Cyane Lowden and Roy Reynolds

[00:00] CYANEE LOWDEN: The conversation id is ddv 002375. My name is Cyane I'm 77 years old. Today's date is March 27, 2023. I'm in richmond, virginia, and I'm here with my one small step partner. Roydeheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheh.

[00:28] ROY REYNOLDS: Okay, my name is roy. My name is roy. I'm 76. Today's date is March 27, 2023. I'm in arp, texas, and I'm here with my one small step partner. Is it Cyane

[00:50] CYANEE LOWDEN: Good enough. Close.

[00:53] ROY REYNOLDS: Okay. All righty.

[00:59] CYANEE LOWDEN: All right.

[00:59] ROY REYNOLDS: Good enough.

[01:00] CYANEE LOWDEN: Now it is sign's first time to. It's her turn to read your bio to you. Okay, roy's bio. I am a christian and interested in many things such as travel, woodworking, model railroading, railroads, reading and photography. Worked as a railroad track engineer for about 20 years and 17 and a half years at train incorporated, assembling outdoor units, where I retired in 2013. Lost my wife of 50 years in 2021. I joined the gideons last year. I have been a scoutmaster and have my wood badge beads in the Boy Scouts when my sons were in the program. I have three grandchildren.

[01:53] ROY REYNOLDS: Okay. Uh, your bio. Cyane I was raised in Pittsburgh. Uh, that's Pennsylvania, right?

[02:03] CYANEE LOWDEN: Correct.

[02:04] ROY REYNOLDS: Okay. Because there's a Pittsburgh, Texas, here. The reason. It's spelled slightly. It's spelled slightly differently, but. But went to college in the south, married in Richmond, and I had my children in Richmond. I did freelance photography for a number of years and worked at the Science Museum of Virginia for an even larger number of years. I have been involved off and on with social issues and political campaigns. Presently, I am retired, but enjoy volunteering with many groups, mostly environmentally based and amid an avid. I'm sorry. Student of religious studies.

[02:53] CYANEE LOWDEN: Awesome. So I'll throw out the first question audibly. The rest of the questions will be in the chat. And I'll start with you, Roy, and you will pose the same question to your partner. Why did you want to participate today in the one small step program?

[03:11] ROY REYNOLDS: I think it'd be. I think it'd be interesting and can be very fun. And you.

[03:20] CYANEE LOWDEN: And why did you join the small step? And then I say, I agree. I like meeting people from all walks of life, and I thought this would be an opportunity to meet someone other than myself.

[03:44] ROY REYNOLDS: Sound like a good enough idea to me.

[03:47] CYANEE LOWDEN: Okay, we can continue. Yeah. I mean, we both are interested in meeting other people, and.

[03:57] ROY REYNOLDS: Yeah, I'm not too. I'm not too shy about talking to people.

[04:02] CYANEE LOWDEN: No, I'm not either. You know, next to the airplane seat, I'll talk to whoever or you know, kind of an extroverted introvert. I do enjoy meeting new people. And.

[04:17] ROY REYNOLDS: Yeah, my son. My son has got Asperger's, and he would no more come up and talk to you just off the cuff than anything.

[04:29] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah. I have met a couple people that have been dealing with Asperger's. It's interesting. Tough, but certainly there's a lot more to it than just. Just the name.

[04:43] ROY REYNOLDS: Yeah. He wasn't diagnosed with it until he was 27 or 28, which is extremely late.

[04:51] CYANEE LOWDEN: Wow. How could they not? I'm sorry about that.

[04:55] ROY REYNOLDS: We had. We had no idea. We had no idea.

[05:00] CYANEE LOWDEN: That's.

[05:01] ROY REYNOLDS: We need. We knew he was smart, but he. But we had no idea.

[05:05] CYANEE LOWDEN: That's. That's incredible, because usually if you can tell. As soon as. Let me get. Something's wrong with his phone. Let me fix this. I don't know why it's supposed to stop after the two rings, but it didn't. Sorry. Lost track. Why were we talking about. Oh, the Asperger's. Yeah. I work.

[05:31] ROY REYNOLDS: Which is a. Which is a. Which they consider a form of autism.

[05:35] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah. Which is.

