Extra Mile Podcast: State Treasurer David McRae

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*INTRO MUSIC*

(Paul Katool) That’s nearly 2 billion and that's money that's going to be spent on improving safety, enhancing mobility and improving economic growth and development in the state of Mississippi.

(Will) Yeah. And with this historic funding from the legislature, new construction will be popping up all over Mississippi.

(Drew Hall) MDOT presents the Extra Mile Podcast.

(Brad White) Men and women of the Department of Transportation are up to the task and up to make sure that we deliver a product that the taxpayers can be proud of. So, I'm ready for us to go to work.

(Paul) Welcome into the latest edition of the Extra Mile podcast legislative session presented by the Mississippi Department of Transportation. I'm MDOT Deputy Director of Public Affairs, Paul Katool. And as always, I'm joined by my co-host, Will Craft. He is the Director of Public Affairs at MDOT. And today we have a new guest on the show.
We have the State Treasurer David McRae. He has been Treasurer since the year 2020, and we're very excited to have him on the show. So, Treasurer, so, the way we do things, the first time someone comes on, we like to kind of get a little background information on them. And I understand you kind of have a different path, kind of coming from the private sector.

So, talk about why you decided to get into public service and why you wanted to be an elected official.

(David McRae) Well, Paul, Will, I appreciate y'all having me here. It's an honor to be here. Long term viewer, first time guest, so you know, I watch it every time on Facebook when y'all post it. So, I'm glad to be here, glad to be invited.

And yeah, I come from a little different aspect of politics, in terms of I wasn't a politician before I became treasurer. I was from the private sector. I was managing partner of my family's family office, investment office, and came through that way. I'm a lawyer by trade, but I practice law.

I practiced very little and then went into private practice with my family in terms of helping them with their legal work and somehow became managing partner. And if you've ever worked with a family that should prepare you for government work in terms of having to deal with a lot of different personalities, even though they were only my brother and my father, but it, it was good.

It was fun, but you know, I wanted to get into politics because I am really just…Being an outsider, being someone who takes the business side of things and sees a different perspective of politics and government. I thought I had a lot to add, and I think I do have a lot to add. I have three young children.

I have a 13-year-old, a 9-year-old, and an 8-year-old. And at the time, in 19, they were whatever age they were. And we could do the quick math, I guess, but whatever they were, and you know, I thought, you know, what kind of state am I leaving my children in? My great grandfather and grandfather and father always had those questions when they ran McCrae's department store.

They said, what kind of place are we leaving our children in? Are our Children, our grandchildren whatnot? And I had that same kind of question, and I thought the best way I could do that it's through the Treasury, through finance, through helping the state get into good fiscal shape, helping people find money, which we'll talk about later, helping people with college savings and saving for college and things of that nature.

And really from the Treasury, it, it, the best way to do that. And I will say this kind of jokingly, I did take over the Treasury in 2020 and I was on the job for about 60 days before COVID hit. And you know, remember that? And oh, yes. Oh, yes. It's all, it's all a blur. But before COVID hit, so, you know, really, it was getting in the office learning all the personalities, learning how government works in terms of being in charge of it, not just from the outside of it, and just kind of putting it all together, and I think we've done a really good job over at the Treasury at this point.

(Will) Absolutely. You know, we're big fans as well. Thanks for the shout out. Always good to have a listener on the show. You know, that's good stuff. But just talking about the Treasurer's Office, kind of gives us an overview. What, I know, you know, don't have to go into everything because you guys have a lot of responsibilities, a lot on your plate.

But what are some of the, maybe the highlights of things you guys are working on?

(David) So the best way, and that's good because a lot of people don't really know what the Treasury does, they know it exists, and we're here, and we do a lot of things, but we handle a lot of our, we're essentially the best way in the overall view of it, we are the bank of the state.

Everything comes through us, sits in our servers, used to be in a vault, but now sits on servers because of technology and all that. So every, every dollar, every cent.

Everything we do comes to the treasury. We handle roughly 26 billion worth of assets a year, transactions a year, and so, but that's kind of the side people don't see.

We handle the bond rating. We handle all the investments. We handle All the unclaimed property, all the college savings, and we're a tiny little office. We're about 36 people, give or take. And so, we handle all that with just a very skeleton crew. So, we do a lot of work over there and a lot of things and a lot of important things.

