[00:06] Speaker 1: Welcome to the Junk Refund Show, hosted by Alan J. Cook, founder of 1-800-JUNK REFUND. Have you ever paid those expensive junk removal companies to take away some of your stuff only to say to yourself, as their truck drives off down the street, "Some of that stuff wasn't junk." Did they try to sell it for you and give you some money back? No. Well, now there is a company that can do just that. Listen to our weekly Junk Refund Show on BBS Radio TV to learn how one lady spent $375 on junk removal and got $3,200 back. 1-800-JUNK REFUND represents the next generation of junk removal. Learn how to not only save your money on junk removal, but how to get some money coming back. Plus, purchase one of our radio vouchers during the show to save even more on your junk removal. Let's get the junk out of your home and out of your life. Now, with your host, Alan J. Cook.

[01:31] Speaker 2: Welcome to my favorite time of the week, Thursdays at 3:00 Eastern, where we do another episode, another show for The Junk Refund Show. I am your host, Alan Cook, coming to you from Rockville, Maryland, where about, uh, an hour ago, we finished hauling some stuff out of a l- out of a lady's home. I stopped by Wendy's to get my favorite meal of the last month, which is a large chili, extra crackers if possible, free ice water, and a small chocolate Frosty, which most of which I still have here at my desk and I'll be chomping on throughout the show. But I am delighted to be here. It is great to just be indoors. I think the high today in the Washington, DC area is going to be somewhere around 25. The low is going to be, like, 12 or something. And we've had a week of temperatures down around 25 degrees or so, and that's about, that's about as high as it's gotten, and we got, about 10 days ago, we got a foot of snow, and boy is it piled up around the streets.

[02:37] Speaker 2: I feel like we're in, you know, Michigan or some place. This, the- the large chunks of ice that came from this snow storm, which then froze for the next few days, you know, it freezes the snow. And so when you go in there with a snow plow to try and clean it off, it's not just nice powdery, you know, Alta Ski Resort powder. It is chunks of ice, sometimes as big as, what, a washer and dryer kind of thing, I mean, that you have to- you have to lift up and throw up on the side of the road and get them out of the way. So that's what we've been- that's what we've been involved in and that's what we've been dealing with. But, um, it also gives to- lends itself to some great stories, which we're going to tell you about today. Um, one thing that's been on my mind for most of the day today as we've gone out and done a couple of jobs has been a situation that happened at the Oklahoma State versus BYU basketball game last night in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

[03:39] Speaker 2: For the third time that I am aware of in the last year and a half, the chant- a chant was made from the crowd that bas- that says, "F the Mormons." And just as I came on air today, I emailed the Public Affairs Department at Oklahoma State University to see if someone would like to come on the show and explain that behavior and just tell us what they think about all of this. This has happened at the University of Cincinnati, I think at a football game last fall. It happened at the University of Arizona, I think also at a football game. Happened at a basketball game last night, and I think I'm missing another one. I think it- I think the chant was made somewhere else. All of these coming from Big 12 schools. And I think the University of Cincinnati came out and said, you know, "This is- this is..." And I'm paraphrasing this. I should have their written word in front of me, but basically they say, "This is not the kind of conduct that we encourage at the school," et cetera.

[04:46] Speaker 2: And last night towards the end of the game while one of the BYU players was at the free throw line, this brilliantly conceived idiotic statement of "F the Mormons" as if saying the F word isn't bad enough, that used to be a swear word in our society not that many years ago. It's probably now the most commonly used word thrown around on the f- on the- the field at an NFL football game. Uh, Aaron Rodgers says it like crazy, um, and, you know, I don't get it. I don't understand. I mean, you know, someone once said that swearing is the effort of a feeble mind to express itself. So if you don't have any better language than that, go read a few books, pick up a dictionary, you know, keep your mouth shut until you can say something constructive. But the idea of doing this in a public arena against someone's religion is astounding to me.

[05:51] Speaker 2: And for some reason, I guess because it happened last night, again, third different school, maybe the fourth one but at least the third one that I know of, I'm just sitting there going, "Well, okay.You wonderful folks in Stillwater, um, what do you say when Notre Dame comes to play basketball against you guys? Do you say, "F the Catholics?" No. What if Southern Methodist University comes to play on your court, do you say, "F the Methodists?" No. And for heaven's sakes, God forbid that some university from Brooklyn, New York would show up and play basketball against you, do you say, "F the Jews?" No. Because if you did, you would be land blasted on the media in this country e- immediately. Right? Do you, do you bring people's race into it? Right? Do you say, "F the whites," or, "F the Blacks," or, "F the Reds," or whatever? No. So why do you do it with Mormons? And do you even know what a Mormon is? So let me just educate you a little bit.

[07:05] Speaker 2: And by the way, I invite any of you, any of you that have a, a, you know, comment on this one way or the other, I don't care what the comment is, feel free to call the show. I'd like to know a little bit about this, because it's fresh on my mind. And one of the things we do in, in our company, the junk refund, uh, you know, 1-800-JUNKREFUND company, we try and get the junk out of people's homes, like we did an hour ago for a wonderful lady in Olney, Maryland. But we also try to help you get the junk out of your lives. And what you say says an awful lot about who you are. And we're in a society that's trending downward vocally. It's almost the c- the cool thing now, right, to, to say what used to be regarded as a swear word. And now it's just such a cool thing, everybody does it. It's what you say, and, you know, and, I mean, I'll stand by the statement that swearing is the effort of a feeble mind to express itself.