[05:37] ROY REYNOLDS: Which can be hugely widespread and a varying. Different things. Asperger's is. Is basically a social coordination problem for a person that they can't.

[05:57] CYANEE LOWDEN: They can't socialize well. Correct. They just.

[06:01] ROY REYNOLDS: Correct.

[06:02] CYANEE LOWDEN: Which is similar. Oh, yeah. But Asperger's. Wasn't there a movie about somebody with Asperger's or something? Not too long ago? It seemed like, do they can get on one subject and talk about that subject forever because they're so well versed. I mean, well focused or something.

[06:23] ROY REYNOLDS: I think you're. I think you're thinking of autism directly.

[06:26] CYANEE LOWDEN: Oh, okay.

[06:28] ROY REYNOLDS: And it's. There. There is a. Don't get old. I'm. My mind goes. There is a lady who is a doctor.

[06:44] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah, I know.

[06:46] ROY REYNOLDS: And in fact, she developed a lot of things for cattle.

[06:56] CYANEE LOWDEN: Right.

[06:57] ROY REYNOLDS: Setting up.

[06:58] CYANEE LOWDEN: And that's autism.

[07:03] ROY REYNOLDS: That's more autism than it is Asperger's.

[07:06] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah.

[07:07] ROY REYNOLDS: And. But. But some of the people that have it just basically almost can't cope. They. The stimuli comes in so fast and so hard on them that they can't take the. They can't take the stimulus.

[07:27] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah. Oh. You know, this is getting onto another track, the railroad, because I love trains. Love trains. I would ride them all, but where I work, the science Museum of Virginia, is a hundred year old train station. It was a major train station. And this is, you know, I'm around the idea of trains, and I remember picking up children and grandchildren from the train station before it closed. But, but you, you were an engineer on. Online and then you were on the train.

[08:08] ROY REYNOLDS: When I. When I graduated. When I graduated from college, I graduated with a bsc e degree, which is a civil engineer. That it. And that is a person. I have done track design inspections, new construction, maintenance, all that kind of stuff. And I have also been the driver of a train.

[08:42] CYANEE LOWDEN: I got to sat and sit in one of those one time.

[08:45] ROY REYNOLDS: The, uh, there is. I was a, um, track foreman on a tourist railroad up in Michigan, 6 miles. And the. Basically I had a twelve ton Plymouth locomotive to use for maintenance purposes on that 6 miles. And one time our regular locomotive was down and they needed to run the big train, which was about ten cars, and they had to double head. They had to use a small steam locomotive and a 25 ton diesel behind it for the actual power and speed. Well, it took two crews, so they were on the steamer, and I got stuck on the, on the, on the diesel to actually run.

[10:00] CYANEE LOWDEN: That'd be fun.

[10:01] ROY REYNOLDS: Which was, which was really kind of wild.

[10:04] CYANEE LOWDEN: Oh, wow.

[10:06] ROY REYNOLDS: I can try. I control the speed and they control the whistle and the air brakes, which made for interesting situation. And then after I moved down here to Texas, I got involved in building a two mile long tourist railroad in Jefferson, Texas, and wound up after we built the track, I stayed on to maintain and run the track and the train.

[10:47] CYANEE LOWDEN: Wow. Did you grow up with trains? I mean, did you have a lot of.

[10:51] ROY REYNOLDS: Pretty much the. I was born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana. Do you know where that is? Okay. The. Because right now I'm about 17 miles southeast of Tyler, Texas. Do you know. Do you know where Tyler is?

[11:18] CYANEE LOWDEN: Not familiar.

[11:20] ROY REYNOLDS: Okay. You know where Dallas? Yes. Okay. Tyler is about 100 miles east of Dallas, and I'm another 17 miles southeast of there.

[11:38] CYANEE LOWDEN: Okay.

[11:39] ROY REYNOLDS: So in the middle of piney woods.

[11:45] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah. Not that familiar with Texas, except for having driven through it one time.

[11:50] ROY REYNOLDS: But I. Oh, that was, that was, that was a long period of time.

[11:55] CYANEE LOWDEN: Oh, we drove through the panhandle.

[11:57] ROY REYNOLDS: East, east to west, or north to south, it doesn't really matter.

[12:00] CYANEE LOWDEN: But east to west. Yeah.