But like I said, you know, the side people don't pay attention to is like investments, but the side people really do pay attention to is unclaimed property and college savings, because that really affects people and their everyday lives.

(Will) Get into that just a little bit if you don't mind.

What's unclaimed property? Now that is people as well as agencies and other things, right? I think you had brought a check here for DOT.

(David) So when I first started at treasury at the treasury and Brad had finally become the executive director over here, I called Brad up and we found him, I think we found y'all unclaimed property money and, and the name's kind of misleading.

It's in statute called unclaimed property, but we don't handle physical property. We only handle money and its money that's been lost over time. It could be a deposit. It could be a life insurance policy. It could be wills that are probated and can't find the rightful owner. It can actually be bank accounts.

People, you know, have to move really quick and not close a bank account and just kind of forget about it. I mean, people do that. I mean, it is quite amazing what people do, but it's you know, but the average Mississippian has roughly 2, 100. Out there, you know, that's our average pay out to people.

And one in 10 Mississippians have it. You can go to treasury.ms.gov and look up your name. And that's one thing coming from the business side. What I wanted to do was make things more efficient. And, the state government, especially at the treasury. And so, I had seen on the business side, most everything had gone to websites, you know, you go to a bank, you can do all your banking online, apps, things of that nature.

And one thing I really wanted to do and one critical complaint I always heard when I was running in 19 was that unclaimed property needed still paper. Now you can still use paper but that's the only way to claim your money was paper and get a notary and all that. So, one thing I set a goal.

To my unclaimed property department is to create a website, create on the treasury website, go to treasury.ms.gov and you can click the unclaimed property link and you can find your name, your business or whatever. And if it's yours, you just click create. That's me. Fill out a couple little fields and whatnot and we'll get the money to you.

It was so effective that we've been able to give back 85 million dollars in four years. We're probably going to hit 100 probably this year. I'm hoping we hit 100 this year. And it was so effective, we had a backlog of roughly 15, 000 cases. And so, I mean, so, we're kind of a victim of success there and whatnot.

And so, we put in a new system last year, and we now bought some new programs, new software, and updated it, and again, more efficient, more trying to make things more productive over there. And what we now have is no backlog with this new software. So, we've gone through 15, 000 cases. And it used to be where You only could, you could get your money back. We wanted to do it in 14 business days, but with all that and such a few amounts of people working on it, we could never do that.

Now we can get it back to you in about 10 to 14 business days.

(Will) That’s incredible.

(David) And that money, you know, that's a huge economic boost for the state of Mississippi. Because it's tax free, we pay you interest, we do all these things. And it's your money, and I don't want it. I mean, I don't think the state, I mean, the state probably does want it.

But I don't want it, and I want to give it back to you because it's yours. I mean, it rightfully is yours. And it goes into the local communities. It goes into the local, you know, businesses, small businesses, which you know, I'm very sympathetic to coming from McRae’s; We were a small business at one time.

I get it. And so, we want to help people out. I'll tell you a story about one that got lost over time. There was this family who I know, and I won't name, but they had a foundation. The last member of the foundation died, So the money needed to go to be paid out. So, in her will, she wanted to send it to the school for the deaf and the blind.

It was about a quarter of a million dollars. And this was in 2017. She earmarked it, they earmarked it from the will and all that stuff, but it got lost because the address was written wrong, or it couldn't be read. So, it sat at a bank for the first five years. And we finally found it on Christmas of 2022.

And then in 2023, we finally paid, got it and gave it back to the rightful owners, which was School for the Deaf and the Blind. And they got a quarter of a million dollars. I mean, that's, that's just how things get lost over time. It's not, it's not your fault or anybody else's fault. It's just over time, things just slip through the cracks.

We found hospitals, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars. We found people, there's one person, we found 800, 000 life insurance policies they didn't know they had, and you know, it's, it's, it's amazing what people have. I mean, some, we don't put the exact amounts on the website for security and safety reasons and all that, but it'll say over a hundred, 200 or over 100 and people think, oh, well, it's just going to be a hundred dollars or 400 or 500. Nah, it's, we found people who said that. And then we found them 25 thousand or 75 thousand dollars, I mean.

(Will) I know what we're doing right after this episode.

