The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Gunky’s Adventures: In the Land of Must Believe by Jim Reuther

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

Gunky's Adventures: In the Land of Must Believe by Jim Reuther Jimreutherakagunky.com A few days after the passing of his beloved wife, author Jim Reuther, better known as Gunky, discovered her extraordinary letter in a handwritten notebook titled, "How to Get Along Without Me." The notebook was a simple "How to Guide" for the tasks she had done faithfully for him until the end. But one request stood out; she challenged him to continue his writings. In Gunky's Adventures, Reuther features a collection of twenty-five tales, one for each letter of the alphabet, beginning with his late wife's note, "Afterlife Love Letter and Wish." Ranging from the humorous to tear-jerkers, to odd happenings and surprise endings, to musings on rock and roll, to stories about family, friends, foes, and fails, he reflects on an array of life experiences. His first poems ever written are included under the title of "Xtraordinaire (Silent Sentinels)." Narrating a life-hearted series of alphabetic escapades, Gunky's Adventures offers an anthology of poems and short stories reflecting on a life wonderfully lived.

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The hosts are the hosts. The hosts are the hosts. The hosts are the hosts. The hosts are the hosts. The hosts are the hosts. The hosts are the hosts. The hosts Foss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today, we have another amazing young man on the show. Jim Ruther joins us on the show. He has a book out August 19th or August 6th, 2019. It is called Gunkies Adventures in the Land of Must Believe.

We're going to get into some of the details of his story, his journey through life, which is pretty cool. Jim won a BA of chemistry and MA in chemistry and PhD science. He won it. That's what it says. In 1984, he retired as associate professor after advising a scholarly research of five PhD and seven MS graduates.

In 2015, he retired from a global nonprofit think tank as a research leader in chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive weapons of mass destruction and defense. He's traveled from Alaska to Afghanistan as a subject matter expert investigating the fires and explosions and defeating improvised explosion devices, reducing fireballs and skin burns, collecting forensic intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and demilitarizing chemical weapons. Welcome to the show. How are you, Jim?

I'm fine to be here. After reading that, yes, I'm very happy to the show. How are you, Jim? Jim Ligato I'm fine to be here. After reading that, yes, I'm very happy to be here. Pete Slauson It says you won a BA in chemistry. So, did you win it? Jim Ligato That's the terminology that's used in the old days. Pete Slauson Is it really? Jim Ligato Yeah. It's not a given. I know people say, oh, I could have gotten a PhD, but the words that were used at the awards ceremony at Penn State University was that you won

the highest earned degree. And my father would hear that. My father was a third grade educated man, truck driver. He dropped out of school for the depression. He was a truck driver. He was a roach coach driver. They call him food trucks today. And combat vet, Philippine jungles with his bulldozer and revolver.

And at that award, he said, I heard the word one that impressed him. And he goes, I have a third grade education. Let me give you some advice. You can't argue logic with an idiot because they don't understand logic. Again, those words were meaningful to me and I've captured them and put them in my story. Give us any dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? It's J I M R E U T H E R a K a gunky.com all lowercase and all no spaces. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's in your book? Gunkies adventures.

It's in the land of must believe. It's an alphabetical anthology of diverse short stories and poems. And since it's the alphabet, there's 26. That's how I can use the word diverse. There's something in this for everyone. If you look at the titles, there's a wide range of topics, stories that happened to me, people that I met, interesting circumstances. Each story begins with a provocative title. I'm going to try to get your attention with a title. For example, I'm going to say Close Encounters of the Hooters Kind, Taming of the Screw. I play on words. The

last one is Ziggety Zaggety Blinkety Blink And that's the, and so they're provocative. They're funny. And you're not going to get them up flicking is dangerous to a career, to your career. The one I like it goes with our broadcast experience so far as jinx come in three jinx coming three question mark. You know, there's always three things that celebrities have to die. But it's diverse stories, provocative titles, playful and profound poetry, and then lots of puns.

I like to play on words. Now I'm going to take you on an adventure and into Gunky's world from every story. You will not expect where you wind up because there's twists and turns in the roads on this adventure. And at the end of every story, I'm going to lead, Gunky is going to ask a question. He's going to have a wondering and he's going to go over what just happened.

