Meet Philip Ferguson and his Star Wars Addiction

Ron Lyons:

Welcome to CelinaRadio.com recorded right here in Celina, Texas, a quiet little dusty sleepy town that has absolutely nothing going on, Guys. I am so totally kidding about, of course, this Isani Texas and we have everything going on here. Now I'm Ron Lyons. This is CelinaRadio.com and we intend to have a good time. So put on your seatbelt and let's get started.

Ron Lyons:

It sounds hilarious to say Celina, Texas is a small sleepy, dusty little town, but there was a time, not that long ago that Celina, Texas more or less did resemble that. And that time for me was 1993. And I remember it like it was yesterday because I had come to Celina from Dallas as a police officer. And I remember very, very distinctly my first night, riding out with my FTO coming into the downtown square, where Papai is now and seeing right in front of the squad car, a pickup truck with tons of teenage boys in it, some in the cab, some standing in the bed and some on the ground in front of the truck and the, as they were driving along, the boys, standing in the bed of the truck, actually had a rope lasso, and they were trying to lasso the boys that were running in front of the truck. And this was going on all the way into and around the square. I looked at my FTO and I, I literally felt like I was in OS or something. I was like, what in the heck is this place? He just smiled at me with one of those really knowing smiles and said welcome to Celina, Texas.

Ron Lyons:

So episode one of CelinaRadio.com did fantastic. And I have you to thank for that. So thank you so much for listening. Thank you for liking it. Thank you for sharing it with other people that you know, and it's just, it's been a humbling and amazing experience. I hope you enjoyed that. I hope you continue to enjoy this show. We've got so many things planned for it. And as promised on episode one, I sat down with one of the candidates for Celina city council. His name is Philip Ferguson, and I didn't want to sit down and just talk to him about his platform and his perspectives and views. You, you can get all of that on the door hangers and on the Facebook page. And you know, all of that stuff. My goal was to sit down with Philip and find out more about the person, the human being behind that name that we see on all those signs. So we met at loosies on the square and talked about all kinds of things. Mostly we, he talked about his passion for Celina, Texas, but we may have also talked just a little bit about Star Wars, that's right. Star wars.

Ron Lyons:

So I am here at Lucy's restaurant Lucy's On The Square in Celina, Texas with Philip Ferguson Phillip, uh,how, how are you doing

Philip Ferguson:

Well? It's Thursday, it's almost the weekend, so that's always a good thing. And early voting's coming up soon. So looking forward to that too. So

Ron Lyons:

I know it's an exciting time for you. Let's let's talk about loosies first. I'm I'm obviously you can hear the background noise. People are actually in here right now. They're eating they're kind of enjoying their meals. They're probably getting very entertained by the fact that we're sitting here talking right now with all of this equipment, but are, are you a regular at loosies?

Philip Ferguson:

Yeah, we've we've become a regular, you know, there's karaoke nights every here every every other Wednesday. So that's that's typically the night you'll find me here. Not that I'm the world's greatest singer. In fact, I would say I'm one of the worst, but it's it's a good time hang out with friends, meet new people and just have a good time with locals.

Ron Lyons:
So, so gimme an idea. What's the best thing on the menu?

Philip Ferguson:

Oh man. Lucy, that's a tough one to pick I mean, their burger's great. I've had that before. They're their chicken salad, outstanding. You know, they're kind of known for their, for their pies, you know, to the dessert's always good too. So you can't go wrong. I mean, you'll find something you like here. So,

Ron Lyons:

So this kind of, in my opinion, Lucy's kind of epitomizes Celina. Like I've been here since 93. You've been here for some time yourself. When, when did you get to Celina?

Philip Ferguson:
I moved here in 2014,

Ron Lyons:

In 2014, and you've got a pretty busy life right now. Tell me, give me a little bit of an idea of what's going on in Philip Ferguson's world.