[12:03] ROY REYNOLDS: Okay. It was the northern part or the southern part.

[12:11] CYANEE LOWDEN: I think it's more through the panhandle. So I didn't. I don't think.

[12:15] ROY REYNOLDS: Oh, way up there. Amarillo.

[12:17] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[12:19] ROY REYNOLDS: If you stand on a tuna can, you can see the back of your head.

[12:23] CYANEE LOWDEN: I'll remember that. Yep.

[12:27] ROY REYNOLDS: The panhandle is flatter the fritter. You know, it just.

[12:30] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah, I agree. It just I mean, it was just endless. Flat.

[12:37] ROY REYNOLDS: Roaring hot in the summer and extremely cold in the winter.

[12:42] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah.

[12:42] ROY REYNOLDS: And the wind blows all the time.

[12:45] CYANEE LOWDEN: Wouldn't want to live there.

[12:47] ROY REYNOLDS: No.

[12:47] CYANEE LOWDEN: Have you ever been to Virginia?

[12:52] ROY REYNOLDS: Yes, I have the wound up flying into and out of Norfolk one time. We, we inspected a track out of Suffolk, Virginia, going, going toward Garrett, which was a little bit west of there, and the, and leaving out. We went over the Chesapeake Bay bridge tunnel just to do it, because we missed a flight connection. We went over to the eastern shore. We spent the night, and then came back and got our planes to go back to St. Louis.

[13:39] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah. Yeah. It's a pretty area in there.

[13:42] ROY REYNOLDS: Oh, it's gorgeous in there. And over on the, in the little panhandle. Not Rick. What do y'all call it? Panhandle? Or is it the little tip that goes sort of between West Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina?

[13:59] CYANEE LOWDEN: I don't know what you call it. Never had a name.

[14:03] ROY REYNOLDS: It goes down to almost a little point down, down there.

[14:08] CYANEE LOWDEN: Certainly is like a panhandle or a pot handle or something, but, yeah, I don't know if it has a name. Probably does. Don't, don't forget to look at the questions in the chat. They're there if you. If you want them, but I just want to make sure you had access to them. Oops.

[14:28] ROY REYNOLDS: Well, I was an only kid. Long years ago. My parents, they only had me. I don't think it was strictly by their choice, but they only had me, and the, they only left me one time or one, or one or two times that almost any place that they went, they took me. And dad didn't like to go anywhere that I couldn't go. And if he saw something on the side of the road that he was interested in, he stopped, and we looked, and he and mama and I was brought up that way. If you see something you like, stop and look at it. You know, if you got the time, do it, you know, somewhat like you.

[15:28] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah. I grew up, older brother and a younger sister, and I just remember playing a lot outside. Grew up a very happy childhood and on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, and it was clearing up by the time we moved there because it was a very dirty city, but had a lot of fun. It just, you know, went through, all the way through high school there. So I've known friends from kindergarten, but don't live there anymore. Moved out when I got married. But it's, you know, there was a. It was a good childhood and lots of family, at least in Virginia. My mother was from there. So had lots of aunts and uncles and cousins that we would visit. But. Yeah, pretty good.

[16:14] ROY REYNOLDS: Yeah, that Pittsburgh is a sort of mountainous area. I've never actually been to Pittsburgh. Now I've been to Philadelphia and I've been to Cincinnati.

[16:27] CYANEE LOWDEN: Oh, it's quite hilly. Okay, we got another question. What are your earliest memories of politics? I'm asking. I guess I'm asking you, Roy. Right.

[16:43] ROY REYNOLDS: I remember when I Eisenhower was in office. That's a long time ago. The. And I definitely can remember when Nixon and JFK were vying for the. For office.

[17:18] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah.

[17:18] ROY REYNOLDS: And I remember all. I remember all of those. And of course we had a television. We got a television back in about 56. So I remember after that it was a matter of. Whenever anything happened, it. Of course we only had three tv stations in town so we got a whole bunch now.

[17:56] CYANEE LOWDEN: Oh boy, do we. Yeah, I have almost the same memory politics as you do since we're about the same age of Nixon and we had. I remember Khrushchev coming through Pittsburgh, you know, because that was one of his tour things which was, oh my goodness.

[18:17] ROY REYNOLDS: I bet traffic was tied up a lot doing that.

