Tim Watson and Slade Watson

[00:03] TIM WATSON: I'm Tim Watson and I'm 57 years old. I was born in Mobile, and I live in New Orleans, Louisiana. Now. Today's November 18, 2023, and we're in Mobile. And I am here today interviewing my dad, Slade Watson

[00:20] SLADE WATSON: And I am Slade Watson I am 76. I was born and raised in Mobile. Most of my life I have lived in Mobile, except for the time I went to school in Tuscaloosa at the University of Alabama. And I was there for 20 years from 1965 to 1985. And I met, I am Tim's father, and I met Tim's mom while I was in high school, and we became very close. And then we got married in 1966 and was married for 16 years. We divorced, and we had two children, Tim who is 57, and Julie, who is 48. We divorced after 16 years of marriage in 1981. And we said each other's good friend, and we still are good friends, although we've had a lot of emotional ups and downs with each other, we're still good to each other's good friend and are there for each other in our lives. And I've been very fortunate to have married Myra. That was one of the luckiest things that ever happened in my life. And then after that, I was married to a woman named Diane from 1985 to 1990. Diane is a wonderful woman. And speaking of Diane and Myra, I think they were much better wives to me than I was a husband to them. But that's not part of the story I'm necessarily going to tell. But I think they were much better wives than I was a husband. And then I married my present wife, Nancy, in 1999, January 1999, and we've been married 25 years. And she's a very, very good woman. And she and my first wife are each other's very, very close friends. And so I'm very proud of that. I've been a very lucky man to have been married to three very, very good women, and I expect that I'll be married to Diane for the rest of my life. Nancy, excuse me. I said, diane, pardon me. And I do that sometimes. I do say one another's names by mistake. Another thing that's happened to me is I had a brother named Rick, and Rick died in 1992 of a ring tumor. Rick was a very brilliant man and was the chief accountant for several veterans administration's hospitals. And I miss him to this very day. Every time I think about him, I cry. And I sometimes, by mistake, call Tim my son by my brother's name, Rick. And so that's one thing, actually, I tear up as I even think about it right now. And so that's a little bit of that history. I went to school in Tuscaloosa starting in 65 and graduated from law school in 1975. I practiced law for 30 years up until 2004. I was unceremoniously suspended for one year of practicing law for something stupid that I did correctly. Suspended, in my opinion. I did not go back to practicing law because I had some illness, and they've never gone back to practicing law after that time. And so I probably will not go back to practicing law, although I may at some point try to retrieve my license. That's simply an administrative process that I could go through. But right now, I have no desire to practice law. I did 30 years of practicing law during that time. I found out I had three heart attacks, didn't know it, and also had a number of other illnesses. One of the things I have fallen into that I absolutely love is history, the study of history. And I'm very involved in Mardi Gras in Mobile. And I have prepared a book along with another man named Wayne Dean, who is a very, very well known history figure in mobile. In the history. The Mardi Gras book, I believe, will be a. The most important history of Mardi Gras book ever published. And I'm speaking of the history of Mardi Gras and on the Gulf coast, not of elsewhere. And so that book is Benedict. I'm working on edit 15 right now, and we're hoping that the University of Louisiana in Baton, pardon me, in Lafayette will publish the book at this point. But if one way or the other, it will be published. And I've been encouraged by a number of major historians have published that book. Even the editor of. The editor in chief of the historic New Orleans collection has greatly encouraged the publishing of the book because it has a great deal of material in it that no one has ever seen or known before. Now ask me some questions.

[05:20] TIM WATSON: Okay. I wanted to jump back to the very beginning of that, growing up in mobile. And then I've always been intrigued, and we've talked about this a tiny bit, but not a lot. Just out of high school and then there's college on the horizon, but also a kid and then suddenly a wife. That's a lot to happen when you're 19. And of course, historically, people did lots of things when they were very young by necessity, because they died at 25, that to decide to go up the road 4 hours or five without, you know, without, I think, without owning a car. We did own a car, so. But all those decisions to. What was it like? Were you ready to get out of mobile? Did you need to get away from your family, your parents? A lot of quick decisions there right after high school.

