Chad Houser and Edward Cole

[00:00] CHAD HOUSER: Go ahead. My name is Chad. I am 48 years old. Today is June 21, 2024. I am in Wichita, Kansas. My one small step partner is Edward.

[00:13] EDWARD COLE: How you doing, Chad? My name is Edward. I am 59 years old. Today is June 21, 2024. I am in Wichita, Kansas, and my one small step partner is Chad Houser

[00:28] CHAD HOUSER: Edward, what made you want to do this interview today?

[00:31] EDWARD COLE: Well, one, I read your bio online, and I see you deal with a youth, a nonprofit restaurant. Dealing with youth. I'm originally from Los Angeles, California, and I'm also a student. I know I'm kind of old to be a student, but I'm 59 years old, and I'm studying psychology. And the reason I'm studying psychology is my goal is to also start a non profit for youth to keep them out of trouble. And this looks like the perfect opportunity.

[01:09] CHAD HOUSER: Incredible.

[01:12] EDWARD COLE: Okay, and what made you do the interview today?

[01:18] CHAD HOUSER: Curiosity. I love hearing people's stories, whether I can relate to them or not. To me, it's an opportunity to understand the world better. Hello, my name is Edward. I am a student of psychology. I started back to school April 2020 at 57. I am from south central Los Angeles. I am back in school to help youth find another way. I have a lot of street knowledge where I've guided a few from my experiences, but I want to help more than a few. If I combine my street education with formal education, I believe I may be able to help more. I would love to. I would love to hear from you. What. What was the thing in your mind? What was the catalyst in your mind that said, now's the time to do this?

[02:12] EDWARD COLE: Well, being in trouble most of my life, okay. But I always went to school, I guess 2020, it was a turning point for most people. I hit my rock bottom then, okay. But it wasn't the start. I actually started my change, okay. When I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2005. But the only thing about change is you have to leave something behind, and I'm from Los Angeles, except I brought everything with me, including me. So in 2020, as I said, I hit my rock bottom. The ill gotten gain that I made over the years before I moved to Charlotte had begun to run out, and I needed to do something different. I was married, and I talked to a few youngsters one day who was, you know, about their lifestyle, and I was able to talk to out of getting out of it and going back to school. And I challenged him, really, to go back to school. So we both went, and here I am today, still in school.

[03:46] CHAD HOUSER: You walked the talk.

[03:47] EDWARD COLE: Excuse me.

[03:48] CHAD HOUSER: You walked the talk.

[03:49] EDWARD COLE: Yeah. Well, I feel that it's easier for a person who has been through what they've been through to kind of pull them out of it and either by experiences or with education. So if I felt if I can talk to just a few and get them away from it with street knowledge, how many more can I get out that lifestyle with street and book knowledge? So. And Chad, I am the founder of a nonprofit restaurant and pro and program that serves 15 to 19 year old justice involved student youth. I am passionate about building a national conversation around youth and advocating for a new model. So, for you, I would like. What makes you get into this?