Philip Ferguson:

Yeah, there's always something. So you know, besides work you know, what's funny is a lot of people think I work for the city because I, I share a lot of stuff on social media if it's promoting an event or a new business or something like, yeah. So it's funny when I run into people, they're like, oh, what do you do for the city? And it's like, well, I do nothing. I'm, I'm a private citizen, but you know, I like to see everyone in Celina and prosper and do well and so forth. But my my, my day job is I work for a large insurance company and in marketing for for small business account with insurance agents. So I work with the insurance agents who work with insureds basically. So that's my day job. Besides that I kind of threw myself into volunteer work with Celina.

Philip Ferguson:

Not, not too long after I moved here. It kind of started off doing some some work with main street downtown and ballooned into some other areas. Politically I stay active. I'm a a local precinct chairman for the Republican party here as well. And outside this line, I've done junior achievement work for a number of years and you know, just all kinds of stuff all, all over the place. I, I just like to stay busy nothing wrong with sitting back and relaxing every so often, but but I don't like to to stay still for too long. So,

Ron Lyons:

So one of the biggest things that you've got going on right now is you are running for city council, correct. Tell us about that.

Philip Ferguson:

Yeah, so it pretty much heats up every, every minute of free time you might have. So what what brought me to it is for a number of years, you know, people have been asking me to run for city council just because of my you know, work I've done on main street and some other thing. And making sure line is the best it can be where where I can make a difference. But this particular seat place one it's called the the existing city council person was was not running for reelection. So it was gonna be an open seat. And some of the other volunteer work I've been doing you know, related to main street and downtown events and, and also I'm the president of our HOA. So the a, a lot of that work was kind of coming to to its natural end or winding down. So late last two year, I started thinking myself, well, what's next for me? I still want to contribute to the city and try to make it the best it can be. And this seat was gonna be open. So I thought, well, the timing makes sense to try to take the next step forward and and see what happens. So so yeah, we've been we've been busy the last few months doing city council stuff,

Ron Lyons:

What for people who don't know, and, and obviously you're gonna be very interested. When is the election day, do you, do you know when, when can we go vote?

Philip Ferguson:

Yeah, that's a great question. So depending on when you hear this broadcast early voting starts on Monday, April 25th it's it it'll last through Tuesday, may the third then the election day itself is Saturday, may the seventh. So typically here in Celina, you know, you'll have about 50% of the total vote will do the early voting and 50% will turn out on, on election day. So starting Monday, the 25th over that next two weeks basically is when everyone will be going to the polls and you know, local elections to be a, a smaller turnout, which means that every vote matters more. Sometimes people think city council, you know, local races don't matter too much, but hopefully they all saw during COVID that decisions made by our local officials are the ones that impact our, our lives the most. So to me, city council, school, board and da are probably the most important races. Yep. Folks should vote vote in. So anyways, they'll have their opportunity here coming up two seats for city council, two seats for school district. There's some constitutional amendments on there, the city charters on there. So there's a, there's a lot to vote on.

Ron Lyons:

Okay. That sounds great. I, we're not gonna get a whole lot into platform and stuff like that. If people want to go out there and learn more about you what's the best way for them to, you know, find out what you stand for, what your views are, or maybe just to reach out to you personally, do you, do you have means that you would like for them to use?

Philip Ferguson:

Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. So I have a campaign Facebook it's called Phillip Ferguson for Celina city council place one cl clever title, right. But that's the campaign Facebook page. So there's a lot of information on there. People can look at whenever they want my personal cell phone's listed on there as well. So I'd encourage folks just to send me a text call. If you see me walking around town to stop and ask, and I'm always willing to have a conversation. So just

Ron Lyons:

Reach out. Do you wanna, do you want to share your phone number right now? Would you like to share that here? So people, it may be a little easier, honestly, it'd probably take me about 20 minutes to find that page, but if I had a phone number, yeah. I might just text you right away.

Philip Ferguson:
Yeah. Phone number it's (469) 667-3918.

