeah, it was good. It was fun. I forget what you said to him, but it was funny.

[14:19] ALLAN ANDERSON: Oh, that he, uh, I said that he recycles. He was a good neighbor because he recycles.

[14:25] JOHN WATERS: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[14:28] ALLAN ANDERSON: Did you do high school in Chicago?

[14:31] JOHN WATERS: Yeah, I did. South side. Lived in the south side. We moved to Arizona about 1984, I think. 83, 84. So we've been there a long time. Yeah, yeah, yep. Long time. We go back to Chicago and try to get back there at least once a year. I still have some grandchildren back there. Actually, right now I've got two great grandchildren, and we're going back next month for one of the great grandchildren's first birthday party. So we're gonna go back for that. Yeah, I enjoy going back there. I still stay in touch with some of the guys that I grew up with. We talk just about once a week. Of course, everybody's retired now. I'll see that when I go back and make the rounds of my favorite restaurants.

[15:34] ALLAN ANDERSON: Gotta hit up Portillo's.

[15:36] JOHN WATERS: And we got portools in there.

[15:38] ALLAN ANDERSON: Oh, yeah. So it's like a mini Chicago portools.

[15:42] JOHN WATERS: And we got White Castle. So I guess I got a little bit of everything now. I'm happy there.

[15:48] ALLAN ANDERSON: And they got pizza there too. Chicago pizza.

[15:50] JOHN WATERS: Yeah, we got. Yeah, Rosangelo is about to closest to Chicago Pizza. Well, we got another family owned place that we go to. The guy was from Blue island and we go there. It's good Chicago pizza too.

[16:10] ALLAN ANDERSON: What made you switch from Chicago to Arizona?

[16:16] JOHN WATERS: Well, your grandmother's mother lived, I remember Pearl lived out there. And it was one of the reasons, another reason was one of my friends was opening up a restaurant out there. And he says, come on out. I said, yeah, okay, I don't mind. We've, my wife wouldn't mind it at all. So there we go. We went out there and loved it. Stayed.

[16:42] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah. Never looked back.

[16:44] JOHN WATERS: Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I don't think I. I can't say it would never. I love Chicago. I would if it was the way it was when I grew up, I'd live there in a minute. But it's not anymore. It's. It's way different now.

[17:03] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah.

[17:03] JOHN WATERS: So what? It was the way it was in the fifties and sixties. Yeah. I loved it. Of course, I was young then, too.

[17:14] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah. It's different being in a big city when you're, when you're younger, I think.

[17:20] JOHN WATERS: Yep. Yep. But you could get on a bus and go anywhere in the city for a quarter transfer. You know, you go anywhere in the city, go from the south side to the north side. Transportation was great. Restaurants were great. Food was great. We had ethnic neighborhoods. So you could, if you wanted italian food, if you wanted greek food, wanted polish, it was there. You could just go to that neighborhood and get that. And by the way, you do know it's a myth that Chicago is known for deep dish pizza? It's not deep dish pizza. It's thin crust and chicago. Yeah. In square cut.

[18:10] ALLAN ANDERSON: Okay. Yeah, that's right.

[18:12] JOHN WATERS: Yeah. Everybody, you see these tv shows that say, oh, Chicago's known for deep dish pizza. It's not. No, it's thin crust pizza.

[18:25] ALLAN ANDERSON: What's Arizona is known for? What's the best food there? In the Phoenix area.

[18:31] JOHN WATERS: We have a variety of everything, but a lot of mexican restaurants, a lot of mexican food, which I very rarely ate when I lived in Chicago and when I moved out there. We eat a lot of it now. We go to a lot of mexican restaurants, some of them authentic. The mom pop places that are owned are fantastic. I like them. They're very good.

[18:56] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah. I like the little mom and pop shops. That's one thing that was really cool about Japan was so many of the restaurants were really tiny. It would just be like 15 to 20 seats. It would just be like a husband wife running it a lot of times and just fill up really fast. All it takes is a couple groups to come in and they have a full restaurant. It's just a cool way to connect with locals, too.

[19:24] JOHN WATERS: Yeah, yeah. Yep. Small, little mobile places are great.

[19:30] ALLAN ANDERSON: What type of place did you, did your friend open when you moved to Arizona?

[19:37] JOHN WATERS: It was a comedy club called comedy club. Comedy club.

[19:43] ALLAN ANDERSON: Did you do any stand up there?

[19:47] JOHN WATERS: The only stand up I did was behind a bar. No, I didn't do any stand up. No, I'm not a comedian. But but it was good. It was very successful place. It was, uh, actually, it was in Scottsdale where he opened it in, uh, there's only I believe there's only one other at the time, there was only one other comedy club there, so it was very successful. You know, when he said he was gonna open a comedy club, I said, you're gonna starve. You know, you're not gonna be any money. But it was amazing. Very popular.

[20:22] ALLAN ANDERSON: Cool.