[08:11] Speaker 2: If you can't come up with a better word to say, especially in public, go read a book and work on your vocabulary. And frankly, you should be ashamed of yourself if you're publicly throwing this language around. You just should be. There's no class in that at all, right? I mean, there's just none. So in the spirit of helping to, you know, discuss this, and oh, you know, maybe there's a, a great point out there about why this should be said, but I've never heard, I've never read, I've never seen reported on SportsCenter, I've never seen it on the news that some student body somewhere said, "F the Baptists" publicly, or, "F the Christians," or, "F the Jews," or, "F the Blacks," or, "F the" whatever, right? You should be ashamed of yourself if you do that. Absolutely, unequivocally ashamed of yourself if you do that. If you want to call the show and talk about it, I'm all ears. I'd love to get your vantage point. 888-627-6008.

[09:31] Speaker 2: And I was curious because I was watching this on TV last night, and I heard the chant coming over the TV set. It was that loud. And it wasn't the whole crowd. It was a minimal amount of people. So I'm not branding the good folks in Stillwater or any of the OSU fans anywhere in the country, but I am branding the idiots who, at the game, have the religious intolerance to attack someone else's religion publicly and vocally by using the crudest words that exist in the English language, as far as I'm aware. I'm calling you out, and you should be ashamed of yourselves for your behavior. I wish there was a school that if you could get on video, if it came from the student section, which I just quickly glanced on Facebook to, to make sure, first of all, that I was right, that this was said last night, and I am right, it was said.

[10:35] Speaker 2: The BYU coach addressed it after the game, and, you know, he, he has to go back to Provo, Utah and explain to his four little kids, you know, why, why their religion just got blasted from the stands, right? And I'll be interested to see what happens

[10:53] Speaker 3: Yeah.

[10:54] Speaker 2: to re- For some reason, this one, you know, I was shocked when I heard about it the first time. I think it was University of Arizona. Then I got it again from the University of Cincinnati where they, the, the, I think it was the athletic director came out and said, "You know, this is not representative of our school and what we think." Okay, then what are you going to do to the idiots that were making the chant in your stands? I mean, if I had on video, if I had the authority to do this, and if I had on video the students that did that, I would expel from the school immediately any student that I could prove that said that at one of our athletic events. The other thing I'd do is fine you $1,000, and I would not transfer your school credits to your next school, God bless you and who that's gonna be, until you paid that fine, but you would immediately be expelled from our university. You know why?

[11:50] Speaker 2: 'Cause that's not what we're all about, and we don't want you there if you're chanting that to a visiting team who is our guest from the stands. Now, let me tell you what we do. See, you get into all kinds of issues with this. You know, Christian people will say, "Well, Jesus said to turn the other cheek." You know, He said, "Love your enemies."... right? And do good to them who despitefully use you and persecute you, right? So when OSU or Cincinnati or Arizona ... which happened last Saturday, Arizona played basketball at BYU, nobody chanted anything negative at them. And in the football stadium a few months ago, we give out free ice cream in Provo, Utah to fans of the visiting team. Let me repeat that in case you missed that. We give out free ice cream in the stands to people who are cheering for the visiting team. Okay? So, what school do you want to associate with?

[13:04] Speaker 2: I mean, there comes a point where, you know, I mean, freedom of speech is one thing, but I can't stand up in a public theater and shout, "Fire" without there being consequences. And I think these universities need to kick themselves in the butt and say, "Look, that's not what we're all about." And don't just issue some kind of public apology, do something to the idiots that are making this a problem for your school. Okay? I mean, athletes will be kicked off a team if they don't live up to the rules. It happens at BYU, right? The quarterback of Tulane who played, first name Jake Retzlaff, was involved in something out at BYU and was suspended for seven games, so he went into the transfer portal and went on to play at Tulane this year, right? Some schools have standards and maybe some schools don't, I don't know. I just know what mine did, and I went to BYU. And every student who goes there signs a code of honor that says, "I'm gonna exta- abstain from premarital sex.

[14:20] Speaker 2: I'm gonna do this and this and this and this." And if you break that code of honor, there are repercussions for that, okay? So, that's what I'm accustomed to. So as I'm out in this freezing weather out here doing these different jobs, I guess because the game was on late last night, nine o'clock I think starting time on the East Coast, it just happens to be one of the freshest things in my mind. And sure enough, here came the chants again. So I went on and read some of the comments about it on, on a Facebook post just before I came on the air. And some people said, "You know what? When you make a big deal out of it, it just puts fuel on the fire. And the next time BYU travels someplace to play, it's gonna be even louder." Oh, okay. So if there's something bad going on, we should just silently condone it and not stand up and say anything? That's a bunch of crap in my book, okay? No.

[15:23] Speaker 2: You know, some child comes home and, and disobeyed a teacher at school, a good parent's gonna sit down with that child and discipline that child. Get the facts, then act according to your responsibility, right? Well, I do a radio show, and it's all about getting the junk out of your lives. And today, part of it is about getting the junk out of our athletic arenas. If you have the guts to stand up and defend decency, then call out the people who are giving you an indecent branding by doing what they're doing at some of these events. I've even thought, you know, if I was a coach of the BYU basketball team or football team, would I ... If that chant started coming at us from some stadium somewhere, let's just say Oklahoma State, 'cause that's where it came last night, what would happen if I just took my basketball team and forfeited the game and walked off the court because I believe I deserve better treatment and so do my players?