(Paul) I already did it. I'm not gonna lie this morning to prep for the show. Unfortunately, I don't have any. Will, you should definitely do it.

(David) Well, and you know, it's great to look periodically because I, I looked back last August and I didn't have any, and I was down in Wiggins and I was talking to a group and whatnot saying, no, you need to constantly look blah, blah, blah and all that stuff. And somebody in the audience found me money.

And I had just looked in August and it was it was. It wasn't a large amount of money. It was just some money, which is great. I mean, you know, how many times do you put on in the winter now that we got summer months? So, you don't put on a coat anymore, really, but in the winter, you put on a coat, find 20 and you're excited as could be, you know, so even if it says you have less than a hundred dollars, I still put on a coat.

Say, hey, look, if it's there, claim it, it's yours. I mean, things are more expensive. To have just a little bit of money in your pocket would be a great thing to do.

(Paul) No doubt. No doubt. That's incredible. That's a great program. Another great program. One that my parents did was the college savings program. That's really kind of saving for college can be a very daunting task.

Can you kind of tell us a little bit about how that works?

(David) So You know, the average young adult graduate’s college with roughly 32, 000 worth of debt. And when I first started as treasurer, that was 30, 000. So, you can just do the math, over four years, that's 2, 000, so you just keep, you know, going up. And college is going to get more expensive.

I guarantee you that, I mean, there's not many guarantees, but college does get more expensive. So, we at the Treasury have, and we've rebranded it as College and Career Savings. So, we're really pushing vocational training and I'll get into that in a second, but we have two college savings programs.

We have the prepaid one, so if it costs a dollar today, it'll cost a dollar tomorrow to go to college. So of course I'll make that number up, but whatever it costs today, it'll cost tomorrow. And the earlier you can start on that, the better. I mean, so, if you have a newborn, signing them up for a college savings program would be great.

And, you know, you save yourself a ton of money. I mean, the point is to save money. And then we have what's called a, what I consider a kind of like a checking account type of program. And you can put in as little, as much as you want starting at 25 and then go up to a certain, a little higher amount.

And you can do that yearly and those both do a little something different. Like I said, the prepaid is mainly for tuition. The checking account one can count towards tuition, room and board, books, supplies, and things of that nature. But we're also pushing career savings. The Mississippi Chamber of Commerce wants an increase in the workforce, so by 2030.

And These are good paying jobs that the Mississippi Chamber of Commerce is talking about. So, we are pushing vocational training, two-year college, two-year colleges that learn a skill. And, you know, not everybody, you know, can go to a four-year school. And, and, and for whatever reason. But with vocational training, you are learning a great skill.

A dental hygienist makes roughly 99, 000. An electrician makes roughly 65, 000. Great. And these are great. paying jobs and you know, and they're in, they're in need. And so, you know, I think a lot of people think that, hey, vocational training or community college means I'm not prepared to go to a four-year college.

That's, that's a real misnomer. That's totally a misnomer. It just means that you want to go make money. I mean, you just want to go make money and you know, these skills are needed. I mean, I know Ingalls and other shipbuilders need welders. I mean, those are in short supply. And, and these are great jobs, I mean, and you're graduating.

From a two-year program without any debt. And, you know, with Amazon coming and the EV plant coming, you know technical, more like computer and technology-based certification, that's going to be your new vocational training. That's going to be, like, hey, I don't want to do diesel mechanics or welding, so vocational training isn't for me, but I guarantee you, when Amazon comes and builds and needs those servers, they're going to need people who have the server experience.

Maintenance training is needed for those. So, I mean, that's your new generation of vocational training. And, also, just because you go to a community college, it's not the end. It's not your stopping point. I had a young woman work as an intern for me over at the Treasury, and she got into Mississippi State.

And kind of a half ride to Mississippi State. She got a full ride into her local community college. And she's a very bright young woman and she decided that she would rather go to the community college because she got the full ride because she knew her first two years in community college were going to be the first same kind of curriculum as it would be at state.

And so, she did that, and did so well at the community college, and reapplied to state, and then got a full ride to state.

So, I mean, those are kind of like jumping off points people can do. I mean, so, like I said, I mean, and I've seen that more and more and more, people doing that. But, going back to your question, college savings can pay for that.