Ron Lyons:

Okay. That sounds good. And so, like I said, we're not gonna get a whole lot in the platform, stuff, all of that. I'm certain you've got all that out there. We're gonna, we're gonna find out a little more about who Philip Ferguson is other than the guy running for council, other than the volunteer, other than the guy who works in the insurance field and stuff. So I, I'm just gonna ask you a couple questions and you are completely unprepared for these questions. I've not given them to you in advance, so you don't know what I'm gonna ask.

Philip Ferguson:
Nope. I'm coming in cold,

Ron Lyons:

Coming in cold. And I have a feeling that some of these are gonna put a smile on your face. So you just just gimme your best answer as you can on each one of these. And, and I'm, I'm gonna try and get through it without laughing as well. So, so first question, if you, you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Philip Ferguson:

Oh, man, that is a great question. Well, Celina is great. You know, we all choose it to, you know, we're all here for a reason. So salon is a great place to to live. But man, if you can live anywhere in the world, I think I might live on a cruise ship. And the reason why you say that is cuz you could sell around the world and see everything. Okay.

Ron Lyons:

Wow. I like that. That's that's good. Very, very interesting answer. I, I thought you were gonna say something like Spain or you know, something like that. Maybe Greece or something, but yeah, a cruise ship. I like it.

Philip Ferguson: Yeah. Why not?

Ron Lyons:
Okay. If you could have coffee with any historical figure, historical figure, who would it be?

Philip Ferguson:

Wow, that's a great one. You know, I tend to focus my learnings in history on more 20th century type stuff. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so I think I would really, man, that is a tough one. Cause there's so many to pick from

Ron Lyons:
What's the first one that comes to your mind

Philip Ferguson:

A as you were asking the question that the first one is Winston's in Churchill, cause I've always been found fascinated with him and his story of his life and everything that that he dealt with. He'd be a great one. JFK would be a great one, I think.

Ron Lyons: Absolutely.

Philip Ferguson:

Absolutely. I mean probably any of our presidents. I mean rather you like them or not just just the stuff that a president has to deal with is is, is interesting. I mean, you've got some philosophers as well. That would be we, we great of course plenty historic or religious figures to pick from as well. So it's a, that's a tough one. I don't know. I dont know there's,

Ron Lyons:

There's a lot of people that you'd like to sit down and have coffee with. What do you think right now? What do you think if you were to sit down with, let's say Winston Churchill today, right across the square, over there at the coffee shop, what do you think he would say about the world today? What do you, what do you think he would say?

Philip Ferguson:

I know that may that's, that's a great question too. It it's hard to say. I mean, I mean, they were dealing with, you know, world war II, possibility their country going away. That's pretty serious. We don't have to deal with that here in the us. We're not under active attack by foreign power or anything like that. You know, one question that pops to mind that I would like to ask him is I think during, you know, during the darkest days of the British people, you know, people look to him to stay inspired and stay motivated to keep the fight up. But where did he get his inspiration from? They're they're looking to him, but where's he walking? You know? So I don't know the answer to that. That'd be, be a great question to ask him. But yeah, I'd be curious to know that.

Ron Lyons:

Okay. Well tell me this, if in the, and I don't know if you, if you like to write or not, I'd love to write. I like to create, I like to do things like that, but if, if you were gonna write a book, what would you write a book about?

Philip Ferguson:

I'm not sure, you know, I'm, I don't consider myself like an, an expert in one particular thing that I can give guidance on. So, but in terms, so I mean, that's what I'm thinking about when we think about writing a book, right?

Ron Lyons:
Maybe, maybe it's a fiction piece. Maybe it's something like that, would you?