[16:32] Speaker 2: Can you imagine the statement that would make if 15,000 fans had paid hundreds of dollars apiece to come to an evening of, you know, basketball, and 10 minutes into it, because of some of the conduct of people in the stands, the opposing team leaves and just walks off the court, and their explanation is, "We deserve better treatment. In defense of our religion and our church, we're not gonna tolerate this religious intolerance. Have a good night, everybody. This game is over." What would happen? What would people do? Would they chant even more because they're glad they got a forfeit? Would the next team you went to play make sure that right off the bat, they all start chanting that, hoping we'll walk off the court again? Or do you just not do anything, focus on the game, do your best to beat the other team and ... which we did in Arizona and Cincinnati, I believe, if I remember right, and let your, lets, you know, let your athletic achievements stand for themselves on the field?

[17:41] Speaker 2: But see what's happening is we haven't done anything on our side, at least as far as I know, and I'm no expert on this. I've just, you know, I'm just curious about this. I don't think the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has done anything about it. Maybe they have, I don't know. Other than ... No, here's the thing. (laughs) Here ... Yeah, we have done something, but we donated, I think the number is 29,000 either pounds, I think it was pounds of food, 'cause 29,000 tons of food is an awful lot of food, to some, some shelters, some foodless shelters, shelters that feed the poor.... in Cincinnati before we went to play football there. So we come into town and we help feed the poor people in Cincinnati, and what this is, what happens at the game? We get, we get cursed at the game. They should have been saying, "Thank the Mormons," not, "F the Mormons." That's what they should have said.

[18:46] Speaker 2: But sometimes ignorance, you know, raises its ugly head and makes you look like a real fool. But, my gosh, you come to our stadium, we feed you free. We come to your stadium, we get sworn at. And just, uh, a- and I would bet you if you, if you quizzed the people at the OSU game last night, not to pick on OSU, but any of these people that have done this, and you just simply said, um, "By the way, what's a Mormon?" I'll bet they couldn't tell you. 'Cause that's a term we stopped using in our church about eight years ago. So, what we're gonna do here, we're gonna take a little break. Again, this is, this falls under the category of trying to get the junk out of some of our society, some of the junk out of our society. Let's call it that. And that's what a good junk removal guy would do. And because it's fresh, we're starting with this one. Your comments are welcome, 888-627-6008.

[19:48] Speaker 2: We're talking about what happened last night at the Oklahoma State-BYU basketball game, where Oklahoma State beat us 99 to 92. Congrats to them. It was a great win for them. But your basketball team can get a victory, but if some of the people in your stands are religiously intolerant, that kind of overshadows your victory, in my opinion. We'll be back in a moment. You're listening to Junk Refund Show, where we teach you how to get the junk out of your homes and out of your offices and out of your lives. I'm your host, Alan Cook, coming to you from Rockville, Maryland. We'll be back in just a second.

[20:26] Speaker 1: Have you ever hired one of those expensive junk removal companies, then wondered what they did with the stuff? Especially the good stuff. At 1-800-JUNK REFUND, we junk the junk. Recycle stuff, like metal and wire, donate items and get you receipts, and put up for sale the good stuff. And if it sells, you get some money back. Cynthia paid $375 for junk removal and got $3,200 back. Would you like to know how she did it? Tune in to the Junk Refund Show with your host, Alan J. Cook, every Thursday at 3:00 PM Eastern Time to get the junk not only out of your home, but also out of your life.

[21:25] Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Junk Refund Show, everybody. Um, this is your host, Alan Cook. I've got about eight or nine topics I wanted to discuss, um, today. That was number one. We'll just call it religious intolerance. Um, I mean, it's, it's one thing... I guess it's still, it's still bad actually, but if the crowd said at a basketball game like they did at OSU's game against BYU last night where they said, "F the Mormons," that's one thing. But it's not a bunch of Mormons down there on the court playing against you. Right? I think, I think there's five members of the BYU basketball team that are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I think that's what it is. I just saw that just before coming on the air, which means the majority of them are not. Um, but you're not playing the Mormons. You're playing a school, basketball players from a school, diverse team, where the school is run and owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

[22:33] Speaker 2: So when you attack Mormon... Well, so why are you attacking someone's religion? Why are you attacking the members of the church? They're certainly not playing you. Most of us aren't good enough to make it on a college basketball team. (laughs) But why are you attacking the religion? Why aren't you saying, "F the Cougars," the BYU Cougars? Why don't you say that? It's still bad. But, no, it's worse when you attack the religion. I can't believe people would be so stupid to attack someone else's religion in a public event like is happening at these different schools in the Big XII. And what's the Big XII gonna do about this? This is the third incident now where three of your schools, and there's might be another one that I've overlooked, have attacked the religious affiliation of another member of the Big XII. Right? What are you gonna do? You're gonna let it keep going on? Is that what you stand for in the Big XII, is religious intolerance? I hope not.

