Colbert Watson and Billy Bullock

[00:02] BILLY BULLOCK: My name is Billy. I'm 65 years old. Today is August 30, 2024. I live in Columbus, Georgia, and I'm here with Russell

[00:21] RUSSELLELL WATSON: My turn. My name is Russell. I am 69 years old. Today's date is August 30. I'm in Naples, Florida, and I'm here with my one step partner, Billy.

[00:40] BILLY BULLOCK: Very good. So, Russell bio, I currently am an old guy that likes to work with my hands. I love offshore fishing. Two or three times I go 200 miles offshore to catch interesting fish. In my past, there was a successful business person. I enjoy my free time of golfing, skiing in the mountains. I used to enjoy whitewater rafting and kayaking. Now I enjoy my wife and our little dog. I have had to. I have had and continue to have a wonderful life. I have a daughter, son in law, a young grandson, and I'm proud of all. Thank you.

[01:39] RUSSELLELL WATSON: I'm the oldest of two boys born in PC, Florida. My grandfather was a preacher in Florida, giving me a strong belief in the bible. I have two adult children and three grandchildren. I've worked hard for what I have and been blessed for it. Love being close to rivers and lakes so I can kayak raft on them. Columbus is now my home with my wife of 41 years. I've seen so much change and growth here and love the people that make up Columbus. Wonderful.

[02:23] BILLY BULLOCK: So I guess the reason I started to participate in the one small step was that seen it on Instagram and thought it was kind of interesting and looked at it and seen that, you know, I had a couple of friends and relatives that, you know, had liked it. And so first thing I did is I went ahead and signed up. I wanted to see what it was all about. Based on my bio. What is your impression of me?

[03:05] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Do you want to go ahead and, Russell do you want to say why you want to participate with one small step and then we'll go to the.

[03:12] BILLY BULLOCK: Next one after that?

[03:15] RUSSELLELL WATSON: I heard about this program probably when it came out initially, they kind of advertised it or they used the Glenn Beck show to promote it. And I'm sure they had other, other ways of promoting it, but that's how I heard about it first. And I was interested a few years ago, but just didn't think that I'd have time to be able to do it. Now they've opened it up, like you said on instagram and so on. I heard about it again and I thought to myself, I wanted to do that a couple years ago. Why don't I go ahead and do that today? So I'm very eager to participate in this, and I really apologize again for being late.

[04:07] BILLY BULLOCK: That's fine, I guess. What was life like for you growing up? If you want to answer that, then I'll answer it.

[04:23] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Okay. This is based on. On your bio. What was your impression of you, right?

[04:32] BILLY BULLOCK: Yes.

[04:34] RUSSELLELL WATSON: I think that's what is lifeline when you grow it up. Well, we skip question two, though, didn't we?

[04:44] BILLY BULLOCK: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I guess we did. Okay. All right, so I'll go back to that one. Based on my bio, my impression would be that I like the fact that you're a deep sea fisherman. It was really something you said. Interesting fish to catch. Me growing up in Florida, half of my life, I did a lot of deep sea fishing with my dad, my uncles, stuff like that. So it was. It was.

[05:24] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Pardon me. I introduced. Is that PC? Is that Lake Pinellas?

[05:29] BILLY BULLOCK: No, that's Panama City.

[05:32] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Okay, I see. I never heard of that. Good.

[05:37] BILLY BULLOCK: You know, growing up in Panama City, everybody says, you know, I want to go to PC, especially around here in Columbus, you know, and then they hear, well, you. You were born there? I said, yeah, I was born there. Why'd you leave? No work. But, you know, it was strange for you, catching interesting fish. And I'm thinking of trigger fish. I'm thinking of blue marlin. I'm thinking of tuna. You know, things like this. I've probably caught every one of them myself.

[06:11] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Sure, sure. Absolutely. Anything else?

[06:17] BILLY BULLOCK: No, that's pretty much it.