And he's going to wonder how he handled it, how he addressed it, and what's going on next. Now, I'm qualified to do these kinds of stories and to put you through these different circumstances and emotions because I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good was a great wife, 36 years, two great kids, great career. The bad, of course, is the passing of her and her friends. And then I've seen the ugly. As a PhD molecular spectroscopist in chemical physics, all those words, I'm just good at it.

I don't know why. I've seen the ugly. I've been in several war theaters doing different things and I just wanted to appreciate life more. I can go the full spectrum. I'm a self-proclaimed light whisperer. I can, you could say my career involves light and how do you make it and how do you, you know,

keep it from burning people. Also a life whisperer. That's essentially what I'm starting to feel as I get on in this career. What I want you to do is I want to have you cheer, chuckle and cry along with me. When you read these stories, I want you to experience my ups, my downs, my break evens. And then finally, I want you to consider what you have left over after the good,

the bad, and the ugly in your life. So those are the experiences. The biggest challenge I had too were one, bearing my soul to the world about this, these stories, and two is I had to use words. As a scientist, I usually can get away with technical jargon and equations, but I had to use words, and with words come the emotions. Now, is there a basis to this story, I usually can get away with technical jargon and equations, but I had to use words and with words come the emotions. Pete Now, there's a, is there a basis to this story to my understanding that this was kicked off by your late wife's note, afterlife love letter and wish? Is that?

Dr. C. That's exactly right. I have a co-author, a late wife. We struggled with the curse disease for many years. And it was an up and down battle. She was a survivor. She was resilient. One of the aces that I had in my hand when this is going on and she had, she had an occupation, a special occupation. She was a nurse, but a special kind of nurse. She was a hospice nurse. So unbeknownst to me, she was effectively handing me as one of her cases and getting me ready for the inevitable, because in the end, we knew she was going to pass away of this curse disease. So she was preparing me. She was doing bereavement

counseling on me by the way she was acting with me and doing it. I did not know this until after it was over. So she passes away and her story is A and then I is the first thing I wrote in terms of as in my scientific career. It was my love letter back to her. And I wanted to document the events that occurred on that famous night. And they were remarkable. And her Afterlife Love Letter, she talks about the first night that we ever met. And it was by default, she was by default. I went out, we were at a fraternity sorority party and we were going to dance with the coeds and I wanted to dance with the blonde in the middle of the dancers and my roommate decided to play a joke and we both went around and tapped her on the shoulder at the same time.

Fate would have it. Now she, Cindy, the blonde turns away from me. I'm standing there looking, you know, a dope, a frat guy. And I looked down and there's this short, dark haired Russian coed and I looked at her and I said, you'll do. And she looked back at and I said, you'll do. And she looked back at me and said, you'll do too. And it was love. It was love at first insult.

First insult. So that's the way we lived. She, we would always say something to each other. Sarcastic, always with love, never mean-spirited. We never really had any fights or arguments. We disagreed a lot. And then we would argue and say, we're both wrong, and get the right solution. But it's like she would, so she always got the last word in it. For example, in our 25th anniversary, we're going to go to the World Cup in France.

One of the other things in my career is I'm a former professional soccer referee. So I have this, I have science, soccer and now I'm trying to be a storyteller. So she, you know, I asked her, I, she said, you know, she said, what's your, what's your major? And I said, engineering. She goes, I hate engineers. What's, you know, your mustache looks stupid on you. Her father has a mustache, you know, so it was like back and forth. So we're going to plan to go to the World Cup and she's diagnosed on my birthday. And she said, this was in January and this is going to be in June and July. And I said, we can go. And she said, no, she said, we can go. I said, no,

this is more important to your health and recovery, chemo and surgeries. She says, no, we really should try to go. And then finally, I just got fed up and said, you know, chemo and surgeries. She says, no, we really should try to go. And then finally I just got fed up and said, you know, 25 years I've been living with an idiot. And she looked at me with a straight face and said, don't worry, dear, you'll get used to it. So she talks about that first night of you'll do and my love letter back, I wanted to write back to her thanking for that. And I will recount her last night with me,

which if you, and I don't want to give away too many spoilers, but the significance of the date, I'll just give you half of it. I met her on December 3rd, 1969. She was failing in the end. We had to take her into the hospital for, you know, and we didn't, we thought it was just going to be for hydration and some pain meds and things. And, but walking in her lie, her eyes told me that she was in

serious trouble. And I said to myself, I don't think she's going to make it now. So we went there, we called the kids, the angels in the hospital were the nurses in the hospital were angels. And we were around with her when she passed. And about an hour before she passed away, she put her arms out, looking to be helped up out of the bed. And I thought she just wanted to go take a pee again. But it was not that. She was trying to hug me. She was trying to have the last dance with me.