[23:48] Speaker 2: 'Cause you're the, you're the worst conference in the country if you tolerate that. You have no guts and you have no standards if you tolerate that. And so far, it keeps happening at different schools. So, come to Provo, we give you free food. We come to your city, we make food contributions to needy organizations in your city through our school and through our church.That's what we do. So I'm proud to belong to, to be an alumnus of BYU. I'm proud to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And I'm proud that we tolerate other people's bigotry and religious intolerance with as much calmness and positive action as we do. We folks are on the high road. Those of you in what I understand to be the student section who said, "Eff the Mormons," last night are on the low road. And we're not gonna drop down to your level. We're having too much fun with higher standards than what you're exhibiting.

[25:15] Speaker 2: And you should be embarrassed and ashamed of yourselves for, if you're one of the people that chanted that last night. End of, end of speech. Um, one of the things I love the most in our business, because we get people's stuff that they throw away or they're moving and they can't take it with them, or they're not gonna use it anymore, or they don't want it anymore, or whatever. We get the stuff. We get paid to take the stuff that other people don't want. One of the things we got about a year ago, I think because somebody was moving overseas or something, was a, what I'm gonna call a Pertinear brand new snowblower, a commercial snowblower, a walk-behind snowblower. We also got another one last year that is an electric snowblower, smaller than the commercial gas walk-behind one, that works like a charm. It, it looked like it was brand new.

[26:19] Speaker 2: And I put 'em in my storage unit and thought, "Well, if we get some snow out here, I'll," you, you know, "I could use 'em for snow removal jobs." Well, last year I did. I think I did three jobs last year using the smaller electric one. This year we've done, I don't know, five or six jobs so far using the big professional one. And boy, is it fun to operate. Now again, you gotta think about this. I'm, I love to use equipment that other people threw away and paid us to take to then turn around and make more money for our business. I have a couple of, I have four lawnmowers right now in my storage units. Two of them ride-on lawnmowers, two of them walk-behind mowers. I have weed whackers and trimmers, edgers right now. I have shovels. I have... And all of this came from other people who paid me to take the stuff. So when I go out and do, you know, snow removal jobs that took, yesterday one took three and a half hours to clear off two parking spots and a walkway to a condominium.

[27:31] Speaker 2: Three and a half hours with two of us, one guy on shovels just chipping away at the ice. I was on the s- the snowblower, using it as, as smart as we could. The problem is there's so much ice on the top layer of the snow, because it's been so cold. And on the bottom layer, because some of the snow melts and then it freezes, it's, it's like an ice Oreo cookie. You got, you know, a, you got hard stuff on the top, you got hard stuff on the bottom, and you got fresh white powder snow, soft as can be in the middle. But you can't just go at that head-on with a gas-operated snowblower, because it won't make its way through, because of the frame that goes around the blades. It can't just push itself through the ice. You have to take a shovel, in our case, a pointed Husky, shout out to those guys, Husky shovel, and break up the ice, which you can do. It's not that tough to do if you hit it right.

[28:35] Speaker 2: And by the way, like I teach our guys how to do, think of splitting a f- um, a log, a f- for firewood, right? You take this log, you put it on, like, the stump of a tree or on the ground so it's flat, and then you hit it with the sharp end of an axe. The way you hit it is to have the axe blade be, be perfectly vertical and go into the wood on a vertical plane, right? Perpendicular to the ground, but parallel with the sides of the log. If you do that, the structure of the log is such, the grain structure inside, that it will naturally split. That's how you split oak firewood. You, you, you hit it with an axe so that the axe blade is perfectly vertical and is perpendicular to the ground. If you hit it from an angle, like a 45-degree angle coming in from the right side, that log's not gonna split It's gonna fall down, and you're probably gonna, you know, cut your knee or something with the blade. It's not gonna work.

[29:49] Speaker 2: So if you're trying to break up ice and snow, you need to take the pointed end of a shovel, and you need to tilt the handle towards your body a little bit so that the blade of the shovel is perfectly vertical. So that when it goes down and hits the ice, the molecules in the frozen water will split like a piece of wood along the grain line. If you don't do that, you're hitting it at an angle, and it can still break apart, but you're probably gonna have to hit it two or three times. If you do it perfectly vertical, you hit it once, and that baby splits and the ice breaks offSo, if you want... If, you know... To show you what it's like in the junk removal business, I got a call Friday night at 10:54 PM from a realtor. I just happened to be sitting on my bed when the phone rang.

[30:46] Speaker 2: I thought, "Oh, I might as well answer this just to see who's, you know, crazy enough to call this late at night." Well, it was a realtor who said, "Can you come remove some snow at a property in Bethesda tomorrow morning? Because we have a 2:00 showing to try to sell the house, and we need the driveway done and the walkway done." Well, as it worked out, our previous appointment for 9:00 in the morning canceled because we were supposed to get more snow, which didn't happen. And the lady at the 9:00 appointment wanted to postpone it until Monday, so we said okay. But because of that cancellation, we were able to go down to the other job in Bethesda, and I was there Saturday morning, less than 12 hours after I got the call. I was on the job site with my brand new snowblower that I didn't have to buy, and a shovel. I was at the driveway and the temperature outside was seven degrees. And I'm telling you, going to medical school is easier than this, right? I mean, I couldn't believe it.