[20:24] JOHN WATERS: Did very well with it. He passed away too. He's going too. All my friends.

[20:33] ALLAN ANDERSON: All your friends.

[20:35] JOHN WATERS: This will take care of me, you know. I'm 80 years old, kid.

[20:40] ALLAN ANDERSON: Getting up there.

[20:41] JOHN WATERS: I am. I am. Yep.

[20:44] ALLAN ANDERSON: Things aren't working right anymore.

[20:49] JOHN WATERS: Yeah, pretty much. You know, everything starts getting rusty, I think.

[20:54] ALLAN ANDERSON: Can still golf, though.

[20:55] JOHN WATERS: I do. Not as much as I have been. I'm cutting back. It's getting a little tough. Yeah, a little tough. Swinging it, but I still out there.

[21:05] ALLAN ANDERSON: Are you were you like the older end of your, of your friend group, or were most of your friends already 80?

[21:15] JOHN WATERS: We're all about being Arizona. We're all pretty much close together. We have some of the guys in a group that are in their sixties, but most of our seventies and eighties, we have some in there. Somebody, we call them younger guys are 65, 66.

[21:33] ALLAN ANDERSON: So the young guys, that's the young guy. The fresh retirees.

[21:37] JOHN WATERS: Yeah. That's the kids.

[21:39] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah.

[21:39] JOHN WATERS: Yeah.

[21:40] ALLAN ANDERSON: And that's gonna be my parents pretty soon. They're almost at retirement age.

[21:45] JOHN WATERS: Yeah. Well, your dad just turned 63.

[21:47] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah. He's getting close.

[21:48] JOHN WATERS: Yeah. Yeah. Won't be long.

[21:51] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah.

[21:52] JOHN WATERS: He'll be hanging it up and enjoying the ski slopes out here.

[21:56] ALLAN ANDERSON: Mm hmm. Indeed.

[22:00] JOHN WATERS: That's one thing I never got into, was skiing. That's for me.

[22:06] ALLAN ANDERSON: Stick to the stick to the water.

[22:08] JOHN WATERS: Yeah. Yeah, I like the water. Give me a fish and pole, and I'm happy. I don't even care if I'm catching fish. I'm just, as long as I got a fishing pole in my hand, sitting in a boat, I'm happy.

[22:21] ALLAN ANDERSON: It's like meditation in a way.

[22:23] JOHN WATERS: Oh, yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. Yep, it is. One of my friends just gave me a t shirt. It's got a picture of a walleye in the front. And he said, in the t shirt, the saying says it's all fun and games until somebody loses a walleye. Kind of funny to a fisherman, but nobody else would get it.

[22:49] ALLAN ANDERSON: What's your favorite kind of fish to catch?

[22:53] JOHN WATERS: Walleye.

[22:54] ALLAN ANDERSON: Walleye?

[22:55] JOHN WATERS: Yeah. In Arizona, I fish for crappie I like crappie. Crappie's a good eating fish, but walleye is best tasted. Fish there is. Very good. We have short lunch every day up there. Fresh walleye, fresh walleye. And pork and beans. Can't beat it.

[23:11] ALLAN ANDERSON: Pork and beans and some fish.

[23:13] JOHN WATERS: Yeah, it's good. That's the way to go.

[23:16] ALLAN ANDERSON: There you go. Yeah.

[23:18] JOHN WATERS: Love it.

[23:21] ALLAN ANDERSON: What type of food did you usually eat? Growing up.

[23:29] JOHN WATERS: My mother was pretty much a meat and potato. A lot of pork chops, chicken, steak, a lot of soup. She made a lot of soup, chili, stew. She wasn't big on fish. She never cooked fish.

[23:51] ALLAN ANDERSON: You had to do that yourself?

[23:53] JOHN WATERS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love cooking fish. Every about twice a year I have a fish fry at the house. All of crappie we catch at the lake. I get a bunch of crappie and we'll have anywhere from 60 to 100 people over for crappie fry. They love it. Everybody's bugging me all the time. When you have another fish, fish gotta catch them first. I gotta catch them first. Been a bad year so far. We just had one about two months ago. All the neighbors and my friends are always bugging the guys I go off with. We're gonna have another fish fry. It's good. We have a good time.

[24:37] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah, you got a good. A good house for entertaining, too.

[24:42] JOHN WATERS: The last fish fry we had, your grandmother said, listen, you know, 100 people's too much. I'm too old. Do all of this.

[24:50] ALLAN ANDERSON: So you two are just so popular that you got.

[24:53] JOHN WATERS: Yeah, yeah.

[24:54] ALLAN ANDERSON: I don't have people coming to my parties.

[24:57] JOHN WATERS: Yeah. So I cut it. We cut it. I didn't invite quite as many people. I say, you got to be careful because if I don't invite them, you know, they hear about the fish fry and then I hear about it, you know, what's the matter with me? But we had maybe 40 the last one.