[06:20] SLADE WATSON: I am personally very acquainted with making quick decisions. I do that. A lot of most of those decisions in my life have been good. Some of them have been terrible. But no, it had nothing to do with wanting to get away from mobile. It had to do with knowing that I had to have a college education to really be the person I wanted to be in my life. It was absolutely essential for me, in my mind, to have a college education. I did not know I was going to law school. I did not have that plan. I actually was working toward a PhD in business when I suddenly decided to go to law school. That was a sudden decision that you may not know. I don't know this. Let me tell you. I had graduated from business school and had a degree in marketing with a minor in accounting, and was working as an accountant at BF Goodrich at a tire plant, in a major tire plant. My job was to monitor the cost accounting of the contractor that was building that building. And so anyway, I was driving to work one day. I was planning on going back to school to finish off my PhD, and I was working toward a masters and then the PhD in business. And I was driving back to law school. It was in May. It was on the way. The law school was on the way from where we lived to where I worked at the tire plan, bf Goodrich tire plan. I stopped at a traffic light. It was on the corner of where the law school was. Inexplicably, I turned left into the parking lot of the law school. I went upstairs. The law school admission test was in two weeks. I signed up for it. I took it. I went home and I told your mom myrataindeen, that I was going to go to law school. She immediately burst into tears because she thought that I was going to be graduating from business school and then getting a job in business, and she wouldn't have to work because she'd been working a job and going to school. She got her degree and she was tired of her having to work and just barely scraping by with money. And she was the money manager. And I knelt towards the word. I was going to law school, and I did. And going to law school was a great separation between Myra and I, because in order to do law school, you have to study almost 24 hours a day. And frequently I spend three or four nights away from home at the law school. During the time I was going to school. She was left at home with you. And then at the end of graduating, after I graduated, Julie was born. She was born on October 1 of 1975. I just graduated from law school and was working and taking the bar exam, and we found out the news that I had passed the bar exam and that Julie was born on the same weekend. I found out. Got a letter in the mail on Friday. Julia was born on Saturday. And so when we had a lot of friends, and we were very close to a lot of people, and it was, yes, I made a lot of snap decisions, always have, still do. And most of those decisions turn out good. But no, it wasn't all about getting away from my mom and dad at all. Although my father and I, as I look back at it, it wasn't necessarily a bad relationship. It just wasn't much relationship. And it wasn't much relationship with my mom, either. I didn't know them well. That's something I greatly regret, by the way, is not knowing my mom. I've studied my mom since that time, you know, that she died in 1980, and I, January 1980, and I didn't know her. Myron knew her better than I did because we would go home. My father was very, very dominant. Turns out I'm pretty dominant myself, and I think I probably inherited that trait. And so he would dominate the conversations, and then he and I might go somewhere, and Myron got the opportunity to talk to mom, and so she knew him. I cannot tell you how much I regret not knowing my mom very well. I mean, I've studied some of that. I've got some records and all of that. I told you about a lot of that, I think, but anyway. And I didn't know my father very well either, really. And then he died in 1983. Mom was only 59 when she died, and dad was 61 at the time he died. At the time, I didn't realize I didn't know them very well, but later I probably come to realize I didn't know them very well.

[11:31] TIM WATSON: They were, they met in service in world War two and then ended back in Mobile after the war was over. And I'm curious about when you did decide college was so important to you. Were they supportive of that decision? We were coming out of are really in the middle of quite a lot of turmoil, and that may not be the right word, but certainly in the sixties, a lot of social change going on, and it was a tough time to be alive, and I mean, a wonderful time, but also a tough time. So how were they support with colleagues.

[12:13] SLADE WATSON: Well, okay. Now, we were raised in Mobile, and I was raised in Mobile. So was Myrataindeh. When I was a Catholic, I was raised Protestant. My father was a Protestant. At that time. The separation between Catholics and Protestants was almost as intense as a separation between black people and white people. And my father hated catholic people. And so when we announced that Myra was pregnant and I was going to marry her, my father was very, very upset about that. He would not come. We did a little ceremony. We had to go and find a priest. We ended up being married by Monsignor in the basement chapel of the bishop's residence here in Mobile, and by Monsignor there. And my father would not come to that. We finally finished that off about ten or 11:00 at night. I went home to tell him that, yes, we had gotten married. And he said, beside his bedside, I think I've told you this story before. He said, beside his bedside, well, that's fine, but don't you raise any little catholic bastards. Because he did not consider a marriage between a Protestant and a Catholic as a real marriage. And then he later got to like Myra. He never didn't know her very well at that point, but he later got to like Myra some. Of course, if you can't like Mara, you just can't like anybody. Your mom is just that kind of woman. She's the kind of person that anybody that knows her, loves her. And I was. Oh, my gosh, I was so lucky to marry her. I consider that one of the luckiest things in my whole life now. And my mother was. Except very accepting of it. And she liked Myra and always had. And I think that she was very glad to know. She died just before Julie was going to be born. And so showed a little note. And I gave that note to Julie, how excited she was about the pregnancy. So that was good. But she never got to know Julie. Unfortunately, she got to know you, but didn't get to know Julie. So that was a kind of a sad thing. And daddy, my father at that point, was drinking a lot. And I don't remember knowing my father sober for maybe eight or ten years before he passed away. I don't recall him being sober any of those times, so. And he didn't have many friends either. He had a few friends. My mom had a lot of friends, but he had a few friends, but not very many. Most of the people who came to the funeral were people he'd known. Someone in the past. Maybe Uncle Jimmy. You know about Uncle Jimmy and Dorothy. But there really weren't very many people at that funeral. And because he just didn't have many good friends. My mom had a lot of friends and that was because people liked her a lot.