[04:53] CHAD HOUSER: Oh, I think if you'll extend me a little latitude, I think my story, in some ways starts before I was ever born. I was born in 1975, and my mom graduated high school in 1973 when she was a freshman in high school. Her high school was the first high school to be desegregated in Dallas, Texas. What, that the implication for me? No, sir. The implication for me was that my mom and my grandma were best friends. So I spent pretty much every weekend and almost all summers at my grandparents house. And, you know, the neighborhood was one of the first neighborhoods in Dallas to experience white flight, because the moment they started busing black students to my mom's school was the moment white families left and moved to the suburbs. So while I grew up in a suburb of Dallas, a suburb that grew very rapidly because of white flight, I spent so much time in a very black and brown neighborhood, and at a young age, saw differences. Not quite mature enough to really understand what those were, but things like watching my grandfather hook the water hose up to the kitchen sink so he could run warm water into the neighbor's backyard and they could fill up a little kiddie pool so that the two young men that lived there could bathe because they couldn't pay the water bill that month, the family couldn't, as opposed to a suburb that was very white, very middle class, no socioeconomic issues like that that you would see. Fast forward. Went to college, went to culinary school about eight, nine years after culinary school, had the opportunity to buy into a restaurant. And I did. Took a risk, took out a loan, sold my house, bought into a restaurant, and it was 2007. And my kind of running joke is, you know, I invested in the incredibly stable industry that is restaurants. The year the economy tanked and every restaurant around me closed, I was fortunate enough to grow the business by almost 40%. And my first year of co ownership was nominated as best up and coming chef in Dallas and thought I was ready to build an empire. But it was right at the one year mark of co ownership that I was volunteered to go inside a Dallas county juvenile detention facility and teach eight young men to make ice cream. And it was the moment that I met them that I felt such a tremendous sense of shame. Because the moment I met them, I realized that I had stereotyped them, labeled them, judged them. And it wasn't just that I was wrong, it was that I thought I was a better person. I knew better, I was raised better, I was taught better. But when confronted with the reality, literally face to face, I was wrong. So I spent three and a half hours with eight young men making ice cream. But more importantly, listening to them teach me who they were, how they were, why they were. Two days later, they were competing against college students at the farmers market. And one of them won the whole contest. He told me when he won, I just love to make food and give it to people and put a smile on their face, which I thought is such a beautiful way to describe your heart. He said when he got released, he was going to get a job in a restaurant. Asked my professional chef opinion on whether he should work at Wendy's or Chili's, I professionally told him the advice my father, whoever hires you first. But over that, starting with the drive home, I just continued to process that 48 hours amount of time that I had spent with these young men. And immediately realizing that this young man was never going to make it to a Wendy's or chili's, and starting to really unpack the why. And there was a surface thing. She's going back to the same house, the same street, the same neighborhood, the same lack of education, opportunity and resource. The lack of food as resource, medical care, in some instances, housing instability. And reflecting on myself at 16 and thinking about how I had been given so many opportunities to succeed, opportunities to fail and try again, and that this young man was given one chance to show the world what he was capable of, and it wasn't gonna land him a job at Wendy's or Chili's. And also understanding that for me, it was this understanding acknowledgement that both of us, for both of us, our lives had been dictated by choices that were made for us before we were born. Whether it be because the color of our skin or the socio economic class we were born in, or the part of town that we were born in that allowed those resources and nothing that was. I just thought, if that's the way the world works, I don't want to be a part of that. And that started my journey to opening a restaurant with the youth.

[10:02] EDWARD COLE: The reason, I'm really shocked. I also was part of the wider flight neighborhood, and my father owned ice cream trucks. And we were the first people in California that had soft ice cream. My father actually the one that took it to Los Angeles. Okay. And from there, we also live, growing up in a predominantly white area and nice area, city of Carson. And I also watch d flight. And I feel you. You know, I understand what you're really coming from. And, you know, I had to interject a little extra.

[10:50] CHAD HOUSER: Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. You know, thank you.

[10:55] EDWARD COLE: I would love to hear more about it.

[10:59] CHAD HOUSER: I'm a man of few words. It just takes a lot of words to get to those few words. Tell you were talking about your father, but tell me about one or two people in your life who had the biggest influence on you. What did they teach you?

[11:14] EDWARD COLE: Okay, well, my first great teacher. I take that back. My kindergarten teacher. I remember in 1970 when I started kindergarten, her name was Miss Andrews, and she had a lot of influence on me. I guess she was the reason the first day I went back home from Kitty Garden, and I said she was real nice. And even today, I still, you know, I still look her up at the school. And the last person who had a big impact on me was a person that was called Tookie Williams. For most people who do not know, he was the founder of the Crips. Okay. Well, he had got a death penalty sentence. However, while on death row, he began to write children's books and received, oh, he was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Now, even though he still died, undefined from Rome, his goal was to stop what he started. So that has a real lot of impact on me. It actually kept me out. Well, not really kept me out for being a gangbanger, but it made me look past why they were gang banging and all of that. So I would say he had a very large influence on me. Now, what about you? Tell me about the one or two people in your life who had the biggest influence on you.