[25:15] ALLAN ANDERSON: That's much more reasonable.

[25:17] JOHN WATERS: Yeah, a little easier to control, so.

[25:21] ALLAN ANDERSON: And if there's a hundred old people, they're all gonna have to use the bathroom at the same time.

[25:25] JOHN WATERS: Pretty much, yeah. Somebody was kidding me about that. Hey, listen, you better put some porter potties. I said, I'm not worried about Porto potties. I said, with all these old people, I'm gonna have the paramedics standing by out in front. And what I got. Hundred old people were here.

[25:44] ALLAN ANDERSON: Pressure monitor.

[25:45] JOHN WATERS: I want the rescue squad right here. We had a lot of fun with it. It's one thing when you get up in age, you know, there's a lot of kidding about how you're gonna go, when you're gonna go. There was a movie out called the Grumpy old men, and that's all they talked about was, boy, I hope I go like him. That was. That was easy. I hope I go to sleep. But it comes up every once in a while with our guys, you know?

[26:15] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah.

[26:18] JOHN WATERS: Sure. And you don't have to answer this.

[26:20] ALLAN ANDERSON: If you don't want to take it.

[26:21] JOHN WATERS: In this direction, but I've heard you now ask or talk about it a few times, dealing with getting to an age where your friends are starting to pass away, grappling with that kind of stuff. And my grandparents do the same thing where it feels very light and casual. And I'm wondering if you could talk to Allan a little bit about what that experience has been like. When you get up in age, you start thinking about, well, okay, I can go anytime. And me and your grandmother, we've already made our plans. I know what she wants and she knows what I want. We've written everything down is to. Because when it happens, it's a shock. You don't have a lot of time to get things straightened out. And we know I'm going to be buried. She knows who to call, where the undertaker is, everything like that. And it's just. It's going to happen. It's going to happen eventually. And we're at that age where we can go. We know it. So we try and do everything we want to do that we physically can still do, while we can still do it, because every year, not every week, it gets a little harder to do things. So we. We do everything we want to do that we still can physically do, and it's inevitable it's going to happen. And my friends, too, I just lost another one about a month ago, and just like that, he went. But y'all, it's something that's on your mind a lot when you get older. This is, you know, it can go anytime, but you live with it. I mean, it's gonna happen. So make your plans and enjoy yourself while you can.

[28:30] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah, gotta enjoy it.

[28:32] JOHN WATERS: Which we're trying to do as much as we can.

[28:36] ALLAN ANDERSON: Doing a good job at it, I think.

[28:37] JOHN WATERS: Yeah, I think we are. I think we're having a good time. But one thing I've noticed sometimes it irritates me is I have some young friends that have known since they were teenagers, that are now in their thirties and forties, and they do a lot for me. One of them was a contractor, was putting in a shower, a walk in shower for me, for free. It kind of irritates me, and I appreciate what they're doing, but I really appreciate what they're doing, but it's like. But I have a lot of them like that I have. You know, they'll. They always call, so you need anything? Can we come over? No, we're fine. You know, we don't need anything. I do now. I won't get on a ladder.

[29:31] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah, no ladders for you.

[29:33] JOHN WATERS: I don't think when I have some things that need to be done on a ladder, I will ask, and they come over and do it. No problem. But it's kind of hard to ask for assistance like that. I mean, we don't need assistance on most things, but a few things we do, but it's. It's. It's time, you know, we're there.

[29:56] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah.

[29:57] JOHN WATERS: So be nice to me. Well, you always are.

[30:01] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah. Be extra nice to you.

[30:02] JOHN WATERS: Yeah. Yeah.

[30:07] ALLAN ANDERSON: Grandpa Dave and Carol, grandmair, they didn't plan out the ending as well as you guys did, and that seems to be impacting them pretty hard now.

[30:22] JOHN WATERS: Yep. Yep. I think it affects some people harder. Well, in their case, it's very tough because of condition Carol's in, but it does affect people harder when they're in a position that they're in. You know, she did dementia. I went through it with my brother three years ago with the dementia, and that's one way I don't want to go. That is absolutely terrible.

[30:52] ALLAN ANDERSON: But, yeah, it's hard when you can see that a person has changed so much that they don't even.

[31:01] JOHN WATERS: Yep.

[31:01] ALLAN ANDERSON: Feel like the same person anymore.

[31:03] JOHN WATERS: Yep. You know, one of the biggest concerns with that is, is it's if you need assistance in an assistant living or something, the expense is unbelievable in everything that you've had that you've saved your house, everything is gonna go because it's a lot of money, but so hopefully you hope you go fast. That's the main thing. Well, we'll see.

[31:29] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah. Fast and content and peaceful.

[31:32] JOHN WATERS: Yep. Well, Asia was a great conversation.

[31:41] ALLAN ANDERSON: Yeah. Always good to talk to you, grandpa.

[31:43] JOHN WATERS: Okay, good to talk to you, too, buddy. It.