Philip Ferguson:

Yeah. Well, I mean, if it's fiction that opens up the world quite a bit. So, so, so, so I'm a bit of a geek and a nerd. I will admit I'm big, big star wars fan always have been since the saw the first movie in 77. Most people who know me know know I'm a big Godzilla fan as well. Maybe there's a way to write a book that sort of blends star wars and Godzilla together. I think that, I think that would be an interesting special effects exercise. So,

Ron Lyons:
So fire breathing, dragons and light savers and the force

Philip Ferguson:

That's yeah. So can of light saber stop Godzilla's atomic breath. There you go. That might, that might be the question of our time. There

Ron Lyons:
You go. Tell me this, what's your biggest pet peeve?

Philip Ferguson:

Wasting time. I, I hate to have time wast. I stay pretty busy for me. And I'm pretty structured in my time. I, I just hate wasting it. I try to find value wherever I can. And that doesn't mean you have to be busy, nonstop. I mean, we all need our downtime, you know but but to me that that's, that can factor into wasting your time. I mean, if, if there's an hour that I just want to chill out and someone's wasting my time with something that I can't, can't chill out about, I don't like that. So I don't like to have wasted time wasted effort or I like things to be organized and, and structured and have a discipline process about getting things done. So time is not wasted.

Ron Lyons:

So, so looking at our team able right now with this big just hodgepodge of wires and, and things like that, does that drive you crazy or are you okay with this?

Philip Ferguson:

No, it doesn't drive me crazy cuz I, I know what it's about. Of course, with all these wires, if, if one of us spill our drinks are probably gonna get electrocuted here.

Ron Lyons:

So that's, that'd be a quick end to the campaign a quick end to the show. Yeah. Yeah. A quick end to a lot of things. Let's

Philip Ferguson: It's electrifying

Ron Lyons:

<Laugh> there you go. Tell me about if you could go back and give your 18 year old self one piece of advice, what would, what would that be?

Philip Ferguson:

I, I would tell 18 year old Phil to try everything. You know, I, I try to live by a policy of yes, these days, you know, so no matter what comes up, instead of finding reasons not to do stuff I'm trying to find reasons to do stuff, you know? So most things you try out in, life's not gonna kill you. And at least they make for an interesting story. So I would tell 18 year old Phil to not be so focused on the, the path forward and and maybe take some of the side roads and and see where they take you.

Ron Lyons:

That's that's good advice. I like that. I think I'd probably say something similar to myself, but you, you brought up something that you and I share in common and I don't think you know this yet, but if you are the biggest star wars geek out there, I'm bigger. I actually, I

Philip Ferguson: Know about that.

Ron Lyons:

I literally, if you cut me, I, I, I actually bleed star wars, so yeah, at some point you're gonna have to come check out. I've got such the collection of star wars stuff and, and in my experiences, probably very similar to yours back in 77, a new hope mm-hmm <affirmative>. And tell me about that. What what's, what's your memory of that then and what made it so amazing?

Philip Ferguson:

Yeah, so, so I would've been six years old at the time when the, when the movie came out and my brother and I, we have a pretty close friend named Jimmy McKenzie that lived down the street from us. And he had went to see, you know, back then you didn't get the, all the marketing and, and beat over the head with that with TV commercials and so forth like you do nowadays. So I vaguely remember, you know, I knew star wars was a movie that was out there, some kind of space thing or whatever. Yeah. I didn't know a whole lot about it, but I remember Jimmy had come home from seeing a movie and could not stop talking about it, you know, to the point where he got my brother and I just, just all riled up. So we were on my dad, we gotta go see this movie.

Philip Ferguson:

You're gonna go see this movie. So we went and saw it. And you're just sitting there the whole time with like your, your just mouth open, cuz it's something you never seen before. And it moves so fast and so many different directions and whatever. And then I just remember when it was over, the first thing that was running through my mind was I have to see it again. If, for nothing more just to catch all the nuances that was going on. And you know, sometimes you have movies like that and they've got so much stuff going on, but it's irrelevant things, you know, but star war was cool. Cause there'd be like

one sentence, you know, throwaway line or even opening, you know, the, the rebels got their first win against the empire and it's like, well, so wait a minute. This isn't the beginning of the story. This is just kind of a, a snapshot of something going on. Well, what happened before? You know, you, you, you just have all these questions, you know, I think that's what fueled the, the star wars fandom for years and years and years. And you know, we, we still have an unanswered question. And so

Ron Lyons:

We do and, and, and there's, there's a lot there's, there's, there's a different perspective of the different, I'm gonna call it generations of star wars. You've got the, the original trilogy. Right. And then you've got the 1990 stuff and you've got the more modern stuff. So are you, are you the bigger fan of the original three or do you like something that's come?