[13:06] CHAD HOUSER: My mom. I will, to the day I die, live my life trying to be half as good a person as she was. She had this unbelievable ability to make anyone that she talked to feel like the most important person in the world, even if it was in a room full of people. She could go from person to person. And by the time she got through the room, every person in that room thought they were the most important person in the world. She passed four and a half years ago. And one of my friends, I thought, described her in the most perfect way. She said, your mom was all the bubbles and the champagne. And she raised me. She raised me to believe in myself. She raised me to be confident, because she was so confident in me that I absorbed it by default, by proximity. And I miss her.

[14:18] EDWARD COLE: Wow.

[14:22] CHAD HOUSER: Could you briefly describe, in your own words, your personal political values?

[14:29] EDWARD COLE: Yes, I can go further than that. Personally, I think Donald Trump and Biden both need to be sent on their way. My political values, I feel like, well, I just got out of a diversity class in the college I was into, and a lot of the things that I disagree with is one is giving each other labels. If you want to be treated the same as everyone else, what do you need a label for? Okay. I'm considering african american, you have Mexican American, and you have all these different Americans. Instead of just saying we're just american, I feel right there, that has a big impact on life out here or most of the labels that we put on each other. Now, what I see that, I even came in, I had a few misconceptions about you, but I now see that we have so many things in common right now that I have to reevaluate myself. And I think that we need to, for our personal, political, or whatever views that we have, values, whatever we have, I think that we should sit down and have a conversation, you know, and, you know, that makes so much of a difference. I remember you was talking about your mom. I wonder what all moms are like. That. My mom was a neighborhood mom, and that was to everybody. Uh, growing up, my best friend, his name was Timmy. Timmy. Yeah, Timmy. And, I mean, that was in kindergarten, and he was, you know, we didn't see color there. We didn't see, you know, what, political whatever. We didn't see that. I mean, our parents may have, but us as children, we didn't see that. It reminds me of the little roster. All right? So, I mean, I'm at a loss with words almost. Okay. Now, can you describe, briefly describe your own, you know, in your own words, your political value?

[17:18] CHAD HOUSER: Oh. You know, I think something that you said resonated in that. I think that we've had. As I get older, I know that this may gets a little silly to say, but we need new, younger life and energy and views and thoughts in politics and our government across the board, not just right or left, but, you know, kind of all of the above. And what I feel like I see is this generational, this older generations that are just trying to hold on to the Latin, they will do it at all costs. And they don't think that they realize what it's actually costing younger generations by not allowing them to have a voice and not allowing them to make decisions and have agency overdose the direction of their lives and in their countries. And I say that because I think I see it not just in the United States, but across the world. All of that said, I am the lone liberal leaning member of my family, which makes for very interesting holidays and conversation. But I found a, you know, I call my uncle up in the evening, my mom's brother, and we talk probably three nights a week. And it's fascinating to me how the conversations have shifted and the tone of the conversations have shifted when it comes to politics or policies. Bye. One simple thing, and that is even when he's negative or says derogatory things about, you know, democrats or liberals or whatever, instead of just being defensive and getting an argument, I ask him questions. Why do you say things like that? Why do you think? Do you think that I'm that way? Do you think. Let's ask. And then, you know, when in Texas, Beto work in Greg Abbott, were running against one another for governor, my uncle just kept making fun of Beto O'Rourke. And I said, well, tell me what you like about Greg Abbott. And he couldn't answer anything. And he started getting defensive. And I said, I'm just asking you. I said, I want to learn and understand. It's clear to me that you don't like this one person, but tell me what you like about this other person. And then I said, well, then let's just go through the issues and talked to him about guns, women's rights, immigration, all these kind of hot topics right now. And it was incredible that his beliefs aligned with the very person that he was complaining about, but it made for a really fun conversation. He was like, yeah. Well, then I was like, then why? Why are you labeling people instead of learning about them? And I think that we could do a lot more of that in this.