[06:19] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Well, I think. I'm really happy to meet you, Billy. I think reading. Listening to your bio and reading your bio, my first thought is, and I should have put this in my bio, that I'm very, very devoted, very involved Christian, and I'm active in a men's group, and I'm active in my church and that sort of thing. So it sounds like we share that interest. And that was the first thing that came out. And I like this. You love being close to Rivers Lake, so you can kayak and raft. I don't want to talk about myself. This is my impression of you, but I think that you and I, regardless of political issues, could be paths.

[07:21] BILLY BULLOCK: So, yeah, I mean, I agree with that. I don't have a problem with anybody's political belief one way or the other, or really their religious belief that, you know, it's. I'm not controlling you, and it's your life to live.

[07:43] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Correct? What was your life like growing up?

[07:48] BILLY BULLOCK: Oh, my goodness. My life was like my wife will say, and I will kid about it. It was sort of like every time the rent come up. We moved elementary school. I was in twelve different schools. Moved all around Florida. My dad was not military, but we moved a lot, depending on what job he had or something like that. So until I moved into Columbus in 71, it was just, you know, move here, move there, but we come to Columbus. My dad got a job there with a bakery, and I have stayed here, married my wife. She lived on the same street almost her whole life. Cause we built a house. We built a house right across the street from her parents. And we were there for 20 years. And then we moved to where we're at now.

[08:56] RUSSELLELL WATSON: I see. Nice. All right, well, I don't. My life growing up was kind of divided between Michigan and Ontario, Canada. My mom died. My mom and dad had me later in life. In fact, I found out. I found out later, when I was probably about 30, when I met the son of an older, older fellow than I, and I met the son of a friend of my dad's. And he said, oh, you're Ross. You're Charlie's little accident. That's what all his pals, he and all his poker playing, drinking buddies called me. So, yeah. And then unfortunately, my mom died when I was ten in a car accident. So my, my poor dad was at that time, oh, probably 60 years old, had this ten year old that was a little wild. And I was always a good athlete, but I was always kind of rough and tumble. And so in the summers he would send me to live with my sister, who had this wonderful little tiny cottage on a lake in Canada. And that's where I learned to ski and fish. And I was never a very good fisherman then. I took up fishing later in life. But my summers, they were just wonderful. We'd get. There was a, I had a pal up there that was basically the same age, and we would get in a canoe and just go as far as we could go. There were indian reservations on this lake and locks, you know, locks that you go from one lake to another on that. It's called the Trent Severn waterway. So we would, we would do that. And then later, later we, when we got to be about 14 or so, we got access to the power boat and learned how to. Well, we, we were water skiing, you know, when we were five years old, but we got access to it and as long as we put gas in it. So we work at a farm up the street. We'd carry groceries in for people. We would do whatever we had to do to get $3 to buy five gallons of gas back then. Can't believe it. And it was just, you know, we would, we would water ski until our arms fell off and. Or if there was a. There were a couple rental cottages in the area. If there was a cute gal in them, we would put her on the inner tube and wouldn't let her go till her top came off, you know.

[12:13] BILLY BULLOCK: There you go.

[12:15] RUSSELLELL WATSON: So in the rest of the year, I'd go back to school and wait for, you know, I played every sport, but we. I'd wait to go to Canada again. It was, it was just a, you know, growing up for me, it was, it was pretty good. And then I, as I got a little older, I started working and all that. I mean, in, you know, in high school. So that was kind of me growing. Me growing up. That was what was important to me, football and Canada. So, anyway, that's, that's where we are now. Okay.

[12:52] BILLY BULLOCK: Yeah, you, you mentioned the, the Indians around the lake. I had a friend of mine that, when I was going through electrical school, him and I worked together, and he was, he was an Indian from up around Canada.

[13:05] RUSSELLELL WATSON: I see.

[13:07] BILLY BULLOCK: So, yeah, that just brought a remem, a memory to me.