[15:31] TIM WATSON: When you went just back to that time when you went up to Tuscaloosa for school, were things more active there civil rights wise than they were in Mobile?

[15:41] SLADE WATSON: Well, I didn't see the civil rights movement in mobile much. I didn't know that. Now it happens in my politics. It wasn't in. And I've always been. I'm an extreme liberal. I was so liberal that at one point I was the corresponding secretary for the Mobile county democratic executive committee and got run off because I was too liberal. And I still am. I still have a great deal of liberal feeling. I could expound on that just very briefly, but let me do that as a matter of fact. Yeah, go for it. It won't take but a second information from Mobile, Alabama. I know mobile, Alabama was filled was totally racist at that time. I was at Murphy High School. Murphy High School was the first public high school in Alabama to be integrated. It was integrated in 1963. I graduated from Murphy in May 1965. But it was integrated in 1963 and there were about 3000 students, 3100 I think students in Murphy high school. All of them screaming and yelling and protesting the integration. Robert Kennedy came down to mobile for a day or two. He was the attorney general of the United States to assist in the integration of mobile, of Murphy High School. I never understood it. I just never had a sense of why all the protests, but anyway, and I've always been a liberal. And after I graduated from, from business school and was going to school, I met a friend and he wanted to start a newspaper. He was a journalist. We started a newspaper and it was a fairly liberal newspaper in Tuscaloosa called the Boll Weevil magazine. And we wrote fairly liberal articles in that. Your mom by the way, collected all of those papers and they're all bound if you ever want to look back at them. When I look back at them, they're very, very sophomoric the way they're published, but they're not bad. And so there's some very funny stuff in there. And I was a business manager and did some writing as well for it and that lasted about three years. Do you remember the Bolivia magazine? Well, yeah. Cause you worked on these. I remember.

[18:00] TIM WATSON: That's how I learned about newspapers. And because I remember going to the press on maybe it was Wednesday nights or something and the paper came out on Friday or something like that.

[18:11] SLADE WATSON: Yes, exactly.

[18:12] TIM WATSON: You had found a press a few miles out of town that gave you the best deal for printing. So we would take the pay stubs down to that press and go over them with the printer and make sure everything was good. And then that was like an all night thing, which I remember very well, actually. I mean, I was super young, but I do remember those drives down there. But that newspaper, at one point, I think the circulation was larger than the paper, the student paper at the University of Alabama, is that right?

[18:49] SLADE WATSON: Quite large. It was once and a half again. And there were surveys done by independent surveys to show that. I mean, it wasn't just our wild guest. It was more widely read than the crimson and white at the time. For over a year or so period of time. We published it for three years. It wasn't a financial success. It wasn't a terrible money loser. It wasn't a financial success. And then they other. Barry Whitcomb was the other person who was involved. He and I had a great falling out. And so that's put up in. That was the end of that.

[19:26] TIM WATSON: But I'm proud of that. I tell people that often that you ran a paper for three years is a long time.

[19:34] SLADE WATSON: It is.

[19:34] TIM WATSON: And I've got pals in New Orleans who run a monthly alternative magazine now, and they're certainly not doing it for the money. That's pretty.

[19:44] SLADE WATSON: I have dreams of doing it again, tell you the truth. I have on my computer dozens of articles that I have written or outlined that would go in such a paper. One of the things I've got going on in my mind is that the History Museum of mobile, which is a great, very, very good history museum, we're glad to have it here, once was a publisher, and it did some publication, used to do publications, doesn't now, and I would like for it to do publications. And I put out that idea a number of times to different people, and so far I haven't gotten any traction, but I still have that idea going on, and I'd love to be the editor of it. I don't think I have the social and the political standing and mobile to do that, because I felt fairly well known as a flaming liberal, and that's still. Mobile, is still very racially divided. And so I don't think I could actually get there, but I still have that idea. Where do you want to go? I have places to go, but what you got in mind?