[31:55] Speaker 2: Seven degrees, and I have to bust this ice up before I can blow it away with the snowblower. I have to manually break it up, then the snowblower can come in and throw it aside. Well, four hours later, myself and a friend included, we got it all done and they were as happy as can be. We charge $100 an hour, by the way, with a $50 minimum, so it was a $400 job to clear off a... what's probably a 100-foot-long driveway and the walkway and the steps and to salt it all. And by the way, if you want to really have fun, go out and try some... find some rock salt or ice melt in the Washington, DC area right now. I'm telling you, nobody's got it. Call as many Home Depots and Lowes as you want to, they're out. It is the hottest commodity right now. Everybody needs it. The, the snow is piled up four and five feet high, the ice I should say, and it's just the hottest commodity around. And I found some after doing a job the other night, which I think I talked about on the radio show last week.

[33:04] Speaker 2: I did a 200-foot-long driveway and had to go find some rock salt afterwards and found it at a BP gas station in Germantown, Maryland, and I bought the last two bags. And that was like the 10th place I checked. I checked seven places this morning as we're driving around doing some work to try to find some more, and nobody's got it. It's, it is a hot commodity. All sold out. I went in yesterday because we did it, we did a couple of jobs yesterday, to simply buy what's called a square-mouth shovel. That is a shovel that does not have a pointed end. It has a bladed straight end. It's about a foot l- the, the, the face of the shovel is about a foot deep and about a foot wide. Perfect for sliding underneath frozen ice on a driveway, and then you just push the handle down towards the ground and y- basically it pops up the head and it breaks off big chunks of ice, right? Home Depot and Lowes don't have any shovels. They're all gone. I didn't think about that.

[34:15] Speaker 2: Not only do they not have the ice melt, they don't have the shovels. But still, going to a regular snow shovel we have and a very nice Husky regular pointed shovel that somebody threw away, we're able to do the jobs with those two shovels and a snowblower that somebody else threw away, and lo and behold, we have a snow removal business. This is really fun. I mean, it's really fun, and I'm having a blast doing it, and I'm particularly having a blast operating this snowblower that somebody gave me, right? So I'm having a, I'm, I'm having a good time with it. Um, I do have to do a shout-out for Craigslist as well, because on Friday afternoon... Well, let me go back. Let me go back to last week. I did, I did this show last week called The Day from Hell, which was last Monday, and Tuesday wasn't much better because that's when we first had to deal with all the ice and the snow.

[35:14] Speaker 2: I did an ad, it may have been Thursday, it may have been Friday, a $5 ad in our area on Craigslist for snow removal. Took a video of myself with my new slo- my new used snowblower, put that out there Took a few still photos, put that out there. Within eight hours, I had three snow removal jobs. The ad cost me $5. It will be on Craigslist for another... well, for a month total, so another three and a half weeks. Five bucks. That's it. And it's already paid for itself 100 times over, at least. And so I'm just having a blast with this thing. It really is fun, and it gives another dimension to our business because if you have a bunch of snow piled up in your driveway, that's called junk, and you need to get the junk out of your driveway and out of your life, so you call us and we come over with our equipment that we didn't have to pay for, and we'll get it u- we'll get it off your driveway and off your stairs. I did have a brilliant thought this morning, I thought this was kind of cool.

[36:27] Speaker 2: After making all these calls to try to find some ice melt and nobody has it, I thought, "Why not just go into, like, Safeway and buy, like, 10 containers of Morton's salt?" You know, table salt... much finer, but it's still salt. And take that and just spread that around on some driveways or on some steps. You'll get the same result. It will also get the, get the ice melting. And I think these things of salt are like 50 cents a can or something. They're... That was an idea I had this morning in trying to figure out how to, how to get around this situation and what to do. I think this afternoon, I'm gonna go buy some containers of Morton's salt, regular table salt. You know, there are these containers like eight or nine inches high and maybe three or four inches in diameter. And just buy 10 of them and use that to sprinkle salt on the steps and the walkways where people gotta be careful so they don't slip. I was kind of proud of my-...

[37:30] Speaker 2: I think that will work and I'm kind of excited to do it. I do have to put in a two-minute, um, plug here for Frontier Airlines, which I've done now for three years on this radio show. This morning, I booked a flight from Washington. This is gonna happen tomorrow afternoon, Washington, DC to Denver onto Salt Lake City for $31 total, and that's because I'm a member of the Go Wild Pass family. Anybody can join that. You pay an annual fee if you wanna fly... Uh, you pay a fee annually, normally about 600 bucks, but they've been letting us renewing the last few years for half price. And then you fly free for a year, which means your airfares are only one penny, and then you have to pay the airport taxes which you are not... There's no way to get around those. The airport taxes to fly from Washington to Denver and onto Salt Lake City are about 30 bucks. So I'm gonna fly out tomorrow afternoon to Salt Lake City for $30.

[38:42] Speaker 2: I'm going there to see my, my daughter and my son-in-law and their two cute little girls. It's my daughter's birthday on Monday, so I'm going out to take them to dinner Saturday night. And I love to go and visit temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One of the newest ones we built is in Burley, Idaho, which is three hours north of Salt Lake City. So S- Saturday morning about 8:00 AM, I'll grab the rental car. I'll head north. I'll go up to... I'll get in Burley at about 11:00. I'll do some... Spend a... Spend an hour in the, the new Burley Idaho Temple, which is always a thrill for me 'cause I always love to go see these new buildings that were built. Then I'll turn around and drive three hours back to Salt Lake, and at six o'clock Saturday, I'll take my kids to dinner.