[13:11] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Yeah. Some of those stories are kind of tragic, how they, they lived. They still, you know, still live. It's, you know, it's just eking out an existence, basically. If they aren't lucky enough to have a casino or something, I guess.

[13:28] BILLY BULLOCK: Yep.

[13:29] RUSSELLELL WATSON: So that's what life was like. Now it's your turn. Who's been the most influential person in your life?

[13:37] BILLY BULLOCK: You know, I would have to say I've had several people. My dad, probably one of the biggest because, you know, he taught me to work on cars, how to do a, you know, a good day's job. I used to ride to work with him, and I would sleep in the car until I got a ride to go to my jobs in the bakery that he worked at. When I was in high school, we, I would, I would mop floors all day long because they would usually have me there doing that during construction. And, you know, I would do it during Christmas break. I would do it during the summer. Other than that, probably the first person that I served apprenticeship under was an old electrician that had actually worked on putting power lines all through California. And, you know, just, just to ride in the truck and listen to him tell stories of, you know, how they would hang this power lines and all. It was amazing to me. So probably those are the ones that I stand out the most to me. How about yourself?

[14:59] RUSSELLELL WATSON: I would, I'm trying to think about this question, because, like you say, I've had. I've had several, but the one that, that sticks out to me the most is a fella named George that led me to Christ when I was. I guess I was like a junior between my junior and senior year of high school. And that was a terrific experience for me and changed my life forever. And then, to be honest and truthful, I backslid, I think they call it. You know, I became worldly, and I was in the insurance business for 35 years, and I had different mentors in my life at that time, but none were as influential as George. And then, now that down here, and, you know, I should say the most influential person in my life definitely really has been my wife. And I was married once before, and then I was single, and I was. I wasn't a very good person when I was single, actually. Fortunately, I met her. And because of. Because of various experiences, she changed my life. She brought me back to Christ. I give her full credit for that. She's made me a better man. I quit drinking alcohol completely. And so I would. I would say number one was George when I was younger. But as I've gotten older, Vicki has been a tremendous influence in my life. Straight. See, you know, they always say Tiger doesn't change his stripes. I had a gal tell me that one time, and I did. So that's. I'm very proud of that, actually.

[17:21] BILLY BULLOCK: So, good thing to be proud of.

[17:25] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Yeah. Thank you. All right, so, number five.

[17:32] BILLY BULLOCK: Let'S see. What do you believe influence your personal political beliefs? You know, I guess growing up in, in Georgia to after I, you know, got into high school here, probably one of the things that. That pushed me one way or the other was just the fact of how. How Jimmy Carter was done by all the farmers at one time, that was, you know, it was just really strange because I've always had the belief that our. Our nation is one, that every four or eight years, we're going to change our president anyway. And by, you know, hopefully by the grace of God, we continue to flourish as a country. But, you know, it was just some of the things that went on here, especially around Georgia and being around farmers and stuff, that probably pushed me in the direction that I go. Not that, you know, anybody else is wrong, but that was probably the biggest thing. What about yourself, Russell

[19:01] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Let's see. I guess it probably goes back to my father. And, you know, he owned a business, and at that time, if you owned a business, you were anti union. Imagine, I don't know, were you in a union as electricity?

[19:28] BILLY BULLOCK: I was. I was.

[19:30] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Well, he, he owned a trucking company, and we lived in Flint, Michigan, which was. I mean, General Motors left Flint, Michigan, because of the union there. Just abandoned that city. It's just a shame what they. What General Motors did to that city. Just.

[19:50] BILLY BULLOCK: And I've been there.

[19:52] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Yeah. Just because of that auto union. And it wasn't. Wasn't. And it wasn't actually the auto union's fault, but they just got mad at. At GM. I lived in a community that was probably more conservative, but that's probably as much it as anything. Ronald Reagan's been my favorite president. You know, I guess that kind of sums it up.