College savings can help you. College savings can be used to pay for community colleges, four-year colleges, because the idea is not to have debt for you when you graduate. And that, that, that's the whole point behind this. And not, because when you have debt it really affects life decisions. It affects when you have a child, it affects where you live.

And we constantly hear about the brain drain and people leaving Mississippi. Well, we're finally getting jobs. And we're finally getting, you know, jobs people want to do here in Mississippi. And more of them. And so, we want to keep kids, young adults, here. So, the more we, you know, have them save for college so they don't have to go off and find a job somewhere else that pays to pay off the debt, I think that works out better.

(Will) I mean, just for my own knowledge here, you know, again, we got, we got lots of parents being represented right here in this room. The age, I mean, as soon as the baby's born, we can start on the college savings program, right?

(David) That's right. That's right. As soon as the baby is born in the hospital. Well, I mean you want the paperwork, you could go online and fill out the paperwork.

You can go to treasury.ms.gov. We have almost every question possible for you on that answer. And if that doesn't work, you know, just, okay. Get up to my office and we can figure it out from there. I have people who are, you know, dying to talk to people about it.

(Will) I bet, and I know that's the truth, 36 folks working 15, 000 case backlog and now zero backlog.

I know it's unclaimed property, but that's still, that's an impressive number. That jumps out at me.

(David) Well, you know, the big thing at McRae's was customer service. And I don't view, I, I view the people of Mississippi as my constituents and not just constituents, but they're my customers. They're my clients.

And so, I take it to a whole nother level. That ingrained attitude that my great grandfather instilled in my grandfather, my grandfather, my father, and my father into me was customer service. Because without customer service, McCrae's would have never been there. And we wouldn't have lasted as long as we lasted.

So, I'm trying my hardest to do that in the state government. And, you know, we answer the phone, we, we are there, and we try to get to yes. I mean, we never tried to get to no, unless it's just not possible. But the answer, we're always trying to get to yes, and we're going to find any way to do that. And if you, if it's, whether it's unclaimed property, whether it's college savings, we want to get to that yes, and we want to help you out.

And I hope you have a good experience with us, and if not, just always let me know.

(Will) That's awesome. Yeah, we greatly appreciate that. Staying on some of the same note, but a little bit of a fun fact, if you will, I guess, and director Brad White, a big friend of yours, I know, but mentioned this that I should ask you about it.

So, I guess there's something in the Constitution about counting the states, physically counting the state's money.

(David) Yeah. So, you know, if you go back and read Mississippi's Constitution, there's all sorts of weird quirks and little things in there and actually one of my favorite parts of the legislature is when they try to clean that up.

I mean, there's little things here and there, but in the Constitution, there is a thing that says that the governor and treasurer have to count the money in the vault. Yeah, and also, we weren't allowed to stay there beyond sunset.

So, I mean, there were a lot of trust issues at some point in Mississippi to their treasurer and governor.

So, there were obviously some massive trust issues there. But yeah, we're there working past sunset sometimes most of the time. And You know so, but we don't have to count the money anymore. It's all on the server. So, it's all, it's all there it's all there and accounted for, so that's good.

(Will) The vault is still there though, correct?

(David) Oh yes. The vault's there, the vault's there. It has some old bonds in it from way back when, and, has some of our Israeli bonds in there that we've done and, and, and some other little artifacts that I'd say are in there and, but it's all closed up, so no one gets locked in there, so.

(Will) It's in the Capitol, right?

(David) It's, it's, oh, no, it's over, well, we do have one in the Capitol. We do have the old, the Treasurer's old office used to be in the Capitol. And now I think that's Chad McMahon's office now. I think so. But he, but it's in there and it's really cool. It's an open glass and the back vault.

It has all the gears and all that stuff in it. But we actually have a, we're over in the Woolfolk building right next door to here. And actually, we have a vault in there.

(Will) I did not know that.

(David) Yeah, we have a vault in there. So, but it's kind of the timeout corner.

(Will) Yeah, all sealed up. Yeah.

(David) So if somebody makes me really mad, we'll just seal them up in there.

(Paul) Okay. What about, what about this? So next time you come on the show, can we do the show live from the vault?

(David) Yeah, sure. Since we're not having to broadcast this, we'll see if We can get a signal in there, but yes, I see why not. It will be massively echoey, but yes,

(Paul) True, true,

(David) but it would be fun. Yeah, let's do that.