[20:46] EDWARD COLE: Country once we get rid of the labels.

[20:49] CHAD HOUSER: It's exactly right. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I would love to hear from you as a non person of color. And you talked about you're labeled as African American and there's folks that are labeled as Mexican American. Would you mind telling me a little bit more about that, about that label, like, how that feels to you, what that's like for you?

[21:16] EDWARD COLE: Okay, well, I was in the Air Force in San Antonio.

[21:21] CHAD HOUSER: Yes.

[21:21] EDWARD COLE: Sir. And I agree with the label thing in my diversity class that we had a, you know, a few things that the teacher would say, but then she'd turn around and label it. Now, the way I figure it, say the binary, non binary, the homosexual lesbian engaged, okay? You want me to see you as the person, right? Then don't give me the label. I'll notice you how you are. I can care less about your sexual preference. I can care less about what color you are. If you a friend, then you're gonna be a friend. Okay. I'm. I'm in ex con. Also, I've been to the penitentiary. And that right there, I had the force almost forced to choose a side, right? And my friend in there was a white guy, and I love to play chess, okay? And we played chess every day. Well, the white gang of the prison, daring brothers, it started a riot, right? And chuckle Wallace state prison had actually started a riotous. And after the riot, we had to be enemies almost. Not because we wanted to, but because we would have to be situated in that situation, right? And the same way with the Miss Beto O'Rourke same thing happened, right? I mean, I grew up in a mixed neighborhood. After it got to a certain, certain age, you know? And so what if my friend is of this color? So what if he's of that color? So what if he lives in that neighborhood? This neighborhood. When my father had his ice cream truck, we used to have to go in all the neighborhoods, right? And I remember one year, on my 8th birthday, my father ended up drinking too much and lost it. But a good thing I can remember about my father is on his 8th birthday. And like you said earlier, he gave me the choice either to give away ice cream for a full day to everyone, or get the money off the trucks for one day. And believe it or not, ice cream man made real good money. So that was about seven, $800. I was eight years old. I said, I want to give away ice cream. Everybody looked for me. Why? Because this is what I want for my present. So that full day, we gave ice cream away, and there was people, you know, from different areas, from different backgrounds, all talking together, and I loved it, you know? And I still believe in that today.

[24:55] CHAD HOUSER: I can't imagine the lines.

[25:00] EDWARD COLE: It was all in front of my house, so.

[25:02] CHAD HOUSER: Oh, wow.

[25:03] EDWARD COLE: It gave me a lot of power. But.

[25:08] CHAD HOUSER: Speaking of power, what is your earliest memory of politics?

[25:18] EDWARD COLE: My earliest, I guess, remembering of politics when I was eleven years old. I was on walking to the store with my mother, and I was pulled over by the police and always looked at older than my age. And it's more than politics. It goes with my early memory of a negative. It's not politics, but a negative situation. And I didn't know what I was doing. I had done. I thought, I thought it was, you know, on the way to the store, there were fruit trees all the way to the store. And I would pick an orange, pick an apple. And as I go to the store, and I was pulling over by the police, and the officer asked me, you know what? You know what? Didn't ask me what I was doing. He just put handcuffs on me sitting in the back of the police car. And after a while, I thought it was for picking the fruits. And he said, when I finally built up the courage to ask him what I had done, he said I fit the description. Okay. I didn't know what the description was, but I had to accept it. And evidently I made him mad. So he took me all around the neighborhoods, and then he would push the car fast as he can go and slam on the brakes. Okay? I guess then. And there's no seatbelts in the police car, so you hit the wire screen. And then he took me to a rival gang neighborhood from my neighborhood, and then he kicked me out the car. Okay? So I don't think police should be defunded as how the politics, a lot of politics say they should. I think they should be educated.

[27:42] CHAD HOUSER: Yes, sir.