[20:36] BILLY BULLOCK: Yeah.

[20:37] RUSSELLELL WATSON: This question will be pretty interesting, I imagine.

[20:40] BILLY BULLOCK: Yeah. You know, you had said about the other part of that is the religion, and you had had somebody bring you to Christ. I mean, my experience, because my great grandfather was a preacher, and he had seven children. And growing up, he had four daughters and three sons. And they did christian singing and choirs all through Florida. They did. So, I mean, I was sort of in it from the day I was born, you know, so it was nothing ever, ever new to me. My faith is, you know, is pretty strong because of that. I have a cousin that's a couple years younger than I am that actually preaches at the church that our great great grandfather, it started. And that's in Sneads, Florida. You know where that is?

[21:50] RUSSELLELL WATSON: I don't know.

[21:51] BILLY BULLOCK: It's. It's right on the. The very end of the Chattahoochee. Just before it goes into the Apalachicola river.

[22:05] RUSSELLELL WATSON: My. My God. Okay. I have an idea where it is. They call it. Don't they call that big Bend country?

[22:12] BILLY BULLOCK: Yes.

[22:13] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Is that part of that? Yeah.

[22:14] BILLY BULLOCK: Yep. Does Chattahoochee makes that big bend right in there.

[22:18] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Got hit by that hurricane a couple years ago.

[22:22] BILLY BULLOCK: That it did.

[22:25] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Yeah. Let's see. Ours was seven years ago. Are the one that influenced us mostly. Although last year, just. Just north of us, it was quite bad. And, you know, who know, I mean, any, any month, you know, any month during hurricane season can be bad. You know, things light up and they start doing those spaghetti models. You never, you know, we've been fortunate.

[22:56] BILLY BULLOCK: You know, you and I. You and I, growing up during that time, we didn't see spaghetti models until recently.

[23:03] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Not only that, I lived in Michigan. We have tornadoes every once in a while, but a big storm for us is like six inches of snow, which is nothing. Yeah, maybe, you know, or some rain or something. And like I say, we've had a few bad tornado strikes, but not like the, you know, Kansas and Missouri and all those states were. Michigan was pretty safe. I always say, when I moved here, we moved here right before that hurricane. I think it was Ian. Ian or Ian or Ida or something. It was another two. We've had two down here, and they both happen to be eyes. But I always say, now I know what a natural disaster is. Yeah. So I know. Now I know why they call it natural disaster. Huge trees just, just turned over stuff around. Like, it just, all the water, all the water came out of the Marco river, the Marco rivers, three quarters of a mile wide, and it just sucked into the Gulf of Mexico and then came roaring back and knocked out every dock. It hit, every gazebo and all that stuff.

[24:29] BILLY BULLOCK: But.

[24:31] RUSSELLELL WATSON: So do you, do you identify with a political party? Are you a Democrat?

[24:35] BILLY BULLOCK: I am a Democrat.

[24:37] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Okay.

[24:39] BILLY BULLOCK: I just. Not that, you know, I mean, I go that direction with that. And again, I fall back to my faith that, that I'm not going to tell you how you can live. That's your choice of how you want to live. When we get to the end, it's going to be up to the answers that we're going to give God. That's the way I look at it.

[25:12] RUSSELLELL WATSON: What's your relationship with the Lord?

[25:15] BILLY BULLOCK: I believe in the God very much. I do. My wife, several years ago, was a youth director at the church that we went to. I was the, what they call a sexton, the maintenance person for 14 years at the church. My strength and my belief is still there. But ever since COVID I really have not been back to a church. Somebody had said that Christianity has become political, and I don't think that that should be that way. And it's, and I don't want somebody in a church telling me that they think I should vote one way or another on anything.