My rock and roll girlfriend, I always called her that. That was a moment. I didn't think me, my rock and roll girlfriend, I always called her that. That was a moment. I didn't think that, and I was, I mean, I was just overwhelmed with emotion, as you can imagine, flashbacks. And she lied down and about an hour later, as I held her hand, her eyes were closed, she slowly would fade away. But at the last moment, she would look straight at me. And it was, she passed away on December 3rd. And what she was telling everybody, she was a very courageous, a woman. I mean, she was, she had courage.

She had, you know, she knew what was happening. And I wanted to talk about her courage and her dignity, the grace that she had and the willpower. She was sending a message that she was going to pass away on that date. There's more to the story that you'll read about more than that. So that's the love affair that we have. It's a, you know, I call it because I'm biased. It's the greatest love story that I've ever had, but those are the remarkable moments that I have and will recount in the book. And there are a lot of others, but that's really so-

Definitely moving, heart wrenching and touching, very much so. And that's the whole purpose. I want to pull on your heartstrings because my heartstrings were pulled. I want to touch your heart. By writing that second story, and it's called Inspirational Inferno, and I wrote a poem about it, about candle flames, why they're lit, I wanted to heal my heart. But by writing the book, and now by sharing it and having other people read these stories, I'm healing other people's hearts. I'm getting them through grief. And Gunky, when he wonders,

all he's wondering is to think and wonder what options you have in all circumstances, because there's always hope. There's always something better. The rest of the story was, is after she passed away, we had to do the pre-functionary things that you have to do at a passing. You have to go to the funeral parlor, a funeral center. And my daughter went with me. My daughter was so strong during this, you know, she wanted to, we had to identify the body, all these things. And then we would have to have a viewing and a ceremony. So a lot to go through. And to me it was a blur, but I wanted to write down as much as I could remember. I came home to my condo. I'm sitting in the very room where her study is. In fact, her ancient desk

is over in the corner. And the thing, I spilled some stuff on my dress pants, and now I'm gonna have to go to the viewing. So now I'm preoccupied with laundry. So I go to my laundry on our little condo, and now I had my first critical moment. This is where I crashed and hit bottom, and it's remarkable. I looked at the washing machine and I didn't know how to work it.

It crushed me. I was defeated. I'm a PhD chemical physicist. I've worked with sophisticated electronics and devices that world has never seen yet, five years in the future. I was measuring the temperature of fireballs from roadside bombs to see what the skin burn injuries would be. So

I know technology and I know devices but the wash machine intimidated me. Now I'm frustrated. I go into the study and I also had to pay a bill, you know, to pay for the different things that you have to do. And again, those hard to do and I want to tell everybody that it's not easy to do that, to be brave and be bold and be comfortable under these circumstances. They're very tough. Everybody is going to go through them and has gone through them. I've lost self-defense. So I'm looking at her desk drawer to find her checkbook. And it was there that I find a notebook. And the notebook is entitled, how to get along without me. Oh, wow. Now I, my heart, my body, I could feel the pressure.

My heart is crushing. And then I looked at the bottom and it said, for a dummy. He got one more zing in on me. She premeditated this. She was planning this. I opened it up. The first page is laundry. Really?

Dirty, dry, bottom, wet, washed, top. And she had a little drawing, a little picture, and she's pushing where to push the buttons. She was a how-to guide on how to go on. Now this is not a new concept. I don't want to claim that she's the only one that's ever done this, but she was leaving me a gift behind that is a treasure. I mean, and I've known other people that wrote love letters to their families after to be read at their viewings and it's extremely touching. The next one was you have to feed yourself, take pictures of what you like and go to the grocery store. She knew that I had this aversion about grocery stores.

