wellRED podcast - Story Time w/ The CHO: Episode #1 - Let It Slam!

Episode Date: May 3, 2018

Hey wellREDers! This is a brand new edition to our podcast and one we hope you will enjoy.Our own resident Cherubic Drunk, Corey Ryan Forrester (AKA The CHO) will be reading stories once a week to hold you over until the Podcast drops every Wednesday.This weeks story is from Dale Forrester aka The CHO's dad! From his book Dime Stores and Dirt Roads this story is called 'Let It Slam!'We really hope you enjoy it, and dont forget to hop over to wellREDcomedy.com to snag tickets for our live comedy shows! 

And we thank them for sponsoring the show. Well, no, I'll just go ahead. I mean, look, I'm money dumb. Y'all know that. I've been money dumb ever, since ever, my whole life. And the modern world makes it even harder to not be money dumb, in my opinion, because used to you, you, like, had to write down everything you spent or you wouldn't know nothing. But now you got apps and stuff on your phone.

It's just like you can just, it makes it easier to lose count of, well, your count, the count every month, how much you're spending. A lot of people don't even know how much they spend on a per month basis. I'm not going to lie. I can be one of those people. Like, let me ask you right now. Skewers out, whatnot, sorry, well-read people. People across the ske universe, I should say.

Do you even know how many subscriptions that you actively pay for every month or every year? Do you even know? Do you know how much you spend on takeout or delivery? Getting a paid chauffeur for your chicken low mane? Because that's a thing that we do in this society. Do you know how much you spend on that? It's probably more than you think. But now there's an app designed to help you manage your money better.

And it's called Rocket. money. Rocket money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket money shows all your expenses in one place, including subscriptions you already forgot about. If you see a subscription, you don't want any more, Rocket Money will help you cancel it. Their dashboard lays out your whole financial picture, including the due dates for all your bills and the pay days. In a way that's easier for you to digest, you can even automatically create custom budgets based on past spending. Rocket money's 5 million members have saved a total of $500 million in canceled

subscriptions with members saving up to $740 a year when they use all of the apps. Premium features. I used Rocket Money and realized that I had apparently been paying for two different language learning services that I just wasn't using. So I was probably like, I should, I should know Spanish. I'll learn Spanish. And I've just been paying to learn Spanish without practicing. any Spanish for, you know, pertinent two years now or something like that. Also, a fun one I'd said it before, but I had a, I got an app, lovely little app where you could, you know, put your friends' faces onto funny reaction gifts and stuff like that. So obviously I got, I got it so I could put Corey's face on those two, those two like

twins from the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland movies, you know, those weren't a little like the cue ball looking twin fellas. Yeah. So that was that response to? What was that a reply gift for just when I did something stupid? Something fat and stupid. Something both fat and stupid. But anyway, that was money well spent at first, but then I quit using it and was still paying for it and forgotten.

If it wasn't for Rocket Money, I never would have even figured it out. So shout out to them. They help. If you money dumb like me, Rocket Money can help. So cancel your unwanted subscriptions or reach your financial goals faster with RocketMoney. Go to RocketMoney.com slash well-read today. That's rocketmoney.com slash well, RED. Rocketmoney.com slash well read.

And we thank them for sponsoring this episode of the podcast. They're the... Hello, everybody. It's your boy, the show. I'm very aware that it's not Wednesday. But, you know, I run the podcast. I can pretty much drop whatever I want. And you guys have been awesome. I've had such a great year so far that I thought I'd give you a little something extra.

And I'm going to be doing these once every couple weeks or so. I don't know what I'm going to call it. Stories with Corey, Cho Time, Cho Knows. Fuck, I have no idea. But I'm here. What I want to do is read you guys a story. I think I'm going to start doing stuff that I wrote and also stuff that my father wrote. My dad has a book.

This is not an ad for him, but if you want to buy it, that's great. He's a book called Dime Stores and Dirt Roads. His name is Dale Forrest. So you can grab that on Amazon, but he wrote a collection of short stories, and I feel that's where I've, yeah, Dad was always the guy that inspired me to write and told me to write shit down, so I think if you like what I write, you'll like his stuff too. So I'm going to come on here every now and then and read one of his stories and then something that I wrote, just so you can have a little extra pick-me-up through the week,

and you're not always just completely having to wait until Wednesday to get your well-read fix. While we're here, though, guys, the Well-Rod Comedy Tour is coming to a city near you. You go to well-read comedy.com, W-E-L-L-R-E-D, Comedy.com. We're going to be everywhere. Upcoming dates, we are going to be tomorrow night, May 4th, Charleston, South Carolina, in May 10th, and 11th, Napa, California,

on to Spokane, Washington, Cincinnati, Ohio, Columbus, Ohio, Dayton, Ohio, Huntsville, Alabama, Oxford, Mississippi, Chicago, Illinois, Chicago, Illinois. Also, I'm super pumped about this. June 23rd and 24th. We're going to be back in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. We always have a blast in Oklahoma, especially doing Kane's Ballroom there in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