(Paul) Love it. Love it. Great idea. All right. So doing a little show prep this morning as state treasurer, you serve on, I believe, 17 boards or something.

(David) That's right. Don't ask me to name them all, but yes,

(Paul) Fair enough. We're going to zero in on one, the PERS board going on with PERS right now.

Can you kind of, Frame that what's going on.

(David) Well, PERS is a difficult subject. I think it's one. It is my most important board. I sit because it is complicated beyond belief. I've learned more in the last four years about pensions than I ever thought I'd learn in my lifetime. I enjoy sitting on that board.

I enjoy helping Mississippians with retirement and making sure it lasts. Per, you know, for anyone watching this or listening to this and that it's in the PER system I know there's been a lot in the legislature right now and a lot of, you know, flux and everything, you know, if you're in PERS today, you will get your PERS check from here on out.

It is, I believe, a contractual obligation. That the state does when you sign up for the state that you have no choice but to sign up for PERS. So, you know, I believe it's a contract and it, it, it is full faith and credit backed by the state of Mississippi. And so, you will be owed it one way or not.

You know, one interesting thing, people always think that PERS's investments aren't doing well. It's, they're doing fantastic. They're in the two percentiles. Of the of the country our managers are paid the, some of the least amount of money, which it's still a lot of money, but they're, they're managing billions and billions of dollars, but our investments are doing great.

PERS does need a little help. I mean, depending on the numbers you read, somewhere between 58 and 61 percent are funded, which is roughly average for the state for the country. I mean, after 08, things happened, you know, and it just needs to recover from it. But you know, it does need a little help.

And I think the board has submitted some good suggestions to the legislature. So, we'll see what they come up with and we'll just go from there.

(Will) I think that's great. You know, yeah. And as all of us sitting here in this room are on that, you know, we're, we're in the PERS system too. We're very much looking forward to the day in the distant future when we can collect those checks.

(David) Oh yeah. I mean, and you know, working for the state government, there's two great benefits of, you know, working for the state. I love it. I love helping people and whatnot and all that. But one of the, the, the two things that people are kind of carried on the stick to work for the state is healthcare and pension.

Yep. And my obligation on the board is to make sure that the pension is solvent for the few. You know, it's there for them, for you all from, you know, everybody that owns it and also for future generations. I mean, cause you want people to work for the state. I mean, it's one of the largest employers, period.

And you want to make sure of the pensions there. I mean, because if it's not, then you know. People will find somewhere else to work.

(Will) That's right. I've got about 25 years before I crossed that, you know, milestone.

(David) Well, we want you to work for a while.

(Will) That's true. I will be here. No doubt.

And a lot of this we have kind of touched on a little bit from a broader spectrum, I guess, but kind of the resounding main point here is personal finance and being on top of that.
Can you talk a little about the importance of, maybe at an early stage being on top of personal finance?

(David) Well, you know, So, the earlier you can learn how to budget, the earlier you learn what interest is and how it accrues and how it is, you know, you always want to pay off your credit card on time, you know, the full amount how to budget correctly so that you know how much money you have going into the next month and things of that nature.

You know, the earlier you can learn these things, the better off you're going to be later in life. I mean, it really is. And, and There's great tables out there that say, you know, show you how much you save per month, and you put it away and how much you'll have next year. And I, I strongly advise you know, going to Google and doing that.

And it really is amazing how quickly it adds up over time. But I think people, you know, need to know younger people need to know, you know, when you get your first credit card. That, you know, interest paying off, you know, you don't want to pay the interest. I mean, you want to pay it off, you know, you don't want that penalty.

(Will) That 24 percent coming at you.

(David) Oh, yeah, for sure. And you know, you want to, I mean, in this day and age with high interest rates for homes and loans and things like that, I think people are getting a really great education of how interest rates are and interest in general. So the earlier, I mean, I'm restating myself, but the earlier you can learn that, like high school, junior high, things of that nature, it really will benefit you.

And so it's good math training as well. I mean, just learning, learning how to do that. And you know you see a lot of adults who don't understand that and the dangers of compound interest and how it will really affect you.

(Paul) Very much so. Don't get into credit card debt if you can if you can help it.
That seems obvious.