I would grow up very poor, very poor. I mean, a meal was a gift. We never exchanged gifts for Christmas presents. You know, our gift was to be together and have a meal. So I have this thing about going to a supermarket and seeing two full rows of dog food. You know, I mean, when I, one of the charities that I champion is food insecurity. So I had to, she knew that I would have to get over this, but it was a how to guide and there's jokes in there that mean we can go on. There's a lot of inside jokes, but that was the gift that she gave me. She's so here's the thing. I mentioned it in my opening, the ups, the downs, the sideways, the break evens. That was my father's expression.

He said, you know, he lived to be 83 and his gift that he was given that he was a, he, he retired from Northern New Jersey as a roach coach, food, cut truck driver, to become a milkman back in the day. His job was to put milk, eggs, and butter on people's doorsteps, pick up the empty and to record it. Very simple thing to do. He was very proud of that.

I mean, given his education. I would tell people that people, I would tell friends that this was his profession. They go, milkman? And years ago, they would never get that. Now they're called uber a dash door dash everybody's I mean it's it's incredible how the evolution of things but it was he was proud of that he was proud of the fact that his gift was seeing over 50 years of sunrises in his life.

Wow. And he could remember a lot of them. We used to he used to let us ride along with him when there was you know three feet of snow and we have to deliver the milk uphill both ways in upstate New York. But he would let us ride the ice blocks in the cooler. We would play like a rodeo on the blocks of ice and slam into the wall. Lots of fun. But that was his gift. He talked about breaking even.

In his last words, he said to me, I want you to do better. And they always stuck with me. So those are some of the life, the wife, I say I have a life wonderfully lived despite all the circumstances, but those are some of the, that's the range of emotions that I'm going to give you through. I'm going to recount these stories. They're populated in the book very deliberately. I will go from the most intense story that many people have read and that's the Afterlife

Love Letter and Wish, in which there she tells me, you must write your stories and poetry to share with the world. So she told me to do something. And it would be years later that I said, I don't know if you know, it's a British television program, there's a banister named Rumpole of the Bailey and it's John Mortimer is the author. But he used to say to his wife, she who must be obeyed. And so I had to do what Teresa with an H had told me to do in your love letter. So that's, but then I filled it, I filled in the letters between A and I with stories. I deliberately picked, when I had the stories,

I had to pick them to begin with the right letter. I will switch up. So I'll go from the very intense, serious, sincere stories, to something lighthearted. So the second story is is beware of troopers busting hippies. So I'm going to pull on, as I said, I'm going to have you get intense, be serious, and then go silly. And then in some of the stories go strange. I mean, I have little topics for each one of them to give you a flavor of what you could read.

I have an appreciation for nature. So again, I'm going to talk about sunrises, my father stargazing with my kids, trees. I've written poetry about trees. When I came back and met my mother after I started my career back in the 80s, she was concerned that I was too hard of a man. She thought that in the dangerous work that I was doing. And she said, you know, you need to get in touch with kinder, gentler things. She was concerned about me. She was, she could pick up the fact that I was hard, hard hearted. I didn't think I was, of course, but mom is always right. And she said,

you know, you need to do something that's pleasant poetry. She said, write me a poem about a tree. She was a challenge. So she was the inspiration for my writing poetry. Wow. Is that when you first started writing? That's when I first started writing with words. I, you know, I laughed. I said, me a poet, you know, no, I mean, you know, I looked at her and I said,

what units do you like your, you know, Helmholtz number in, you know, I was being sarcastic back to her. That's one of the things I do have. I do have the sarcasm gene in me. I said, so she said, no, write it. So I wrote her a poem. I wrote her trees for all seasons, poems, winter, spring, summer, and fall. And I, it worked. It got me into an appreciation. It gave me more respect for why I was doing it. It protect not only people, but the world and nature.