[20:59] TIM WATSON: Well, I would just. I don't know if I've ever told you this, but I would spend a week or two in the summers with your. With your parents before they died. And your father. My grandfather was mostly at work, but spending time with my grandmother. She definitely. I think she admired the way that y'all had done it. Y'all had gone to college. You went to law school. She raised the kid. I mean, she. I think she had a lot of admiration for that. I always got a sense of. From her, of, you know, your parents are. You have good parents. You know, you're. They're doing a good job for you, that kind of thing. Not in so many words, but always got that feeling from her. So, you know, I think that feeling was mutual, that maybe she wanted to know you on another level more, but she did. She was proud.

[21:59] SLADE WATSON: So thank you very much. I'm glad to know that. That very. Oh, God, that makes you cry. Because I wanted to know her better, but I didn't. When she died, 59 years old, she died. And I have lots of skin cancer. She died of skin cancer, by the way, and I have lots of skin cancer. As a matter of fact, on November 30, I'm going to have four operations. Not just one, but four will be removed at that time. I've had over 100 removed over the time, and by golly, I'm not gonna let those things get me. I go to the skin doctor every three months to get checked out very carefully. Sometimes every two months, get checked out very carefully. And so they pop up on me all the time. So, hey, what the heck? Just go get them taken care of. Which, by the way, I want to say this. I've got a lot of medical issues. I am so grateful today to have incredible medical care available to me to take care of all of the different medical issues I've had. And this is on the liberal side. A comment on the liberal side. I think it's inhuman that we as human beings don't provide every human being on this presentation planted with life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, food, water, shelter, medical care, the basics of human life. It's inhuman that we ration those things based on economic and social standing, based on racial issues, based on religious issues. It's humanly insane. Inhuman that we do not take care of each other as human beings. To me, that is. Some people might say that that's very liberal. I don't care. That is insane that we do not take care of each other.

[24:10] TIM WATSON: I completely agree. I agree.

[24:14] SLADE WATSON: Yes, you might question. That was too hard, I think, to write down. But I just want to go back because Tim did just tell you something that seemed to have hit a nerve. It did. And then we ran away from it pretty quickly. So I'm hoping that we can sit in that for just a second longer and maybe also use this as an opportunity for. It seems like you guys are close and know a decent amount about each other, but I just want to give you that space. If you would like to get to know your son and you your dad, if there's any question, or if you want to tell each other why you might be proud of each other, so that that doesn't come as such a surprise, right? No. Okay. Tim and I know each other very well. We talk to each other all the time. We're very close to each other. And I am. I can't tell you how proud I am of my son. He is a very accomplished. He's a nationally, internationally known documentary film editor. He has made that on his own. He's just scratched that out of the woodwork, how he got there. I'm so proud of him. Just scratching that out. I made sure he had a good college education. That, to me, was the absolutely essential thing. I made sure he did and I made sure Julie had a good college education. And that, to me, was the most important parenting thing that I could do. I wasn't necessarily physically there for them a lot as a father. I looked back and I realized that I was gone all the time. I was practicing law, I was doing other things, not the house. Their mom was raising them, both of them. But I want to make darn sure they got good college education. And that was very important now. But I'm very close to both my children. Whenever anybody asks me for parenting advice, any young people or anything, I say one piece of thing, one piece of advice, be there, be there, be there, be there, be there. No matter what, whether they're mad at you or they dislike that emotion, whatever. Doesn't matter. Be there, be there, be there. And I have practiced that with Tim and Julie and tried to be there for them as best as I could have. I made errors in that. Oh, yes. But on the other hand, they are incredibly accomplished people. I'm very, very proud of both of my children and so. But we have a lot of communication. Now what he hit a nerve. Wrong. Was that my mother? Go ahead. What you have to say.

[26:51] TIM WATSON: No, no, no.