So if you haven't grabbed tickets for any of those, go to well-readcom. Sign up for a newsletter so you can get tickets before anybody else, and you can see some cool merch. We just put some new stuff up on the website. That's really awesome. So this story that I'm going to read you is one that my father wrote a while back, and he included in his book, it is called Just Let It Slam. Just Let It Slam. The back door at Mamas was protected by a slamming screen door that not only kept out the flies,

but allowed the aromas from her kitchen to reach out to the neighborhood and on towards the heavens around supper time every night. Truthfully, I pretty much just described every single house even remotely near me in the early 70s. Looking back, it seemed as though there was a steady rhythm. The sun acting much like the metronome for life. life in our part of the world. But you started hearing about a new product for home back then, one that most people, including Mama, eventually bought into. Storm doors. Of course, they were nothing more than fancy screen doors with glass coverings, but they had a carefully engineered

closer that enabled the door to make a somewhat smooth transition back to its resting place, thus saving the glass. As years went on, you didn't hear screen doors slam much anymore. When the screen doors left, so did most of the lightning bugs. Our timing was now off. The rhythm was somehow gone. Suddenly, being outside just wasn't as important anymore. Years later, after I had married and put away childish memories, Mama got a new door to replace that modern storm door leading out to the carport.

It was a very nice screen door with Victorian-style elements. It was kind of heavy, too, offering a good slam. I was there when Daddy installed it, and I had forgotten. and just how perfect that sound was. It's years later now, and we just built a new screened-in back porch at our house. As usual, I had no say-so about such things, but this time I did make one small request. There would be screen doors on each end. Screen doors that I wanted wound tightly enough to be heard slamming down to the shop right

and over to the smokehouse just behind us on Thomas Avenue. My demanding wish was granted. Then I started praying for the lightning bugs to bring a whole bunch of their buddies with them when they come back next year. I keep slamming those doors. I just know they're out there listening. Mama died in the summertime. Later that year, it would have been around this time as the leaves were beginning to change colors and eventually lose grip on their home. Daddy began working on his kitchen.

Actually, Mama's kitchen. It always was. There was no announcement, and he began the transformation rather quietly. without any paint, new appliances, new flooring, or any of those other things you might find on one of those HGTV remodeling programs. He simply started incorporating apples into the decor. Apple plates, apple pictures, apple towels, apple magnets on the refrigerator, pretty much anything he could find Apple-related, he bought and found a spot for it. He then took a trip over to ElyJ, the Apple capital of Georgia, and loaded his truck up with so many Apple-themed decor items, that he finally could no longer find any open places to put them.

I remember finding it humorous and a little odd that my dad had suddenly developed such a keen eye for interior design. He was very proud of his work, his newly found skills, if you will. I, on the other hand, began to entertain thoughts that perhaps Daddy's losing it. Then, one afternoon, I dropped by to see him on my way home from work. As I walked through the carport, I was suddenly engulfed with the most wonderful smell of apples as they wafted through the screen and out into the neighborhood. I can take you today to that very spot where the

fragrance met me. Apple-scented candles, those glorious bottles of wax that can take your mind back to special times. The sense of smell somehow just doesn't forget, and for me it is a very intense remembrance, almost like a time travel moment, if only for a few seconds at a time. Mama loved the smell of apple spice in the kitchen as the cool mornings arrived. I can still remember those apple candles, lighting up the darkness after all the plates had been washed and put away at night. Then the warming aroma of leaves burning throughout the neighborhood, their crackles and woody smoke adding yet another layer to the autonomous palette. That's a great word, Dad. Daddy remembered too. That spicy apple scent

accompanied me as I walked through the carport and finally pulled the screen door open. As I entered the kitchen, I felt as if I was walking back to another time. Then the door slammed behind me. It was at that very moment that I finally realized what had happened. Daddy hadn't just fancied up the kitchen. He was trying with everything he had to bring back and hold on intensely to memories of Mama. We never spoke about it. We didn't have to.

Mama was still there and is to this day. She's never left me. So today I ventured over to the big town, strolled into the big mall and walked right into the candle store and laid some cold hard cash down for a mama in a jar. I do it around this time every year. I came back home, lit the wick, closed my eyes, and took a deep smell all the way back to that kitchen. Then I went out onto the back porch, opened the scream door, and just let it slam. Daddy would have liked that. Yep, it's going to be another wonderful fight.

y'all. That was I Let It Slam by my daddy, Del Forster. Thank you guys for listening and continue to listen as we release a well-read podcast every Wednesday. Come see us on tour, drop us a line. We love you. Ski-U. Vehicles with Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers.

Discumb not available in all states or situations.