[18:21] CYANEE LOWDEN: And Kennedy came through our small town. I remember I was within 10ft of him. Just. I was amazed to see a realized president at that point. But it was, you know, I guess, I mean being in Pittsburgh you ended up getting some interesting politicians coming through. Not that I was too aware of anything. My most was because we had so many missile silos around during the cold War. And we wore dog tags because they didn't know whether anything was going to be blown up or not. And as an elementary school kid we had dog tags to identify ourselves if. If the whole city had been blown up, which is not really.

[19:03] ROY REYNOLDS: We never had. We never had dog tags. But Shreveport, Louisiana is across the river from Barksdale Air force Base. In fact, Barksdale was built because the city of Shreveport in the First World War provided the land for the air base when it was part of the army way back in World War one. And then, and then they. And then it just developed through, through World War two and then. And then being a sack base during the Cold War. Yeah, it just. I can, I can remember b. KC 135 Sde.

[19:52] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah.

[19:53] ROY REYNOLDS: Flying in and out of there.

[19:55] CYANEE LOWDEN: I can imagine.

[19:56] ROY REYNOLDS: I even our. Where we lived was on the southern side of the city and basically a flight path to come into, to land at Barksdale. And several times I have seen KC 135s refueling b in our backyard. You know, from. I was in our backyard and and one time they were flying the shuttle, I don't remember which one, but it was being transported back from California to Florida. And they landed at Bark State. And I saw that thing on the back of that 747.

[20:54] CYANEE LOWDEN: I bet that was, that was.

[20:59] ROY REYNOLDS: That was a sight.

[21:01] CYANEE LOWDEN: I got to photograph the fourth launching of the space shuttle down at Cape Canaveral, which was quite an impressive sight of. And it was like standing on an earthquake when that thing took off.

[21:15] ROY REYNOLDS: Yes, I can imagine. I went, oh, the first year, the year that I graduated from college was 1969. And right after I graduated, I went to, I, I was inducted into Talbeda Pie and they had a convention in, in Houston. And the, I went along basically as an alumnus from the school. And I got to meet one of the, one of the astronauts that there. And that was something. Yeah, that was a big deal back then, for sure.

[22:22] CYANEE LOWDEN: Sure was. Yeah, we have another. What do you most enjoy about retirement and what do you find challenging?

[22:35] ROY REYNOLDS: Challenging. Get up. I've got a long list of things that I probably should be doing, but it's a case of get my get up and go to go. That's, that's my biggest problem, is getting my get up and go to go. Yeah, that's, I've got a lot of things that I can do. I've, I've got, I like the wood carve and, and stuff and the, but it's just a matter of getting myself to go. I, whenever I get going and I don't, you know, I don't have too much of a problem.

[23:24] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah, I, yeah, I was forced into retirement and I mean, it was also sudden. I ended up volunteering for everything in sight to feel like I was still.

[23:36] ROY REYNOLDS: Working, but, well, still volunteer whenever back, my last work day was February 28 8th, 2013. And whenever my wife was able to take to get her Social Security when she turned 65. And that was March of 2013, the, I said, okay, we'd already talked to the Social Security Administration and so, and they consider the first day of the month to be the day for your birthday, no matter what, when it is in the month. So since my wife's birthday was the 17 March, they considered her 65 on the first, which is march the first. February 28 is the last of February. I just put in for retirement at the, at the end of February and no problem whatsoever. We just switched over and that was it.

[25:03] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah. Good plan.

[25:05] ROY REYNOLDS: And then I got a, I saw a little job deal on the bulletin board at church and looking for a couple of different things, and one of them was taking care of the canoes at a camp, and. Well, all of this was at a camp. And it turned out that doing that would have had to have had a red cross, you know, the life saving thing. And I didn't have it. And the other thing that they needed was someone for the archery range. So that was me for about four years. Four or five years. And I would go out there. I would. I took care of the four people inside the range. My wife took care of the people outside of the fence, and I didn't have to mess with them. She got to go with me. I got paid, and she got to go with me. And we had fun, and I didn't have to work 40 hours a week or even every day. So it's just we were. We were pretty much on call, and the people liked it because we were both there. We took care of everybody. Everybody had fun. And one of the big deals was, I always told them, instead of being hard and stern and everything, I said, I'd tell them, look, we don't need. Everybody has a certain number of holes, okay. We don't want any new ones. We don't want any new holes.