[26:52] SLADE WATSON: Just addressing. Oh, yeah. Addressing. Now what Tim hit a nerve at. It was. What you hit a nerve at was that my mother was proud of me. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I didn't have any real communication with my mother at all. Anytime I tried to communicate with my mother, my father was on top of that. I have speculations about his emotional stream about that, but I don't know him, and they don't matter. He's long gone. It doesn't matter. My speculation is that he had this cute young wife that he met while he was in the military, and all of a sudden, she got pregnant. And here I came along, and I was the most important male in her life instead of him. And I think he was jealous of that. And so he probably dominated because of that, dominated the relationship between my mother and I. And I know I can remember growing up having lots of arguments with him and trying to discuss things with my mother, and my father wouldn't interfere discussion, and we would have. Now, you have to remember, my father's a very smart man, very well educated and very smart man, and loved language. And so whenever I'd speak of language, I love language, too. And whenever I'd speak of language, he would always find some fault with whatever I said about language. But it would be. But I just didn't get to know my mom. I just didn't have a chance to. I'm glad to hear the story that my mom most proud of us. That's great.

[28:26] TIM WATSON: Those times, that time that I got to spend with them alone every summer, I mean, there were other times, holidays and such, but that week or two in the summer, it was turned out to be pretty important. Looking back and really appreciate that, that y'all did that, made sure that that happened.

[28:43] SLADE WATSON: I'm very glad to hear that.

[28:44] TIM WATSON: Yeah, it was good. But, yeah, I guess I would have to say youre a. As we were growing up, the experiences you gave us in terms of meeting as many people in many different situations and, you know, people of all stripes was really important in our upbringing, and, you know, not every, certainly not every kid had that, and many people were insulated. They were, they stuck to their own, very own tight community. So I have always appreciated that, and I think that's helped me and my sister get to places that we would not have gotten to. So that's, you know, that came out of y'all's, you know, I think your sense of adventure when you were very young and having a kid so young, you always took us everywhere. There was never a babysitter or rarely a babysitter. You just took us. So that was, looking back, that's critical, and I appreciate that.

[29:50] SLADE WATSON: You know, it's an interesting thing. I have always liked to interact with lots of people. As a young person, when being five or six years old, I always wanted to introduce my friends to other people. I don't know where that came from, but it's always been in me to want to create interaction between people. And much of my life is still about that in many ways. Many of the projects that I do, I have. I introduce people to each other all the time. I have many, many stories of that. And because, and I don't know why they come. I don't know why I have that in me, that desire, but it's there, and I do it all the time. I could tell you, hell, I could tell you five or six stories in the last week that I've done that, and I'm doing more of it. In fact, the event I'm going to tonight, I did that, interacted with people to introduce and people to people. So thank you very much. I'm glad to know that that always has been important to me to create interaction between people. I'm glad to know that it's been, that that's an important thing in your life.

[31:10] TIM WATSON: Thanks.

[31:11] SLADE WATSON: Thank you very much for that.

[31:14] TIM WATSON: We have a few minutes. I wanted to ask you, you've been, as you mentioned, this book you're writing on the history of Mardi Gras and mobile. We've been talking about it, talking about it for a long time. And I know, I mean, some of it is, there's the history aspect, but I'm curious. We haven't talked so much about, let's say that's plot. We've got lots of plot about history of carnival going back, way, way back. But tell me more in short version of your thoughts about why this book is going to be important in the long run, thematically, to Mobile and to the rest of the country. Because Mardi Gras, again, all the plot stuff, there's this ball and this time and this president and this queen and this king and blah, blah, blah. But theme wise, tell me what you're hoping to get across with this book.

[32:15] SLADE WATSON: Well, several things. One thing, is that where it came from? How did it get here? Why do we have it here? And the short answer is the Jesuits. Nobody in Mobile, no one who has written, ever written any history of Monte Gras in both Mobile, New Orleans. And we have to remember mobilians found in New Orleans in 1718. But there was monograph being celebrated in Mobile, not monograph as we know it today, but as a drinking holiday the day before. The day before certain more liberal people, the Jesuits were liberal people. But setting out that, how did it get here. That is a main theme. And it took me years to really figure that out, studying the French that were here and how they got here, and the Jesuits and all of that stuff, putting that together. So I have a chapter on that particular thing. There are ten chapters in the book altogether, but there's a chapter on that topic of how it actually got here. And that. That chapter, I believe, to the editor at Historic New Orleans collection, she sees that chapter is a very important thing to be out there, to be publicized as to how it actually got here, why it's here, then Mardi Gras.

[33:43] TIM WATSON: So the Jesuits, of course, are famous for pursuit of knowledge, but also, yeah, having a pretty good time.

[33:51] SLADE WATSON: Right.

[33:51] TIM WATSON: So that's, I think a lot of people that those two things go together, actually. There's.