So that was another experience. And that's one of the chapters in the book. It's called Extraordinaire. It's just a series of poems that I wrote about silent sentinels, which are trees. And I have taken pictures of trees as they change during the season So I mean so I got me in touch with nature

I used to spend I lived in upstate New York after we moved from northern, New Jersey Because of the way it was turning out in the schools. They were dangerous and moved to the Catskill Mountains in New York My friends were four or five people that lived within a mile of me and the woods I spent a lot of time with trees and nature, brooks, exploring in the lake. So that's what she wanted me to do. She wanted me to get this other side because I was, as I said, I was rendering safe EDS, tactics, techniques, and procedures. And she said, you know, you're losing your soul. You're losing that gentle side. And she always knew that I was a clown,

but she wanted me to get in touch. So that was one of the inspirations. So I'm blessed. It was a brilliant call on her part. Pete Slauson Definitely. What an interesting foresight and what a love letter from beyond she was thinking of. And you've turned it into this amazing book that inspires other people, that makes a difference in their lives. And how do you think this will resonate with them? We've often talked on the show about how sharing our stories, sharing our cathartic moments in life help other people identify that they're not alone and that there's a blueprint for

a roadmap out of the valley that they're in sometimes. How do you feel it's going to resonate with readers? People asked what the legacy is. I had to bear my soul and that was difficult, I mean, to share some of the things. But once I did, people resonated with it. I'm not telling anybody how to navigate this experience. The main, I mean, you give advice, a know, a lot of people have gone through that. My advice is that whatever emotion you're feeling, whatever grief you're feeling, is right. You've got to understand it. You've got to learn where you are. And I always say that, you know, you have

to celebrate the life, but you also have to celebrate the afterlife love letter, the first word that's picked by Teresa. She picked that word, it's afterlife. She wanted me, she said in that letter, I live in a, we moved to a condo development, 20 small condos, 20 population. And when we were there, there's several ladies in Tollgate where I live in Worthington, Ohio. She said to me one night,

it's a target rich environment because there's beautiful ladies in there. And I said, you gotta be kidding me. She says, no, I'm just planning. She said, someday in the letter, I want you to find someone else to whom you'll say, you'll do. That's the charity. That's the love.

That tells you the true love that she had left it on our kids. Our kids are the same. So, I mean, we all turned out okay because of her and my mom and the like, but I'm not telling you how to do it. I'm saying to go with it. And it doesn't, there's not a, there's not a time function in this equation. If you look at, you know, she passed away in 2008. It took me a while. I was, I buried myself in my work.

Yeah. Got a little burnt out. You know, I flinched once and my team said, you know, maybe you've got too much going on in your head. And so I called my, you know, recalled myself and just try to get, you gotta get things in order. Need support. One of the programs at the Colbacker house in Columbus, Ohio is where she worked as a hospice nurse. They have a bereavement program.

So I went to the bereavement program where one of the hospice nurses worked. And I heard from all the other nurses about what a clown she was. They told stories about her that were unbelievable that I never heard, but it's a bereavement. And it's the way to get through it is really to share. You're not alone. A lot of people are afraid to talk about I was, you know, you want to bury it. It's bad, it's over. But she said to me once, Teresa, she quoted something that I had quoted to her long before. I used to hang with a lot of NATO people in my profession and there were the Italians who lived life to the fullest.

They said, you Americans eat to survive, we Italians eat to be entertained. And I said, because you'll have done a sandwich for lunch and we're going to have a three-hour meal. Yeah. But one of them is his name was Dante. He goes, we're talking about because of the nature of us, you know, trying to defeat roadside bombs that are designed to kill, maim and burn innocent people. I don't believe in war. Okay. I worked for the Department of Defense.

I worked on the survivability side, not the offensive side, although I could, but I went on to try to keep people alive. I don't believe in war the whoever wants to volunteer and do this. I respect them I just want to keep them alive sure, but he said one night he goes, you know You're dead a long time And I go so she tells me this, you know in their passing days she goes, you know You know, I just want you to know something one One of those quotes, it was Dante, she goes, I said, you're dead a long time. It's what's left over.

You've got to have hope that something's going to change. And this is what I thought of when I wanted to do this interview with you is I just explained to you I lost a beautiful woman, Angel, a wife at 36 years. She did all these things for me and with me. And when she passed away, I said to myself, what am I going to do next? I was lost. I was stunned. And it was then that I find a notebook, how to get along without me. And then I find a love letter. And in there, she tells me to write my stories.