[27:09] CYANEE LOWDEN: Good idea.

[27:13] ROY REYNOLDS: Not to. Not to mention, if they. If they made a new hole and it started leaking, I'd probably fall out. We don't want that. That's for sure.

[27:23] CYANEE LOWDEN: No, not at all.

[27:24] ROY REYNOLDS: Plus, that would hurt.

[27:26] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah. Yes, it would. Yeah. I've just enjoyed being outside and gardening and volunteering at a garden here. A lot of fun. And, you know, you make a lot of new friends because we each have our designated area to be in and learn a lot, too. And, yeah, I'm also help the city pruning trees, which is also a challenge, but it's all outdoor stuff, and that's what I like. It's, you know, retirement's nice because you just don't have to obey the rules of nine to five or anything like that.

[28:08] ROY REYNOLDS: Oh, absolutely. That's what I best love about it. I have nothing. I have not regretted retiring. No, the. At all.

[28:18] CYANEE LOWDEN: No, neither.

[28:20] ROY REYNOLDS: It's been a. I probably would have stayed working a little bit longer had the. It been a little bit more fun.

[28:32] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah.

[28:33] ROY REYNOLDS: Even though it was working up to. Up to just about the last year or so. I did have fun at work, even though I was working it. It was. It was fun. It was interesting. I thought I was contributing and stuff, but whenever. When you start filling out forms and stuff of things that are going on and you keep filling out the same things on the forums day after day, they don't do anything about it. Yeah, it gets to be no more fun anymore. And so I just, okay, I just fill out my time and be done with it. I, I had started out in one thing and then did some, some other things and became a maintenance guy. Nothing. Well, a repairman, really. Not maintenance because that was totally sex. Totally different section of the plant, but repair on the line, and then an auditor who check everything and so. But they wouldn't seem to change anything no matter what you did. You kept telling them the same problems over and over and over again and they never did anything about it. So I just. Okay, there's no point in, no point in me battling my head against a wall doing that. I mean, if you're not going to do anything about it, I don't want anything to do with it.

[30:17] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah. So, yeah, my job got boring. I was glad they kicked me out, actually laid me off. But, you know, it had gotten boring and it was getting way too technical for me. So, you know, I was glad to say goodbye, even though it was a shock.

[30:36] ROY REYNOLDS: I understand that part.

[30:41] CYANEE LOWDEN: All right, Roy what about our country makes you most worried? What gives you optimism?

[30:51] ROY REYNOLDS: Oh, what I'm most worried about, we go too far that we can't go back.

[30:58] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah, I agree. Yeah.

[31:03] ROY REYNOLDS: And we get too many. We have too many. It, we have too many people that are trying to put wedges between all of us.

[31:16] CYANEE LOWDEN: I hate that. You know, that's, it's just.

[31:19] ROY REYNOLDS: Oh, I know. I know. It just, it's, it's totally frustrating. Yeah, that.

[31:25] CYANEE LOWDEN: Well, yeah, I just, and I don't understand it why people can't be nice to each other. You know, what is, what is this big deal of hating?

[31:33] ROY REYNOLDS: I agree. I saw, like, I don't remember how many years ago now, but we, we as a country, we as a group of people were getting a whole lot better. And even from when I and you were small, everybody in the country was, was, was getting better. And the, it just, I don't know what. I know. It was a pointed effort on some people's part, and I think it was some people that were outside of the country, they're doing it.

[32:30] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah.

[32:31] ROY REYNOLDS: And war two. Well, I was thinking now, sooner than that, you know, that it, not, not quite so far back, I mean, it's.

[32:44] CYANEE LOWDEN: Repeating itself as, you know.

[32:46] ROY REYNOLDS: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I know after 911 and, and all of that, the country was together. Yeah, pretty much.

[33:01] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah.

[33:02] ROY REYNOLDS: At least for a while.

[33:03] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah, I agree. And then we, you know, like you said, we have these splitters getting in our sides that are trying to make us turn on one another. I don't like that. I'm hoping there are enough good people that will be able to write this.