[33:56] SLADE WATSON: They do.

[33:56] TIM WATSON: There's humor in that, there's dark humor in that. There's like, how are we gonna survive in this world? Kind of stuff. Is that what was going on?

[34:04] SLADE WATSON: Oh, yes, absolutely. The Jesuits were founded in 1534. The French founded New, New France in Canada, what became Montreal in. In 1600. About 1600, right. So we're only talking about 40 years or so. And what happened was one of the Jesuits, who was kind of an upstart guy and became the counselor to the wife of Louis XIII. And that's why she forced Louis XIII to send Jesuits over here. He sent Jesuits, a jesuit colony over here about, I think, eight or ten Jesuit guys. They needed a houseboy. And so this guy named Charles le Moyne was 15 years old, and Dieppe, France, wanted to go. He was raised among the seacoasts over there, and he wanted to go. And that Charles Lemoyne happens to be the father. He had 17 children, and he became the richest man in New France. And the third oldest child that he had was Pierre Lemoine d'Avervo. And d'Avervo was. I mean, he was a hell of a fighter. He was unbelievable guy. I got a little bit about him in the book, but he was raised Jesuit. He brought over, he was celebrated Mardi Gras in the. He was about 30 years old, going up the Mississippi river, and it's Mardi Gras day, and by gall he names a bayou there, Mardi Gras island in 1699. And then he brought a jesuit guy over, another jesuit guy over on his second trip over here named Paul Duru. And Darnify wasn't able to figure out, for the first time, nobody ever figured out before that, Paul Duro celebrated Mardi Gras in Mississippi river. Apart from ivory in 1700.

[36:07] TIM WATSON: Yeah, but just the themes, like, they were getting. They were escaping daily life. Is that why they.

[36:12] SLADE WATSON: No, not really. Now, Duru wrote in his journal that he was very happy to celebrate Mardi Gras here with in the wilds. Much better, much more fun than the fine foods and everything he would have had in France, because he was in France the year before, and he had no idea. He was not a. He was not an explorer type guy. He just got stuck in the job. And he wrote in general, he was very happy to be here among all those savages and all the world. He was riding around with some native people, some indigenous people, and, yeah, he celebrated Mardi Gras on his own, and he said he was happy to be here instead of being in France with the fine foods and the fancy dresses and everything that they. That was going on in the royal court in France at that time. So, yeah, there was a big struggle there. I mean, a huge struggle that's part of the story. And all of the story of Mardi Gras and all of the story of founding, of course, is one of conflict, one of all kinds of different people having different interests. Is that sort of responding to what you're asking?

[37:29] TIM WATSON: Yeah. You know, people use it today as an escape, and for lots of reasons. It's certainly more than what you might see on the 06:00 news, if you live in Des Moines or something. Anyway, I can't wait for the book.

[37:47] SLADE WATSON: And it was an escape in the 16 hundreds and 17 hundreds when they celebrated in Italy and in France. The whole thing over there. Oh, no, it was an escape. A lot of cross dressing, a lot of masking, and just all kinds of things went on. And some people think it came from the roman celebrations of all kinds of debauchery that they did. There were three major roman celebrations, and you can't really quite tie them together. I've discussed that in the book. People in general want to escape. They have all these alternative things in their minds. And so Mardi Gras provides some of that. And, in fact, I'm just editing, re editing right now. Chapter nine in the book, there's ten chapters altogether. Chapter nine is discussing gay and cross dressing Mardi Gras. And so. And I'm re editing that chapter, kind of bringing it up to re looking at that chapter. And they worked on that chapter this morning, as a matter of fact. And so, yeah, I mean, that's. I mean, it was. Oh, gosh, you look back at the religious conflicts and all of that stuff. Oh, my goodness. It's incredible. The problem with the book is it was 144,000 words to begin with, which is about twice too long for a book. And I had to go cut out. But the problem is we know so much more. I mean, this chapter is about 6000 words. It needs to be about 26,000 or 30, 40,000 words. How do you do that? But I think once we publish this book, if I can ever get the dang thing published, there are a number of more books to come after it that because we have so much more material that to really expand on hundreds of topics written about.

[39:56] TIM WATSON: Excellent, dad, thank you for this. This has been great.

[40:00] SLADE WATSON: Yes. Are we done?

[40:01] TIM WATSON: We're done.

[40:04] SLADE WATSON: Wow. I've got so much more I want to talk about. Oh, well, can we do another one? This has been delightful.

[40:11] TIM WATSON: It's.