[39:28] Speaker 2: And then that night, I'll go stay with my sister and watch BYU play Houston in basketball in Provo on television, where nobody in that crowd is going to chant, "F the Cougars," which this is interesting 'cause you have both BYU Cougars and Houston. Nobody's gonna chant anything negative about Houston's religious affiliation. Guaranteed, okay? Anyway, that's my weekend. I'm very pleased because just this morning, I bought the airfare for 30 bucks. It's gonna take me three-quarters of the way across the country, starting in about 24 hours from now and I couldn't be happier. Anyway, that's, uh, the kind of world we live in. Great stuff happening. We're gonna take another break here. You're listening to The Junk Refund Show. I'll be back in about a minute. Gonna suck down some more chili from Wendy's, pop in a cracker or two, have some ice water, and hopefully have enough time to take a couple of gulps of the chocolate Frosty, and I'll be back in a minute with The Junk Refund Show.

[40:26] Speaker 2: Be right back.

[40:27] Speaker 2: (instrumental music plays Have you ever hired one of those expensive junk removal companies, then wondered what they did with the stuff, especially the good stuff? At 1-800-JUNK REFUND, we junk the junk, recycle stuff like metal and wire, donate items and get you receipts, and put up for sale the good stuff. And if it sells, you get some money back. Cynthia paid $375 for junk removal and got 3,200 back. Would you like to know how she did it? Tune in to the Junk Refund Show with your host, Alan J. Cook, every Thursday at 3:00 PM Eastern Time to get the junk not only out of your home, but also out of your life. Perfect. Thank you, Don at BBS Radio. We like, we like these guys a lot, Don and Doug Newsom. If you have ever wanted to do a radio show, you should contact them in Tomball, Texas. And they... The... Just go online at bbsradio.com, like I did three years ago or something, and tell them who you are and that you'd love to have a radio show. And wham-o, for not very much money each week, your show can go to 49 countries like this one does, and it also turns into a podcast. And they're doing some wonderful things with AI where they're, they'll take this audio from today... And it used to be that, that I, I would put together... And most of the time I didn't get this done. I would put together a summary of the show and send it to them and then they would put it on their site. And then if you go to their site, you can tell what our show is about. Most of the time, I didn't get that done so they had to go back through, listen to the episode again con- put... uh, basically write their own summary and put it up on the website. Now AI does it through a new computer they have, a new server. And within about 30 minutes of the show ending-... it's posted. AI c- comes up with the synopsis of the show, photos, other stuff, and wham-o, there you go. All done through AI. Brilliant move on the part of BBS Radio and TV. So, anyway, it's never... there's never been a better time in the history o- of the world to be alive than now. That's what I believe. And it's never been easier in the history of the world to do a radio show than now. So, if that's something you've always wanted to do, call me at 1-800-JUNK-REFUND or contact the good guys at BBS Radio and they can set you up, and off you go to the races and you too can be on the air. Um, I'm, uh, I'm really excited this weekend, I'm, uh... uh, just a quick note about family traditions as a great way to get some of the, the junk out of your relationships is to do something that makes those relationships better. I have... my oldest daughter, of my four kids, my oldest daughter has two beautiful little girls now, both under the age of 18 months. One is about two months old, one is about 17 months old. And the oldest one, I just got in the habit of buying some kind of a little stuffed animal from wherever I happen to have been, that has the name of the city or the place or the resort or wherever it was on the animal, and I'm, I'm just... uh, whenever I go out to see her, which is almost about once a month or so, I like to give her another s- little stuffed animal, right? I got her a Mickey Mouse larger stuffed animal from Walt Disney World, from Orlando, and boy, she loves it. She goes to sleep... this little 18-month-old goes to sleep every night with it, which makes... you know, it just warms your heart as a, as a grandfather. And I started a tradition about a month ago with grandchild number two that has to do with my, uh, hobby, my spiritual hobby of visiting temples built by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And I'm going to visit another one of those. I've been to all of them in the United States, which is somewhere around 100 and something, I think. I've been to all of them except two. One is in Burley, Idaho, 'cause it's brand new. It just came on board. We just built it in the last two years or so. It just came on board, so it's a brand-new temple, and the other one is in Farmington, New Mexico, which I'm planning to go to later this month, but the one that's really got me pumped... And so I... this is just kind of a, a big... it's a big high for me every, every time I do this, um, because each of these buildings has a lot of similarities, and yet they all have a lot of differences. And it, it's a spiritual high, is really what it is. And so that's why I do it, because it means a lot to me in my life, and it's fun to go meet people around the country that are the same religion that I am and we have a lot in common and we can talk about stuff like that. And I get to see how the Church customizes these buildings down to the carpets, the furniture, the paintings inside, the color of the vases that are inside on the tables. They're all done for local interest of that area, right? So, if you go to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in some of the rooms inside where they paint murals on the walls, they have painted it to make you feel like you're in a swamp. If you go to Newport