[26:19] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Sure. Yeah. And I can tell you this. My, I'll go ahead and answer this question for myself right now, but I do not identify with the political party. I'm independent. Okay. But, but I, here's the thing. I'm an independent, but I've probably never voted other than republican because I'm still. I'm independent, but I'm still conservative. I was on a, I was on a committee. I sold health insurance. So I was on a health insurance committee under Georgia, George Bush, the national small Business Health Insurance Committee, which was quite an honor to get involved in that. And what that meant is we got to go to Washington. We got to talk to the lobbyists, we got to do all that stuff. And at that time, I was a true Republican. And then the Iraq war came along. I guess that was the first one. Yeah. Iraq, Iran, no, Iraq slash Afghanistan war. And when Bush was trying to push that through Congress, they called for money to know, to donate. They were always calling for money, but they called for money to support George Bush's effort for war. And I said to the person on the phone, I said, do you support war? And she said, what do you mean, you don't support the war? I said, do you support young, at that time, young men, young people dying, being, you know, mutilated, being all the horrible things that go along with war? Because it wasn't like, you know, we had. We had 911. I understand that, but that. How do you fight this new terrorist war? You don't just ultimately go to war for 20 years. I think I was right. And I said, I said, take me off your list. I'm not a Republican anymore, so I have either voted or abstained from voting every year. I voted for Trump 2016. I don't think I voted for him in 2020. I appreciate some of the things that. That he did when he was president, and I'll vote for him this time. I don't think this current administration knows their ass from a hole in the wall, pardon my language. I guess we're not supposed to talk like that, really. I don't think. I don't think it's the first time you've. You've heard that. What you said about COVID because we were involved in a church, and Covid came along and I didn't appreciate the way they handled the safety of their members. And I felt that it was done because of the fact that they needed the cash register to terrain not. Not really the safety. They started having open meetings and exposing. Exposing people. We. We ended up. I don't know. It's too long a story to get into here.

[30:21] BILLY BULLOCK: But.

[30:21] RUSSELLELL WATSON: But so we were without a church until about six months ago after Covid. We left that church where we've been part of and had enjoyed, but just kind of had a kind of thought. We saw their true colors, and so we left after Covid, and we're without a church, but my belief is still quite strong. But then we found. We found a very good church, and that's where we go every week now. And I'll be honest with you, politics is a big part of that church. I think they did a. We didn't. We didn't go last week. I don't know. We had something else. We didn't go, but it was easy not to go because it was a. They were. He was preaching about abortion, and I don't agree with abortion, but I don't need to listen to, you know, all the gruesome tales of. Of that. So I don't know if it was national abortion Day or coincided with something like that, but he felt the need, and minister felt the need to. To preach on abortion. And I would rather. I'd rather listen to something from the Bible because it's a very bible centered organization. Very, very bible centered church. And. And I appreciate that, but I don't. I'm with you on the. On the politics. I'll decide who I want to support.

[32:10] BILLY BULLOCK: Yeah. Yeah. And I agree with that. I mean, that's. That's one of the other things that sort of helped me, especially my wife, to walk away from a church before COVID was ever hit. And this is February of 2019. I woke up and could not breathe. And I had been out sick the day before and gone to the doctor, and they said I had the flu. Go home. I didn't sleep well. My wife took me back to the doctor, and they did an x ray of my chest. And, you know, the doctor, the x ray tech had to hold my hands up so she could even take the x ray.

[33:02] RUSSELLELL WATSON: You were so weak.

[33:04] BILLY BULLOCK: I was that weak. My doctor has been my friend since high school. We went to high school together, and we're in the same church together.

[33:13] RUSSELLELL WATSON: I had like that in Michigan.

[33:16] BILLY BULLOCK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she run across the doctor's office to tell my doctor. And I spent 21 days in ICU. I did. My fever was, like, 108. They. My wife come in one day, and they just had ice bags all over me just trying to get my fever down. I left the hospital in an ambulance going to rehab. They didn't think I would. They didn't think I would ever walk or anything. They had me on so much fentanyl, trying to stop everything to get stuff out of my lungs. My lungs were just completely filled with. They don't know really what ended up. I had a trache. I had a feeding tube. I had to learn how to. I had to learn how to walk and everything again. Well, at that time, my wife was, you know, we were. We were putting a lot of money in the church, and my wife didn't know whether I was going to live or not. And she, you know, asked for that to be stopped, and the know. Tell our tithes.