(David) No, I mean, and I mean, how many times on the radio do you hear, Hey, we'll help you with your credit card debt. I mean, it is a big issue in America and it's a big issue in general. And you know, you don't want to be paying that off. You'd rather use that money for something else.

(Paul) No doubt. No doubt. So, lots is going on at the treasurer's office. So maybe kind of looking ahead. Is there any, are there any legislative agendas in 2024 for the, for the treasury department?

(David) So legislative wise again, going back to how I want to make things more efficient, more up to date. There's a lot of things that need to be updated at the treasury, like our unclaimed property, how we pay out certain things and make it easier for people.

Our investments make them updated to the new, you know, new things working with our public depositories and things of that nature. And, and that's kind of what we do. We try to just You know, streamline things to make it up to date because a lot of things have just not been up to date over time, and it's just time to do it.

So we do that. But a lot of what we do with the legislature is kind of teach them what we do. We do. Our stuff over at the Treasury is super complicated. With the bonds and what, and everything. So I have always made my office very available to any legislator that wants to be kind of taught in a better way for a better term, how we do our investments, how we do our bonds, how they affect our credit rating.

The credit rating is so important. Yes. And, I mean, we, I'm sure don't have enough time to go into it, but I could do a whole thing on the credit rating, and we could just go into that. But, just to explain to the legislature how important the credit rating is and how that affects the way we borrow money.

So, you know, we, we They'll call us and I'll send somebody over there or they'll come over and, and they've been very, very happy about that. So, making my office available to learn the finances of the state, to legislators, to people who just want to know little things. And I really have appreciated the legislature being open and happy to do and want that education.

(Paul) That’s awesome.

(Will) It is. I mean, you guys do a great job over there. I have learned so much just from this podcast but listening to speeches you've given and presentations you've done in, in the years past, I've, I've, I think I've upped my game a little bit on personal finance and, and just an overview of what the state does and as far as the treasury goes.

So, I very much appreciate that. We'll kind of wrap, get to the end here a little bit, but a couple of fun questions for you. One more before we, before we kind of break into those though, what do you think may be the greatest accomplishment since being the treasurer?

(David) It really is unclaimed property. I mean, it really is.

On day one, I set the unclaimed property team down. I said it is my, it's imperative to me. y'all get as much money out as you possibly can. And they, I set that goal and they, they achieved it. I mean, they've exceeded my expectations on it. I mean, it is honestly, I tell Lee Youngblood, the uncle, a property director, you have the best and actually worst job in the state.

You have the best job because you give money back to people who it's rightfully theirs. And, and they're happy about it. And you, once they get it, there's nothing but positive feedback. I mean, hey, I mean, it's money. The worst part of the job is he gets hung up on and chewed out when he calls because they think they're trying to, it's a scam.

And so it's how many times do you get a call for your new car warranty? It's kind of the same equivalent. And I hate that so much for him, but they call back, he calls back and goes, no, no, no, no, no. We, we really are with the Mississippi state treasury, and we really do have your money because, I mean, Let's be honest, I would be a little skeptical too if I was somebody and someone said, hey, I'm from the state and I want to give money back to you instead of the other way around of you giving me money.

(Will) Yeah, it would not be on my bingo card for the day if I got that call.

(David) It definitely wouldn't. I mean, I, yeah, so.

(Will) That's pretty good though. That's great. And big fan again, unclaimed property, killing it over there. Shout out to you, folks. And just again, for our listeners, if you get that call, check in. It is a real deal, you know, don't hang up on it.

(David) And you can always go to treasury.ms.gov after say you hang up on us, you can go there and go to treasury.ms.gov and see if it really is you.

(Will) I love that. A contingency plan for the hang up, too. Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. Well, look, to get into the fun questions here, we know you spend a lot of time running around the state.

We like to eat. Everybody likes to eat. Do you have a favorite maybe locally or maybe somewhere that you don't get to go very often around the state?

(David) So, you know, you have your local favorites and everything. But you know Brad's gonna really appreciate this. I love Crechale’s. Love Crechale’s.

And Bob, we just had Easter lunch there on Sunday. And Bob and my family go back. When we had the store, the headquarters was right down the road. Okay. So, Dad would always go there. We'd meet Dad there. And I remember when it was all smokey and you could smoke in there. And if y'all have been there, you know the swordfish that's in there?

(Will) Absolutely.