[33:22] ROY REYNOLDS: Well, let's put it this way. We had some people, like, up in the northeast, that it would say things about people from down south and vice versa, or east, west and. And all of that, but, like, it happened during World War Two, but yet they were talking back and forth to each other. But it's like brothers and sisters. You mess with, you mess with one, they'll. They'll. They might have been fighting, fussing with each other, but you mess with one, both of them are at you. Then, you know, if somebody outside started messing with that doesn't. You don't do that. And. And pretty much that was. That was our situation, our. The country's situation, like World War two. And. And up until, just, say, 1010 years or so ago. Uh, 1015 years ago, that's the way it wasn't around here. You know that.

[34:46] CYANEE LOWDEN: So, yeah, I, uh. I just hope, you know, we all depend on our young people to kind of hopefully see things better than we ever did. Children.

[34:59] ROY REYNOLDS: Well, some of the young people. Some of the young people that I have seen, the pendulum is swinging back. We can kind of count on them.

[35:13] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah.

[35:14] ROY REYNOLDS: Which is. I'm really surprised because I remember the hippies and because that's about the time that I got married and, well, May 2271 was when my wife and I got married. And we, on our honeymoon, we. We stopped at a few places and there were some hippies and whatnot, but even after. After a while, you know. But the hippies then are the ones that are in pretty much running things now.

[35:59] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah. A different world. Yeah, I know. What is it? The first millennials, I guess, are beginning to rise to the top now because they're 2025, something like that. That's the first round of them. And some of them getting into politics. It'd be interesting to see what they do.

[36:22] ROY REYNOLDS: I have a tough time keeping up with what you call baby boomers. I guess we're baby boomers because I was 46.

[36:32] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah.

[36:33] ROY REYNOLDS: And I don't know. Yeah, boomers, millennials. And I can't keep up with those terms at the age spreads as they go.

[36:49] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah. But I think the boomers is the biggest group. I forget it expanded along up into the sixties somewhere is when they tailed off or something. Lot of years. A lot of decades.

[37:02] ROY REYNOLDS: But, yeah, we get, of course, let's see, 45 to somewhere around 60. And because. Yeah. I graduated from high school in 64, college in 69. It just.

[37:24] CYANEE LOWDEN: Well, then Vietnam, right at. Where we were graduating was. Vietnam was the biggest, big issue.

[37:30] ROY REYNOLDS: I. Right after graduation, I got a card to go.

[37:35] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah.

[37:36] ROY REYNOLDS: To visit the local people.

[37:39] CYANEE LOWDEN: Did you have to?

[37:42] ROY REYNOLDS: No. I wound up getting a four f for my eyesight. And. Which frustrated them to no end, I could tell because I only missed one question on their little tests. So I made a 98 on it, which was the highest grade of the group of people, group of guys that were there, and they were totally unhappy and unhappy. Cause I had gotten. I had the highest grade there and wound up four f. Well, I'd prefer.

[38:21] CYANEE LOWDEN: To be a four f. I think. I wouldn't have wanted to fight in that war system.

[38:27] ROY REYNOLDS: I tell you what, though. I. As far as it goes, uh. Yeah, I'm. I'm not adverse to defending the country, but I want to know what I'm defending, why.

[38:43] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah.

[38:44] ROY REYNOLDS: And what for.

[38:45] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah.

[38:46] ROY REYNOLDS: It's defend the country. Yes. Just to. Just to do something on the other side of the world. No, I'm sorry, I can't. That part I. That part I have a problem with.

[39:00] CYANEE LOWDEN: I agree with you. I think the government has been a little less than forthcoming over some of these, quote, unquote, wars. We've had the fight.

[39:13] ROY REYNOLDS: No joke. That's my problem is, is they're not forthcoming. And the last, well, since I hate to say it, but I don't trust them anymore. After. After this pandemic fiasco, I can't trust them. I don't know who to trust. They were never forthcoming, and they would never say that. Okay. Because of new information, we are changing our mind or changing our position. It was always, well, we're just changing it and no real good reason.

[39:54] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah.

[39:55] ROY REYNOLDS: And I just. With. With the group of people doing that, you just. You do what we say or else. I don't go with that. I'm sorry. That's not what. That's not what this country is. It's never. It never has been.