Beach, California, same, same stuff goes on in the same, in the same building as goes on in Baton Rouge, but if you walk in those rooms in Newport Beach and you look around on the walls, they've painted a beach setting for you and you feel like you're sitting on the beach. It's the most amazing thing. And so we customize them depending on where they are, and so I like to see how we kind of make these special for the different areas that we build them in. But anyway, I am, um, for, for, uh, for my second grandchild, my young granddaughter who's only a couple of months old, I started a tradition last month, when I go to visit one of these temples I try to find something that has to do something with the temple, and I, I give that to her, even though she's too young to really appreciate it. We're starting to build up a little collection of kind of spiritual gifts from her grandpa, which is just a blast for me to do, and one of these days she'll be old enough to appreciate it. So, granddaughter number one gets stuffed animals, granddaughter number two gets kind of a spiritual shot in the arm, and that's just what we're doing, and I'm thrilled with it, and I think it's gonna be a blast. So, um, I'd, I, I've long maintained, with travel being the way that it is, that you don't need to live next to family or even in the same time zone as family in order to be close to them. You... I have lived across the country for 35 years from my mother, for example, and I had a brother tell me recently at my mom's funeral couple of months ago that, in his opinion, I have the most and the best memories of events I did with my mom, so how can that be when I live 2,000 miles away Because I called her every Sunday for 20 years, and I went out and saw her regularly and did sp- you know, special things with her, and we went and did fun things, and I have all these wonderful memories of what I did with my mom. So, at her funeral about a month ago, I have no regrets. I am just full... I spoke at the funeral and I just sat there and thought, "Man, I got so many stories I could tell. Which one... I gotta boil it down to the, you know, the 10 best," which I did, and it was a blast. Um, I wanna talk also, one of the best ways to get the junk out of your life is to not... is to stop thinking about yourself and focus on what you can do for somebody elseHere's a case in point: you've heard the story about, and you've seen, you know, reels of this on Facebook, where some guy stops what he's doing, gets out of his car, and stops what he's doing to help an old lady across the street. Right? That's what Boy Scouts are supposed to learn how to do when they're, like, 12. So we cleaned out, hauled away some stuff with one of our Groupon deals, which are quite popular here in the DC area. Couple a days ago, we went down to, I think it's Arlington, Virginia, let's see, Alexandria, Virginia, and hauled away some stuff from a lady's apartment. And on the way out, and it, and this snow equipment crews are out on the street kinda blocking part of the street off 'cause they have to get rid of all this snow that's still piled up on the outside of lane three or something. Well, we finish the job, we're getting ready to leave, and there is a, an older Black lady by herself, carefully walking ahead of our truck by about 50 feet, and she's trying to figure out how to cross this busy road where there's no crosswalk directly in front of her. And it's icy and it's slick. And I thought, "Oh, gotta help out." So I went over and just kinda took her by the arm, and I escorted her across the street and got her to the other side. And the traffic control guy for the construction company that was removing the snow, when he saw what I was doing, he immediately jumped in and went out and stopped the traffic so we could walk her, get her across the street safely. We did that, and so both me and the traffic control guy, we're now new buddies because we both helped this lady get across the street, right? Simple. You can't, I can't tell you how many times she thanked me, right, and how much it meant to her. But just taking a moment to try and help somebody else out is a great way to get some of the stress outta your life and to just feel better about life and feel better about our society. It's just a good thing to do. It's that simple. And that was a standout idea. I've got another one for you that happened on Monday night of this week, where a young lady and her husband, uh, just had a, they just had a child about three weeks ago. She has kind of a prominent position in our church with the responsibilities that she has. She kinda heads up the, the women's organization of our congregation, which is a very active group. And she's young, and she'd just had a baby, and so some other members of the congregation said, "Hey, let's, for about a two-week period of time, we're gonna send out an email. And anybody that wants to can jump in and provide dinner for this family, we'll do it like every other night, can provide dinner." Well, I signed up for Monday, February 2nd. I texted the husband. I said, "Hey, what would you guys like? Don't be shy. I'm probably just gonna buy it for you and have it Ubered over to you. Um, tell me what you'd like." And he mentions, he mentions, I think it's Monterey, I'm not sure. I'll have to double-check this. Um, I'm not sure that's right. It's Mon- ... I'm not ... something it is. But anyway, he ... No, it was, it was, uh, it was Honeymoon Chicken. That's what he did. He said, "My favorite chicken place is Honeymoon Chicken on Georgia Avenue, and I love their chicken sandwiches." I'd never heard of Honeymoon Chicken. I went to DoorDash, I got 'em a couple of chicken sandwiches, some mac and cheese, and something else, some fries for sides, couple of drinks, and threw in some customized, some kinda little cakes or tarts that they have for dessert. It's about 50 bucks. Paid for it, DoorDash delivered it. Boy, were they happy. Now, how do you think I felt? Fabulous, right? 'Cause I did something for somebody else. Simple. And (clears throat)