Wow. So she was directing me again, she was paying it forward and that's what I'm doing here is you've got the rest of your life to live, to laugh, live and love again. That's your option. Go comfortably. It's just like aging, you know, comfortably age as you grow older. I'm 75 and a quarter now, and it's just age gracefully, do it gracefully, but you grow older. I'm 75 and a quarter now and it's just age gracefully. Do it gracefully but you need support, you need sharing. I've had several people lots of reviews written that they say they relate to their personal

experience, whether it's their wife or their husband. I've talked to several people who've lost their spouses and I just sit with them and share with them and it's that community. There's hope. You've got to, you have to recover and get back into the game of this game of life and at the speed of life. One of the other spoil stories that I have is I had a dear friend through soccer. I mean great guy. He was a pilot, National Guard. He flew tankers over 9-11 over New York during 9-11. Great guy, great referee. Worked games together, went through wars together as referees, as you can imagine.

I learned new words every time I referee. I knew about my parentage and my mother and my ancestry every call I made. But dear friend, always there, reliable. Teresa passes away. His wife is Teresa without the age. A couple, I think it was about three weeks after my wife passed away, I get a call at three o'clock in the morning. Okay. Phone rings. I answered it. He goes, I'll be right over. He said, I know he says I'll be right over pizza and beer. See you in 15 minutes Okay, what the hell? I mean, I'm confused. There's a lot of things going on in your head 15 minutes later

He shows up pizza to beer my favorite beer He sits down and I'm saying what's going on here He sits down and he says to me I'm confused about the new offside interpretation Could you explain to me how it is? I'm a national instructor, former pro-referee, national instructor, assessor. Soccer has been part of my world. Teresa was a, I said to her, she goes, what sport do you like? And I said soccer and she goes, I hate soccer.

She's a bigger fan than everyone. She grew up with the Columbus crew. I mean, she loves soccer. She knows all the referees names, their wives, they tell stories about their husbands. It's all great and wives now. But I said to him, it's deflection versus, you know, deliberate. And I gave him an instruction. He goes, thanks. He says, I got it now. He says, I hope you get back on the field with me later. And he leaves. Never talked about what just happened. It was that distraction. That distraction is what I'm trying to do.

It's more than a distraction that I tell you the stories. I purposely placed stories in there to put you in different circumstances. I had to find the letters to do it. It was hard, excuse me. But it's really just to put you through a series of emotional gyrations, if you will, just to get you in the mood, to get you past the first one, the first story about tragedy. And again, I will talk about my ups and downs and I'll talk about trees and stars and sunrises. I'll talk about things that go bump in the night. I talk about stones.

You've seen the cover of the book. I have it here if I can show it, but there it is. These are lucky stones. They're stones that have holes that you can see through them. And this is one from the cover, it's in the middle here. But I find these, I've collected these. Now this is a story called Under Your Soul, of your foot. These are lucky stones.

And I just found the stones like this. And I said, I never found out why there's a hole in them. But as I got on and got a little philosophical in my life, I imagine these holes as being portals to the other world. It's the world that you could look through and dream that you wish you were on. And again, if there is a history there, if you're a good witch, you can do happy things with them. If you're a bad witch,

they're called hagstones. I'm not a bad witch. I don't put any curses on anybody. But I imagined when I wrote this story that these are portals to the other world that you can be in. You can be happier. You can be more content, you can be at peace. And as I imagine this, you can imagine it, what you need to do is turn it around and you can be there. You can be happy. And again, it's not easy. I'm not trying to downplay the difficulty of doing this, but you can be in a better state of mind. You can go to a safe place, go to your safe place, your safe haven, and then have comfort.

Have comfort with friends. If you want to be alone, if you don't want to talk about it, but eventually you have to come up for air and breathe. In fact, on my desk says, breathe. You have to breathe after these experiences. You have to do this. So these are lucky stones and people go, oh, they must be very rare. Okay, they are.

I have over 400 in my collection. In fact, there's trays of them behind me. I have them all sizes, all colors, grays, browns. We have two color ones like we have here. I found them on the Atlantic Pacific Gulf of America or Mexico, whichever you prefer. Again, I am apolitical because of the nature of the work I do. I don't care what your politics are. People killing people.