[34:36] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Uh huh.

[34:37] BILLY BULLOCK: And next thing she knows, the pastor is at the church or at the hospital, wanting to know why she had stopped tithing, you know? And that really put a bad taste in my wife's mouth for that.

[34:54] RUSSELLELL WATSON: You're so similar to me. I mean, we're supposed to be different, but I think I. We have more similarities, and we have difference than anything.

[35:04] BILLY BULLOCK: You're right. You're right. It's. You know, I mean, I'm thankful that I'm here. It's been a long five, six years, but I'm fine. And so that's. That's some of the reason why I have the feelings that I do.

[35:25] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Yeah. Do you still read the Bible?

[35:28] BILLY BULLOCK: Oh, yes.

[35:30] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Good for you.

[35:30] BILLY BULLOCK: I actually have it on my phone, and sometimes at work, I just listen to it.

[35:36] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Oh, my gosh. I did the same thing. I have. I have audible. So I'll listen to either, you know, I'll listen to some Bible studies. I'll listen to the Bible. I work. Last night, I was listening to. Well, it ended up being psalms, but some. Somebody on a podcast said, listen to. What's the one that starts with l after numbers?

[36:04] BILLY BULLOCK: Leviticus. Leviticus.

[36:06] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Have you ever read Leviticus? Do you remember?

[36:10] BILLY BULLOCK: It's a hard one to read.

[36:12] RUSSELLELL WATSON: You are 100% right.

[36:15] BILLY BULLOCK: Oh.

[36:17] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Every chapter starts with, I am the Lord. Don't have.

[36:21] BILLY BULLOCK: Yeah.

[36:22] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Or burn it. Throw another calf on the fire. Or, you know, it's. I really couldn't understand why the. We were doing a. It was a. It was a podcast that we listened to as our men's group down here. And they said. They said, listen to this podcast. And the guy on the podcast, it was about integrity, the message. And he said, I tell my friends that are struggling. I think this fellow is a young minister. I don't. I don't know for sure. I'm pretty sure that's the scenario. He said, I tell my young men, or my men to listen to Leviticus, psalms, and proverbs when they are feeling. When they are having a problem with integrity, I guess. Oh, so I didn't even know my Bible studies until recently have all been in the New Testament. I could have had a Bible that was a, you know, half inch thick, and I would have been. I'd have been fine. But that, as you know, doesn't tell the whole story. And it really, like, we talked about it this morning in our men's group, and they said, you know, you listen. You read or listen to the Old Testament, and you get. You gain a knowledge of God. And I'm starting to figure that out. I read job last week, and, you know, so now. Now I'm. I got through that Leviticus, and.

[38:18] BILLY BULLOCK: Anyway, if you ever want to try this, find you a Bible that is written chronologically. Oh, it doesn't start with Genesis. It starts different, and it goes as a different Bible, and you'll get a different perspective of how it goes.

[38:47] RUSSELLELL WATSON: I've never heard that before. I appreciate that.

[38:50] BILLY BULLOCK: Yeah, that was a good one and a good study that my wife and I did many years ago at our church. And it was really hilarious and, you know, a little bit different.

[39:03] RUSSELLELL WATSON: We're getting the ten minutes.

[39:05] BILLY BULLOCK: There you go. Okay, so let's go back to this.

[39:10] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Yeah. Are you patriotic?

