We tell a quick story before we have our guests on to put this into perspective.

So in the mid 90s, nothing I bought a tear down house in West University at the corner of

Brompton and Pittsburgh.

And what a lucky thing that turned out to be, because I sold it three years later for

twice what I paid for it, with the explicit contract provision that it had to be torn down.

And the reason was, and I don't need to hear from you how stupid I was, okay, I know.

The reason was I had attempted to perform, because I was beginning to buy apartments.

I attempted to perform a number of home improvement projects related to fields of undertaking

with which I had no training, very dangerous.

I got it.

And I didn't want someone else to get harmed and that beyond my conscience.

And in the course of that, I became friends with the WestU police.

And WestU is a little hamlet kind of in the middle of the city of Houston.

Think if you're on 59 South coming out of downtown and you turn south on Kirby and go

south toward the Astridone, before you get mugged, there's a community on the West on your

right right there, call West University.

Tiny little community with plenty of police officers and there's relatively little crime

that was back then.

So if you were going on vacation, you could tell the cops.

And you might get a call, Mr. Barry, yes, Officer Jones.

I wasn't a public figure yet, but I got to be good friends with the guys and they'd tell

me stories.

...