My daughter said my dad has a job security because he's he's trying to settle disputes among different religious organized differences among organized religions on the planet i'm going that's a little bit harsh you know started out with the irish and catholic the catholic and protestant bombers in belfast and then went to the israelis and the palestinians and Palestinians and then Muslims infidels and now we got just about everybody fighting everybody. I have job security unfortunately I'm still active not to do the heavy lifting but again it's just to make you think and wonder about it. So I found them on Atlantic Pacific Gulf,

Great Lakes, riverbeds, several countries including Afghanistan when I was there last and people say it must be very difficult to find. I said you know you river beds several countries including afghanistan when i was there last and people say it must be very difficult to find i said you know you walk with your head down and you look at the stones and you see one with a hole in it and you pick it up and you see if there's a hole on the bottom it's in i said i'm a phd combustion engineer explosives propellants.

I am a PhD rocket scientist, although I usually work on the front end. I said picking up these stones is not rock-et science. Attempted humor. Rocket science. Rocket science. So it's, yeah, So those are novelties. And when I go to book signings, I'm going to the LA Times festival of books in two weeks as a featured author.

I will, when they sign the book, I will give them a little lucky stone. And I don't know how much, I mean, I've been to LA times two years ago. I'm going and the printers row literature festival. I give them a little baggie with the little miniature lucky stone in it They now have something they put it on their bracelets. They pull on your necklaces. It's like a little momento. It's a memory It's a new memory that they can use and people I mean I was surprised at how many people I mean people came back and wanted one or more I gave out all my my my supply But those are the little things is to grab a hold of something that you believe in.

People have lucky stuffed animals. We had a stuffed animal, his name was Elio the elephant that I would talk to my wife, you know, as a little puppet, you know, make jokes, just to lighten her up. Anything you need to do to get through life and to get into recovery and to get back into everything that's going on. What a beautiful story. I mean, what a beautiful thing and the fact that you're sharing it, you know, I mean, the tragedy happens, we share our stories of life and blueprints. So, as we go out, give people a final pitch out to order the book, dot coms and where they can get to know you better, etc. etc. Pete Slauson Do you want my –

Pete Slauson Final pitch out to people to pick up the book and any dot coms where you want people to find you on the interweb or learn more? It's available. We're all ready. My daughter lives in LN. She said practice this day at practice. It's available. We're all fine.

Books are sold. Yeah. But what I want the final pitch is there's the fuddling mysteries in this book. There's some bizarre old happenings. There are some cryptic conspiracies There's wholesome humor and puns There's inspirational and uplifting stories. There's some melancholic Mesmerizing memory moments like I've just described there's perspectives There's perseverance against all odds in your life. You're not the only one

There's practical jokes that were played by on me by my father and I play on others. Always surprise outcomes. The power of true love in life and after death. Resiliency recovery, sarcasm in rock and roll, tears from both sadness and joy, some unique personalities, resiliencies and wonders, and then finally, some sheer zaniness, I'll be silly. And what I want you to realize is that I want all the readers to come away with a rejuvenated belief, hope, joy,

and warmth in their hearts, minds, and souls, that we're all on this wonderful world together, spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and I want to give comfort and solace and peace to them and their times of trials, and then to enjoy their joy more. And Gunky always leaves with this, reason, peace, and love will prevail. You must believe.

Pete You must believe. Wisdom of words for us as we go out. Thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it, Jim. Jim I really appreciate this time. I always, you know, I ask the question, what am I going to do next after her passing? Here we are. Pete There you are. Jim It's an adventure and I'm blessed and humbled and I appreciate the opportunity to do this with you and share it to the world. And I always say, be seeing you. Pete Thank you very much, Jim. And what a beautiful, wonderful story to share with people.

What a beautiful thing that your wife left behind to not only help you, but help other people. And just wonderful. So, thank you very much, Jim, for coming to the show. Thanks for on us for tuning in. Order the book where refined books are sold, Gunki's Adventures in the Land of Must Believe out August 6th, 2019. Thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Forchess, Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Forchess, Chris Voss, One the Tiktokity, and all those crazy places in it. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.