- Well, we got married in 74 and in 78 it got hit by lightning.

We happened to be gone to some relatives over by Walnut Grove.

And my mom called on the phone and she was crying, and I though, "Oh no, my dad had a heart attack," because he had periods of heart trouble.

And she said, "No, not that.

Your house got hit by lightning and we don't think we can save anything."

- [Rob] Oh, the whole thing.

- Whole thing.

- You know, that gets kind of glazed over when people say that.

But when you think about your house and being a total loss, it's not like a tornado or something.

It's just like everything is gone.

All your memories and that, that had to be pretty tough.

- It was really tough.

And one of the things that I like to talk about is the fact that Kathy and I came from families, hardworking, and we just dug in and had to work through it because shortly thereafter, started raising hogs.

We sold the dairy cattle and we were paying 24% interest on our operating note.

- Oof, 24.

- 24, yeah.

- Yeah.

So on top of that, I mean, so you went through the 80's.

- Yeah.

- But you did make it through the 80's.

- We did.

And how we did that was another commercial, is that, and this is one of the license plates.

- [Rob] Roof Doc.

- Yeah, Kathy and I formed Tom Cat Roofing.

- Growl.

- Yeah, and this was one of the license plates.

- We do hedges too.

- But no, Kathy had four part-time jobs and still couldn't support me like I would like.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- And so I-- - [Rob] She had four part-time jobs?

- Right.

- And you were farming.

- With the kids being small, it was tough.