[27:43] EDWARD COLE: Okay. And I. And that gave me, for a long time, it gave me a negative impact on my life. And I think we need to do more education to individuals. Something like the diversity class that I just took for school, right. For South University, I took a diversity class. I think that one police need to be more than six weeks of training, eight weeks if you live in San Diego, California. They need more time than that. They have the right to take a life. Okay. With only a few months of training, I think we need to start changing laws, all right? Not just for. To make it more equitable. You know, equality is going to come, but we need to make it more equitable.

[28:58] CHAD HOUSER: Yes, sir.

[28:59] EDWARD COLE: All right? So I think that's what the laws need to, and that's what the politics need to really focus on, all right. Cause we can give you equality. It reminds me of one of the things I've learned in class. If everybody is on the same level, say you're watching a baseball game on a fence, okay? But everybody has the same size box to stand on. And the tall person gets to look over the fence. Easy. The one that's smarter than him. He can look over it. Okay? But the smallest person, he don't get to see the open defense because he's on the same size box as everybody else. So in order to make it more equitable, okay, let's have different sizes of the boxes. Right. This. Everybody is not the same inside. I wouldn't say inside. I would say everybody is not on the same level.

[30:09] CHAD HOUSER: Yes, sir.

[30:09] EDWARD COLE: Okay. So those who are on one level and those who are on the smaller level, let's bring them up so they can be on the same level. I think that's what, uh, politics should focus on. Mm hmm.

[30:27] CHAD HOUSER: Appreciate that. I appreciate that.

[30:30] EDWARD COLE: No. Where would the. When was the moment when you feel misunderstood by people who have different political views than you?

[30:43] CHAD HOUSER: I mentioned my family earlier. I have another uncle, particular uncle, that he. He just won't even listen to me. I mean, even. Even trying a neutral approach, he just won't listen. And he one time just started berating a particular congressman in Texas. And I said, you know, I just told him, like, respectfully, that that particular congressman is a friend of mine, a close friend of mine, which I was thought would calm the situation. He got in my face and said. Told me that, well, your friend is ruining this country alongside Nancy Pelosi. And just started going on and on. I thought, like, what part of your Sunday church values that you. But it was very hostile. And I just thought, you've known me my entire life. You know who I am and what I stand for. You know, that I'm a decent person. You know? So how could you all of the sudden turn on me like I was the Antichrist? And that, for me, was very eye opening in the depth of how divisive politics is at the moment. That an uncle that's known me, that practically raised me, could turn on me that fast just based on one comment.

[32:30] EDWARD COLE: Can I ask you one more question?

[32:32] CHAD HOUSER: Yes, sir.

[32:32] EDWARD COLE: Okay. Do you think politics is causing more unity or division right now?

[32:41] CHAD HOUSER: I think it's causing far more division, and I think it's for all the reasons that we've talked about. But really kind of doubling down is what I think causes the division, is politicians don't really care what they say anymore. They don't care if it's true. They don't care if it's backed by science. They don't care anything. They. All they care about is that it riles somebody up, not just in support of them, but against the other person or the other side. And it makes me sad because it's not who we say we are as a country, as Americans. It's not who we say we are.

[33:34] EDWARD COLE: Who we say we were. Exactly.

[33:37] CHAD HOUSER: And we can't even acknowledge. I mean, we can't. They lie about our history. They lie about our present, and it's that.

[33:52] EDWARD COLE: I agree with you.

[34:00] CHAD HOUSER: What do you think could help so we know it's divisive? And you talked about equity. What do you think could help our country change for the better?

[34:15] EDWARD COLE: As I said, equity. We got to start treating each other better first. As I was talking about the labels, we get rid of the labels, okay? If we can look past the labels, then we can see what's really inside a person. Take religion for it. I know this is another taboo subject, but take religion for it. We have all these different christian religions, right? This separates a Christian from a Christian. Now, the way I figure, God wasn't separated, right? So who gives us the right to separate? So. So those who want to be separated, let's separate them and go on with our lives. All right? That's the only thing I figured. I think what's gonna happen and what's in the writing right now is I believe in more than just us as a species, more than just earth as a species, okay? But what I think they're gonna do to bring this whole world together, something like Independence day, it's gonna be staged. Because I'm reading. I read everything. It's gonna be staged. We're gonna have a world crisis again, that either we gonna win or lose, it's up to us how we act, right? And I I give it the next ten years, and we're gonna have that world crisis. Something like more than a pandemic, okay? We're on the verge right now of our third world war. They said the second one was gonna be the last one, but here we are looking at our third right now, okay? I am us. As you said, the new blood. Us. The younger people. Because I'm old. Like, the younger people.