[52:52] Speaker 2: , and it was a blast, and it just makes you feel good, and they appreciate it, and it strengthens your friendship, and it, it's one of those deals where everybody wins. Okay? Everybody wins. So tonight, at 7:00, at Panda Express, at the Wheaton Re- Regional Mall in Silver Spring, Maryland, I'm gonna take six of our young full-time missionaries to dinner, which I do about once a month. It's usually done on the last Thursday of each month. We call it The Last Supper. And I treat 'em to dinner. And so there's two girls, there's four guys, there's me. I even invited a couple a extra people to come from our congregation who had some mile- milestones happen that they were proud of in, you know, in their life and stuff. So, and one of 'em had a birthday, and so I invited a couple extra people to come. But tonight at 7:00, I'm taking at least six people to, to dinner.

[53:49] Speaker 2: And boy, do the points rack up at Panda Express on their app when you, you know, you pay for 100 bucks for dinner for, like, eight people or something. Man, do you get points quickly. It's awesome. So tonight, again, it'll be my treat for these folks, and we'll have a blast. And I do this about once a month, and give these wonderful young missionaries who are 60 hours a week out in the cold trying to help people have a better life, and those guys deserve a nice meal at Panda Express (laughs) you know, once a month. And so that's my effort to kinda feed them and, uh, give them something fun to do and give 'em a meal out where they don't have to pay for it themselves. So I hope you get a sense ... I'm not doing this in a, "Hey, look at me," kind of a thing. I'm really not. But I am doing it as a guy who claims to be happy day in and day out. And we talked about last week, a week ago Monday, the day from hell.

[54:51] Speaker 2: I get one of those about once every 10 years.So I talked about that on the show last week, but hasn't happened since then. And here are three examples: the lady yesterday that I was able to help get her across the street, the people Monday that I was able to buy dinner for, a young couple that just had a baby, my family this Saturday that I'll be... my daughter and grandkids that I'll be taking out to dinner out in Utah, and tonight, taking six people to dinner at Panda Express. There's four stories, four different groups of people in the last seven days that are, what? Charitable acts, I guess you'd say or something? How do you think I feel? I feel fabulous. I do. Because it's fun and you help people out. I went to our weekly Bible study class last night and every, every week I go to Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, and here's a plug for those guys, by the way.

[55:58] Speaker 2: If you want to do some fundraising activities for your organization, especially for your church, you can go in and buy 25 dozen doughnuts electronically at Krispy Kreme once your organization is approved, which I got our church approved for this. You can go in and buy a dozen doughnuts in groups of 25 at a time for $7 instead of the retail price of $15.99. I, uh... And what I do is I go in and buy 25 of these electronically and then they send me 25 gift certificate numbers, and on every Wednesday night, I go into a Krispy Kreme Doughnuts just down the street here and I redeem one of those numbers for another dozen glazed doughnuts. And the church ends up getting those doughnuts for less than half price. Well, last night, for the fourth, you know, in the fourth year now that I'm doing this, I finish work, I go down to Krispy Kreme's, I redeem one of those things.

[56:59] Speaker 2: I walk out with a dozen doughnuts, I take it down to our Bible study class and the people every week say, "Where's the doughnuts? Where's the doughnuts?" Right? And it just makes the Bible study class even more fun because of the doughnuts. There you go. And it's... And I get reimbursed for this by the church, right? So I'm able to buy these doughnuts less than half price. Check out Krispy Kreme's fundraising options for your organization. The real idea here is to go in as a school or a church and buy these doughnuts at $7 a p- a dozen and then sell them to the members of your congregation for $15 a dozen and you make money for your scout troop or whatever you're doing, girls' camp or whatever it might be. In our case, I explained to them right up front that we're not using this to make money for the church. We're using it to... we're giving these doughnuts away to people who come to the church Wednesday nights for Bible study class.

[57:58] Speaker 2: Well, they approved us anyway even though we're not using it for fundraising, which was great. I love that. So for a couple of years now, boy are we tight with Krispy Kremes in this area. And they love us and I go in twice a year and buy 25 dozen doughnuts, right? And then for seven bucks a pop, seven bucks a week basically, I distribute them. Boy, do they like me when I walk in with another dozen doughnuts, right? So shout out to Krispy Kreme as well for what they're doing in their fundraising program. Check it out if you're looking for a way to make some money for your organization. So that about does it for this week's show. Thanks to Don Newsom, our producer, for doing such a great job and for the BBS Radio Network. They're great folks. Look them up at BBS Radio, like Boy Boy Scout, bbsradio.com. They're out of, I'm gonna call it Tomball, Texas. I'm probably mispronouncing it, but they do a great job. It's a lot of fun.

[59:00] Speaker 2: Your radio show can turn into a podcast and could go to a whole bunch of countries, and you too can be on the radio like me teaching people how to get the junk out of their life. Call us at, uh, 1-800-JUNKREFUND or, uh, email us at junkrefund@gmail.com if you have any questions. We go around the country doing junk removal jobs for people and we would love to come to a city near you real soon. Thanks for listening. Have a great week everybody, and I hope where you are it's not seven degrees on a Saturday morning where your fighting's frozen ice, but even if it is, you can still win and it'll still work out. Thanks folks. God bless.

[59:39] Speaker 2: Have a great week

[59:42] Speaker 1: (music) Thank you for listening to the Junk Refund Show, the longest running junk removal radio show on the air. Join us next week as we discuss innovative ways to declutter your home, your business, and your life using 20 years of junk removal experience. Find out why we give out free ice cream gift cards to our clients too. In upcoming shows, we will explore how to get the junk out of your relationships, your spiritual life, your waistline, even your travel life. Plus, call in with questions and situations you would like some help with. At 1-800-JUNKREFUND, we are committed to bringing the next generation of junk removal because not all junk is junk. Thank you for listening to the Junk Refund Show, the longest running junk removal radio show on the air. Join us next week as we discuss innovative ways to declutter your home, your business, and your life using 20 years of junk removal experience. Find out why we give out free ice cream gift cards to our clients too.

[01:01:20] Speaker 1: In upcoming shows, we will explore how to get the junk out of your relationships, your spiritual life, your waistline, even your travel life. Plus, call in with questions and situations you would like some help with. At 1-800-JUNKREFUND, we are committed to bringing the next generation of junk removal because not all junk is junk. See you next week on the Junk Refund Show every Thursday afternoons at 3:00 PM Eastern Time right here on BBS Radio TV.