[40:13] CYANEE LOWDEN: No, I think that. Yeah, well, the pandemic changed a lot of people in the way of thinking or being or anything. And I don't know. I found it very hard to stay home after a while. At first it felt like a vacation, and then. No. And I couldn't see my children and my grandchildren, and it just, you know, we'd have dinner outdoors or something or other, just to cope. But that was a lonely time for.

[40:41] ROY REYNOLDS: Even if you were absolutely, absolutely the. And having the kids out of school.

[40:52] CYANEE LOWDEN: Awful.

[40:53] ROY REYNOLDS: Whenever. When the kids were never really in a problem of, they never were getting this, that, like, the older group and the middle agers, the kids never were affected as much as the. As the older one.

[41:24] CYANEE LOWDEN: My youngest grandchild was affected badly by it. I mean, she was in elementary school, and it was so sad, you know?

[41:32] ROY REYNOLDS: Oh, absolutely. That's terrible. The. Basically, we have a whole bunch of kids, students from, that were messed up for one, two years and longer now because ongoing, which is terrible. That was a terrible thing to do to that group.

[42:06] CYANEE LOWDEN: I think people didn't know how to protect themselves, but yet wanted to be out. And, you know, it just was. There was just because the disease was so new, nobody had any real handle on it and knew how to handle things. I remember walking.

[42:23] ROY REYNOLDS: I can understand going into it that we don't know what is happening. We need to take some precautions until we can find out. And then once they know Athenae better, then, uh, we can make adjustments and then start doing so. But they never would really make any changes. So even when things were coming out, it's sad that. That so many people have been vaccinated, boosted and whatever, and they have had, uh, they have been attacked at least twice or more, because in 2021, I was not feeling good. And, uh, I had a 530 breakfast meeting, went into town, had a meeting at noon with the Alzheimer's men's only group support group. I went to a clinic, hoping to see my doctor. They said, go to the Erde. So I get in the car, drive around the hospital, into the parking garage, walk across the street into the ER. They said, we're going to keep you. Come to find out, I had a hemoglobin number of 3.3, and it's normally supposed to be 14 to 18. And with all the tests, they came up and gave me a diagnosis of non Hodgkin's lymphoma, stage four. I was. I asked, well, I asked the doctor, I said, you know, if I do nothing, then what do I expect? He said, about four, about two to three weeks. So they. They did chemo, and they wound up between March 12 of 2021 and September. I had five rounds of chemo, 13 pints of blood, and eight pints of platelets. My. I celebrated our 50th anniversary with my wife on May 22, and then she died on the 8 July.

[45:34] CYANEE LOWDEN: Oh, I'm glad you got to celebrate the 50th together. That's good.

[45:39] ROY REYNOLDS: I had. I had. I had promised her 50 before we even had our ceremony. And then we're going to renegotiate. But I regretfully the renegotiation did not happen. But that was. That's my kind of thinking, and it's kind of a nutty character that I am. I just. Yeah, well. Well, I'll promise you 50, and then we'll renegotiate. The renegotiation did not happen.

[46:16] CYANEE LOWDEN: Oh, well, at least you had a happy 50 together. That's nice.

[46:21] ROY REYNOLDS: I fed her a dairy queen blizzard, and I had some. And I got it close, and she snapped at it and then looked at me and grinned. And I knew she was playing, but she recognized me up to the end and the. Which I was thankful for. And when the hospice nurse called and said that she had just died, I had two questions. One of them was, was she in any pain? And the answer was no. And was it peaceful? And she said yes. And I was satisfied. I was. That, you know, I had done everything that I could do.

[47:17] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah.

[47:20] ROY REYNOLDS: Regretfully, I wouldn't be able to see her anymore, but I knew where she was.

[47:24] CYANEE LOWDEN: Well, there's your comfort. Yeah. Yeah. I had one thing. You know, I've never met a Gideon before. I've met the Bibles, but never the. Never a person I was interested in your being a good one.

[47:39] ROY REYNOLDS: Well, it's a group of business people, you know, professional business people who have banded together to have the Bibles printed and put out, either passed out, like, to school children and other places, and in hotels and motels and places like that. That's the whole reason for the organization.

[48:18] CYANEE LOWDEN: I think that's very interesting because I'd never really known anything about it except for seeing the Bible in a hotel room.