(David) He would, was a different color at one time. He and he are definitely not the same color he was when I was younger, but from all the smoke and everything. But now it's so funny how it's not smoky anymore, but Bob is such a great guy and dad would take people from all. that would come in and want to work with McRae's from all over the country.

And he'd just take them to Crechale’s. It's a great spot. And it's a great spot, but it's a fun spot. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a good meal and it's everything. And it's just, it's, it's just one of those Mississippi staples. I think it's just a great place. It's, you know, far more dangerous now than it used to be over there.

But I feel the guy with the shotgun in the back will help me.

(Will) Yeah, that's right. He's a good guy to have on hand. That's for sure. Do they still have the jukebox?

(David) They, you know, have a new jukebox. Oh. So it's a new jukebox. And when they start singing happy birthday and everybody's clapping, I mean, it's not it's not your birthday.

And you just love you just so happy for the person that does it. And I mean, it's some of the best onion rings. You know, in the state.

(Will) Man, I’m hungry already thinking about this.

We’re going to Crechale’s for lunch, okay?

(Paul) I've heard of it. I've never been, but after this I'm gonna pull the trigger for sure.

(David) It it is, it is, it is worth it.

It is, like I said, it is kind of a hole in the wall. I mean, it's fun. It's just a fun experience and it's a good experience.

(Paul) Gotta check out the new jukebox, for sure. New jukebox. Okay, so we'll transition from food to music. That makes sense. So, we don't know if you're a music person or not, but have you been, what's your favorite concert you've ever been to?

(David) Well the, the, the two-part answer to that. Right. I was born in the eighties. And so, I mean, there's a lot of metal bands like Guns N Roses, things of that nature, Def Leppard, Metallica, things of that nature. But in the nineties, I really started to love music. And I'm a big Weezer fan.

(Will) Oh yeah. Okay. That's awesome.

(David) Remember at the end of Fight Club there's a song Okay. That comes at the end. Pixies. That's the Pixies. Where is my mind? Yeah. I love The Pixies and I got to finally, I've always wanted to see the Pixies and they have a, a kind of bad history with each other and eventually got back together called, you know, money.

And I finally saw Weezer and the Pixies together. Oh, wow. Five years ago, it was maybe the best concert in terms of music that I've ever seen. I loved it to death, but in terms of concert experience, I had the very fortunate circumstance to see U2 at the Sphere.

(Will) Oh, nice.

(David) I'm a big U2 fan.

And I've always liked U2 and from the 80s and all, all that. And I got to be their sec I was there the second day the Sphere was ever open. I happened to be in Vegas for something and I was like, let's just wanna go see them. And that That was an experience that was one of the most amazing visual experiences I've ever seen. And it's just, if you ever have a chance to go to the sphere, I think the Grateful Dead are playing there now for a couple, for a couple months. And then they haven't announced who's coming after that.

But if you ever want to go see it, I, it is just amazing.

(Will) It turns my depth perception off looking at the videos.

(David) It does. And the videos don't do it justice. I mean, you're just around it and you're just. immersed in everything going on. And it is just such a visual, I mean, you kind of forget you're listening to music actually.

I mean, because you're just so captivated by what's going on. It's, but yeah, those are my two best experiences I've, I've, I've had at a concert.

(Paul) It had incredible answers. Those are, in fact, I'm going to say that's the best answer. I'm headed to the sphere May 24th to see Dead & Co. So, thank you for pumping that up.

(David) Oh, it is. And if you sit on the second floor, don't sit on the floor, Or the second floor up, you can see the whole sphere around you, and it just just grabs you. It's just amazing. But if you have a fear of heights, don't go. I mean, because it is literally like that.

(Paul) That's amazing. Best answer ever.

Absolutely. Treasurer McRae. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Like Will said, just an awesome education. So come back.

(David) Well, I appreciate it. Thank y'all for having me. And I'd love to come back sometime and appreciate y'all having me. We’ll be at the vault next time.

(Paul) Perfect. Perfect. We'll wrap things up right there. Thank you to our listeners, our viewers for tuning into the extra mile podcast. You can watch and listen to episodes by visiting GoMDOT.com/TheExtraMile, follow us on social media @MississippiDOT is the handle there. We want to thank our producer, editor, Drew Hall for holding things down behind the scenes.

And remember to drive smart out there on Mississippi highways.