[39:17] BILLY BULLOCK: I mean, me? I'm very patriot. I mean, I live right here at Fort Benning. I have. I have done a lot of work at Fort Benning, and my career. I've sit out there and watched planes take off. I've watched soldiers jump out of airplanes. I've seen them stand there. I seen a big, old, big airplane. It was a monstrous airplane sitting on the tarmac at Fort Benning, waiting to go to Grenada. And I was working at the airfield out there. But, I mean, my son is a 20 year member of the Georgia National Guard, so I'm.

[40:08] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Was he. Did he go to. Has he gone to war?

[40:12] BILLY BULLOCK: He has. He was in Afghanistan. He was there at the end. He was closing bases.

[40:19] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Amazing.

[40:20] BILLY BULLOCK: When he was there, he was a QRF.

[40:25] RUSSELLELL WATSON: How does he feel about that, how they left Afghanistan?

[40:33] BILLY BULLOCK: He has a different point to it. And if you talk to soldiers, you'll get a lot of them that have the same because of the fact that they left the Afghans that were helping them. And that's. That's probably the biggest downfall that he sees of it, and, you know, and knowing that they were probably murdered when the Taliban took over.

[41:01] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll go next on this patriotism so we can move it along, Billy. But I've really enjoyed our conversation. I have to patriotic mean to me. I, um. I just have. I'm very patriotic. I have an american. I mean, this is how patriotic I am, right? I have a. Two american flags and an american striped dog on my windshield of my pickup truck. Okay, obviously, I'm a patriot, but no, I love this country. I'm so proud. Proud of this country. I love this country so much. I don't. I am conservative. I don't want. I don't want this country to change. I want this country to remain strong. I want this country to defend its borders. I want this country to treat its citizens and our veterans with respect. Let them have dignity. I see too many homeless people. You know, we're blessed and so are you, to live in a decent climate. If I was homeless, I'd want to live here too. Not that we don't have the homeless problems they have in California. If I was homeless, I'd really rather live in San Diego, California, I think. But I just, that's what patriotism means to me, I would say, and I don't know if that's too political, but it's just how I feel.

[42:39] BILLY BULLOCK: Yeah. I mean, again, me growing up, just to stick with that, me growing up here in Columbus, when we moved here, and, I mean, we were at the tail end of the Vietnam war, we, I mean, I can't tell you how many of the kids I went to school with had lost parents. You know, their father had been killed there. In my 6th and 7th grade, I lived through the trial of Callaway.

[43:19] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Okay.

[43:20] BILLY BULLOCK: So it was a lot that went through that I've seen here in Columbus over the years. I mean, I've been out to many graduations. When I worked a weekend shift, I would go on Thursday just to the graduations, just to see the kids that graduated infantry are either airborne because, I mean, I do, I support them.

[43:47] RUSSELLELL WATSON: That's terrific. Yeah, I was being, I'm 69, as I said. I was right at the end of, and I had a lottery number. I had a pretty high number, but they weren't at that. That was like, just at the cutoff that were a year older than me. Then the class. I had definitely kids I played football with as a, I was a freshman and sophomore. I played football with the varsity and I saw kids that, that I played football with actually not come back. And, you know, it's heartfelt.

[44:32] BILLY BULLOCK: Yeah. So we had one in our youth group that never made it back and I had to set up everything at the church for him to be buried, so. Been there.

[44:44] RUSSELLELL WATSON: How do you feel, Billy? I, I don't have, truthfully, I don't have a lot of people I can have a conversation with like this. And I do have a really good, I have a good pal that lives down here from New Jersey and he and his wife are very liberal. They're just complete democrats. You know, that's, we, we used to be able to talk politics. It kind of answers the next question, but now we just, we just choose to just avoid it, not talk. What, what, what happened was, and I think, I think the reason is five minutes. I think the reason is, is I asked him how he felt about the border and about the, you know, undocumented people in our country. I don't know. I think that's a politically correct phrase. That's a big issue with me. How do you feel about that, Billy?