[36:46] CHAD HOUSER: We're old. We're just not that old.

[36:52] EDWARD COLE: I used to say, well, I'm so old. Hey, I was best friend with Moses, you know? Methuselah, he was a good friend of mine. But we need to just stop and look around and see what we're destroying, what we have destroyed. What can we bring back? What should we leave behind? It's simple like that. I think the younger generation, they need to take over, okay? Matter of fact, I think we should go back and get a five or six year old to be president. He'll do a better job run all these countries. They did do a better job because they don't see, they haven't had got it into them yet. Okay. And the reason I say yet to know what the barriers are, that is keeping my separate and they look past them barriers. So I believe that's what's gonna take a two. We need to educate, not the youth. Leave the youth alone. We need to educate on the adults they really are looking at as you was talking about your uncle and the politician. They really need to reeducate themselves and to see, well, why do I dislike this person so much or why do I like this person so much? So I mean the class, I just took the diversity class, that person, really, really big insights on me and I recommend it. Everybody. I recommend all schools have, you know, so that's the only way I can pick. And for you, do you remember when you first became aware of politics?

[39:25] CHAD HOUSER: I remember in elementary school would be the early eighties. I remember specifically the school would have like in class you would, they would do like little polls on who's voting for who. And so, I mean, I defaulted to whatever candidate I heard my parents saying that they were, you know, but it was interesting to me because it established in my mind that there were other kids in the room whose parents weren't voting for the same candidate because I assume that those kids were at eight years old, formed a solid political opinion yet. But I think when it really like truly set in for me is I remember late middle school, early high school, well, maybe even before that, I remember the Reagan war on drugs and the just say no campaign and there was the D A R campaign and that went from Reagan to Bush through Clinton. And I think as I got a little older, and I certainly by high school, when drugs were more in ready supply, availability, you knew more people that were using them. I questioned. It was a political thing where we had labeled drugs as drugs, right, but then. But we didn't, what we didn't do was actually be honest about it, because when I was 13, 1415 years old, it was like, they referred to marijuana as the gateway drug, that if you, if you used marijuana, the next thing you know you're gonna be doing cocaine and heroin and pcp and everything else. And it was. And I didn't, I knew a lot of people that smoked marijuana. I didn't know a single person that did any of those other drugs. And it just felt like a big lie. And I thought, why can't you just be honest? Like, I also knew I had a lot of angry drunks in my family, but I never saw an angry pothead. So for me, it just was realization that politics was dishonest. They didn't tell the whole truth.

[42:14] EDWARD COLE: Okay, I have one question.

[42:18] CHAD HOUSER: Yes, sir.

[42:22] EDWARD COLE: So this is not a debate. So what drugs do you really think should be legal, and do you think. Oh, the main question is, okay, and this is going past the dope lillies and all of that. Do you think, and I often tell this to a lot of people. Do you think your dope dealer or your dope dealer want repeat customers now?

[42:53] CHAD HOUSER: Oh, boy. You know, I will fully admit that I'm not educated enough to be able to give you, I think, a well founded answer, but I can just, you know, kind of off the cuff say that I definitely think that marijuana should be legalized. I think that for a multitude of reasons, first of which is that marijuana has been used to incarcerate a lot of people, and is the causation of a lot of broken families significant impact in communities, particularly communities of color, in that it's used to perpetuate systemic bias? I also think that there are a lot of drugs that are legal that are some of the worst that you can take, particularly around pain and anxiety and so forth. And I believe that we could. I know. I know folks that have handled pain management through using marijuana in a way that was far better for their mental being, their physical being, their emotional being. And there's a far better alternative than, I think, oxycontin, hydrocodone, that are. Are very addictive. But that being said, that's, you know, amateur opinion on.

