Friendly Fire

Oftentimes our podcast guests will join us for lunch. Since we tape the show at 1:30 PM in The Mall, we’ve developed a habit of meeting for lunch beforehand. Typically we use this time to discuss which HoCo loco news stories to use that day. When the guest joins us we use the time to try and get to know them a little better before we stick a microphone in front of their face.

That wasn’t really necessary for Paul with this week’s guest. Rich Ruehl, the president of the HoCo professional firefighters union IAFF Local 2000, went to high school at Mount Hebron with Paul. They’ve remained friends since. This creates a different dynamic then you’d normally get with a guy who describes himself as being “right of center” and a guy who heads up a public service union. Though they have strong philosophical differences about unions and benefits, the discussion and banter on the podcast was respectful and civil.

That’s the way it often goes in HoCo. We are a small county so there is always the likelihood that the person on the opposing side of a debate is also an acquaintance or a neighbor.

Or, in my case, future neighbor.

As we were talking over lunch, Rich happened to mention that he was building a new home in HoCo. I asked him where.

“Worthington Fields,” he replied.

As it turns out his new home is two neighborhoods over from mine. I walk past his new home site as part of my regular neighborhoods walk. 

You can listen to the latest episode of “and then there’s that…” here.