[48:27] ROY REYNOLDS: That's the, that. That's the. That's the whole basis of the. Of the. Of the group. And you know who Gideon was?

[48:41] CYANEE LOWDEN: Don't you know.

[48:46] ROY REYNOLDS: Gideon was. I forget which book it's in. It's in the Old Testament, but they had a war going on between Israel and some of the surrounding people. And he came up and he had a group about like ten or 20,000 to go against their foes. That's too many people. So he goes out and it cuts down the number of people. It's still too many. So he goes out and they go down to a stream or water or something, and I. And the ones who put down their spears and their shields to drink, you know, they get down and kneel down and get water to drink. Y'all go home. He was left with 300 guys and against an army of thousands. And they. What they had done, they waded out into the water and they would cut their hands and bring water up to drink so that they could still see what was going on. And then at night, they took a lamp, which was a little stone vessel with, like, olive oil, and I. And which they use for lights. And then they put a clay pot over those to shield the light. They encircle the camp of the enemies, and at a prescribed sound or signal, they broke the pots to let the light up. And by them being totally encircled, their enemies got so scared of them being totally surrounded, they trampled each other to. Because they were. They were. They were scared. And basically they killed each other. And I. Roy, we.

[51:56] CYANEE LOWDEN: Unfortunately, I would love for us to talk all day, but we have just a couple more minutes left, and I wanted to pose the final question, which was, what incorrect assumptions do you think people make about you based on the way you identify politically? And that's for. And that's for both of you.

[52:25] ROY REYNOLDS: How about you going first?

[52:26] CYANEE LOWDEN: I'm trying to think of an answer because I hang out with more or less similar people politically, but I think if a person who was me, an extreme right wing person, I don't know, they probably. They probably would assume, you know, I'm. I don't know, very unforgiving in their beliefs or something like that. But I have some friends who are on the other end politically, but we don't discuss it, and we're friends. We don't. You know, you just don't discuss politics and they're good people. So, you know, something like you said.

[53:18] ROY REYNOLDS: That part I agree. That's. That's the. That's the thing. If you can. You can. You can discuss what you think, where you are, so long as you don't put the other person down or their position down.

[53:38] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah. Just try to understand where they came from.

[53:40] ROY REYNOLDS: That's the. That's the. That's the. I guess that is my pet peeve, is that people won't think of you in any way other than your enemy.

[53:56] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

[54:00] ROY REYNOLDS: You have a legitimate reason for thinking the way you do, or talking the way you do, or even. This is why this. This is why I do certain things, and it's why you do certain things, or the other person does certain things, but they don't. They won't come to the realization that you have as much reason to think the way you do as they do is the way they think. And if you don't think the way they think, then you're totally wrong. And.

[54:47] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah.

[54:47] ROY REYNOLDS: Which more than likely, you're both wrong. That's the way it tends to work out is that you, neither one, neither side has the whole picture.

[54:59] CYANEE LOWDEN: Absolutely.

[55:00] ROY REYNOLDS: And without the whole picture, you're in trouble. And because you can't really, you know, you can't balance everything.

[55:11] CYANEE LOWDEN: No, I think you got to hear both sides, not just your side.

[55:15] ROY REYNOLDS: Absolutely.

[55:16] CYANEE LOWDEN: Even if you don't agree with it, it still gives you, and, you know, you don't know how the other person grew up and what they were grew up with a strict father and not strict father, whatever, but.

[55:26] ROY REYNOLDS: Oh, absolutely.

[55:28] CYANEE LOWDEN: You don't ever know that. So you don't know why they behave the way they do. But. Yeah, I am, I haven't really encountered anybody who really wondered why I thought the way I did it was just kind of, you can talk or you could not talk, but I don't, you know, I like listening to people from the other side just to get an idea of why.

[55:57] ROY REYNOLDS: Well, as long as the, as long as you are getting. This is the way I believe for what, for whatever reason. But I'm not, if the person says that I'm not going to entertain any other ideas, then they've already closed their mind.

[56:21] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah.

[56:22] ROY REYNOLDS: To what is going on. And there's no point in talking because if you're not, if you're not going to try to understand what else there may be, you know, it that's, it's not going to, it's not going to work.

[56:44] CYANEE LOWDEN: Yeah.