[45:00] EDWARD COLE: Not really. I research on that one, too.

[45:05] CHAD HOUSER: I would like to ask you a question that I. I think be educational for me. If you could talk to a younger version of yourself, what would you say?

[45:22] EDWARD COLE: Don't go down the street. If I can talk to a younger version of myself, some of the things that I've done, that I would intelligently do the same, and a lot of things I would tell them to do different. But one which I've done. Stay in school. Okay. You know, whatever you're doing that is wrong is not gonna last forever. Okay. And this is what I want to tell a lot of children, really, being that I have no children of my own. I have a spiritual daughter. She calls me dad, so she's my daughter now. And we have the same last name, which kind of scared me. You had to go back, you know, start counting on my fingers and toes. But I went, say, you know, as I said, don't go down the same road you traveled on or that I traveled on. There's a better way to do things, you know? And those who teach in negativity stay away from. That's the best way I can look, if it's teaching negativity, if you're learning negativity, and if you're feeling negative afterwards, then that's not where you want to be, as best I can say that.

[47:17] CHAD HOUSER: Hear, hear.

[47:20] EDWARD COLE: Now, I think this probably be our last question. What political issues do you. Do you want to see progress on?

[47:30] CHAD HOUSER: Oh, um, just one. Gosh, I. It's hard for me because I think that there's some that are just so important right now, you know, starting with guns. They're a problem in our country. And I've been going from community to community over the last six to eight months, specifically communities where young people that I work with come from and folks that are doing work in those communities. It's always the same conversation, and it's about guns. But at the same time, being the father of a four and a half year old who will start kindergarten in a year and a half, I don't want him going to school that has to have an armed guard at the front. I don't want him going to school in a world where he has to wear a clear backpack. And I think that there's some sensible, simple, smart, common sense solutions that politics gets in the way of. But I also think, as I sit here as a man talking to a man, but I think women's rights are important, too.

[49:04] EDWARD COLE: Oh, yeah.

[49:04] CHAD HOUSER: I think a woman's right to legislate her own body is important. It is. You know, my daughter should be able. Should not have someone else tell her what she can do with her body, period.

[49:21] EDWARD COLE: I agree.

[49:23] CHAD HOUSER: And it's scary to me to see that regression over the past. While.

[49:34] EDWARD COLE: On that, on both issues that you would like change, I agree on 100%. It's a shame. Well, when I was growing up, I think one person was shot, and it was by the security guard, okay. At the ice crew I went to, and that was in 1983. And I say things going straight downhill. Okay? Do you know they make bulletproof backpacks? You don't have to worry about the clear one. They had the bulletproof mouth. And why? Why do we need to do this? Okay. Each generation that I'm saying is getting twice as worse as the last, okay? The kids are not getting the education they need. I believe when they took religion out of school, it went downhill. However, they let, uh, satanism in school. There is, uh, schools today. You have the devil's club. You have Satan's club in school, but you can't have prayer. Okay? I think all that's wrong. I also did a paper on that, okay? And I. The last thing I'm gonna say, I believe that big pharmaceuticals is the blame with the drug situation. They're the one who pushed the opium pills. Okay? They then. They're also are the ones now it got out of control and it's broke. And. And now the dope dealers. What I was telling you about, the reason I asked you that question, okay. They don't care if you come back. It's not like in our day when used to buy your weed, okay? Because not only lacing it with everything so they can care if you come back or not. And yeah, marijuana should be legal. No, I'm not 420 friendly because I just don't do it. I was friendly with everything else at one time. Okay? So I say we need to evaluate what's right and what's wrong again, you know, instead of letting politics tell us. Okay.

[52:50] CHAD HOUSER: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. And for your honesty and candor. I greatly appreciate it.

[52:59] EDWARD COLE: And thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. I see that we have so much in common from the beginning to the end, and we're from two different backgrounds, so that's really good.