[45:55] BILLY BULLOCK: You know, I mean, I have to draw mine on the fact that growing up and working in construction, that on any given day that I was going to a job and I had to have somebody dig a hole. We had a little corner here in Columbus that was called Kinfolk's corner, and you would pull up there and people jump in the back of your truck regardless of what they had to do, you know, and it was black people that were mostly there. Those lives have been changed now, and it's Mexicans or, you know, something like that that is there now. So it's a necessity to have them because there are jobs out there that nobody else wants to do. I mean. Yeah.

[46:57] RUSSELLELL WATSON: And it was, it was exactly as you're. It's the same scenario.

[47:01] BILLY BULLOCK: Yeah. I mean, I, my wife and her mother and mother lived in a little town off of Donaldsonville, Georgia, which is on the other side of Chattahoochee from Snead, and they were farmers, and there was, I mean, there's school buses that pull Mexicans in there to pick tomatoes to pick. That's whatever. So it's a necessity that needs to be there. It needs to be monitored correctly. To me, it's the same idea of monitoring somebody that's buying guns that doesn't need to have them, that goes out and uses it to kill 20 or 30 people in a day.

[47:53] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Be wonderful to pinpoint that and stop that. You're exactly right.

[47:58] BILLY BULLOCK: Yeah.

[47:59] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Guys, I just posted a closing question. It is, what is something that you'll.

[48:03] BILLY BULLOCK: Take with you from this experience?

[48:10] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Go ahead, Billy.

[48:12] BILLY BULLOCK: You know, to me, it has been eye opening, and not necessarily because you and I have a different political background, because I have a lot of people that I work with that have a different political background that I do. I'm not going to sit and argue with them, but we communicate. We talk to each other every day. It is nice to, as you said, to have this conversation, and that would be the biggest thing that I could take from it.

[48:52] RUSSELLELL WATSON: I appreciate that. Yeah. The biggest thing I would take from it is your answer. Just, first of all, like I said before, I think you and I could be pals. I'd love to hang out with you. I'd love to go fishing with you. You know, we have more in common than we have dissimilarities.

[49:17] BILLY BULLOCK: Yeah.

[49:18] RUSSELLELL WATSON: But the biggest thing is your honest answer about this illegal issue, because the way, what you said is exactly true. There's jobs that nobody else will do and there's jobs that are necessary need to be done. And so, and they need to be done, I hate to say it, but economically or whatever. But they, it's really changed the, it's changed the economy where we are because we are, we really have a significant number of folks like that, Hispanics mostly. And they've had devastated some. I do handyman work, so they've devastated some issues like painting or, you know, other things. But I tell you this, too, I, I've never met people that love their family more. I've never met people that are harder workers. I have a young man that worked, has worked with me from Columbia. Now, he was born here and raised here, but his parents came from Columbia legally. And he's the most wonderful young man I've met in the last ten years. And I give him tremendous credit. So I just, I appreciate your candor. This is difficult to just be dropped into a screen. Who's this guy? You know, you were sitting at a restaurant and one of your pals came in. You'd say, who is this guy? And I, you know, if it were me, I'd say this is my new friend Billy. So, yeah, that's, I, you know, I would have no problem doing this again, chatting with you about other issues or about, I'd really like to get into the fishing. The interesting fish that, that I was talking about was like the golden tile fish and rose snapper. Those are beautiful goldfish. Oh, my gosh. Guys, thank each other. I'll end the recording.

[51:43] BILLY BULLOCK: All right. Well, thank you very much for your time, and I have enjoyed this, Bill, you likewise.

[51:51] RUSSELLELL WATSON: I appreciate everything that we've talked about. And like I said, your honesty. And you're a good man, as far as I know. I hope you find a church that you like, and maybe you will. But I wrote down this chronological bible and I'm investigate that and probably get one. So I'm sure they're available on Amazon with everything else.

[52:19] BILLY BULLOCK: Right I there or either the bookstore.

[52:23] RUSSELLELL WATSON: Yeah. Terrific. Justin. Yes.