Philip Ferguson:

Yeah, I think it's a generational thing. Probably. You know, so I guess what do you call OG or whatever? Yes. So, so, so the original three are, are definitely my, my favorites. I like the three prequels that came out in the nineties and the early two thousands didn't like, 'em as much. But they kind of got better. The, the, the last three, I think they were still growing on me. I was hoping to see Luke go in a different direction than he did, but you know, I'm, I'm not the writer of a director, so I guess I have no voice.

Ron Lyons:

Right, right. So, so if somebody was gonna watch the, the, the whole star wars thing, would you encourage them to start at a new hope and to literally go in, in order that the movies were released or to go all the way to dinner, to, to, to the first episode, and then watch them in order, even though the technology, the filmmaking and stuff is not necessarily gonna be, you know, it's not gonna follow because we had better technology later in filmmaking than we did back in the seventies when the first one was released. So what, what's the better way to approach that if I've never seen star wars,

Philip Ferguson:

I, I would encourage people to watch 'em in the order that they came out. And the reason for that is for what I said earlier, when you watch the original three, there's a lot of questions. I mean, if you're really into the story, there's a lot of questions that come up and why is this? And why is that? And so forth. And then the, you know, the prequels help answer some of that stuff up. I think if you watch, 'em start to finish then or, you know, from episode one to episode nine, you get a more congruent story that way, but I don't know that you capture the same kind of magic.

Ron Lyons:

So tell me this. Do you have any original of the action figures or the star cards? Do you, do you collect any of the memorabilia or any of the old toys?

Philip Ferguson:

I do find some trinkets and treasures out there every so often that for me means something for one reason or the other. So I'll buy 'em. So I don't think that's the worst thing in the world just to have a cool toy.

Ron Lyons:

So, so how do you feel about this? If you walk into we've converted the garage into a big, giant game room and there's a big 12 foot bar in there. Right. And right up on top is one of these 48 inch Darth haters. And it scares the, the, the goodness out of my wife every time she walks in. And I think it's great.

Philip Ferguson:

Is, is that the one that that they were selling like five, six years ago? It is. So I have one of those as well. I have the, the 48 inch and then the, the, the smaller one, the, the 20 minutes, like 24 inches, I guess. Right, right. And, and they both stand right next to my giant Godzilla, so

Ron Lyons:

That's awesome. That's awesome. So real quick. Yeah. And, and wrapping this up. Thank you so very much for being a part of this, we appreciate it very much. And obviously, like I said, there's so much campaign material out there and, and ways to find that I, I wanted to know more and I know more about you right now than I did before, but my last question, why do you love Celina so much

Philip Ferguson:

For me? Like when I moved here in 2014, I didn't know anybody. I mean, I was born and raised in Alice, but I've finished college in the mid nineties. I moved to Las Vegas and I went there for 20 years. And, you know, before social media really kind of took off you know, you just kinda lose contact with people, you know, when you're geographically just far away. So, you know, a lot of friends and so forth that grew up with, you know, we just, we were just kind of our, our different paths. Social media helped reconnect all that kind of stuff. But when I moved to Celina in 2014, I didn't know anybody and getting involved with some volunteer work and stuff I've done on main street and so forth. I mean, every, every friend I have in Celina is a result of doing some volunteer work around here.

Philip Ferguson:

And to answer your question on what, why I like Celina as when I first moved here. I mean, there was in 2014, there it was what, four or 5,000 people here. I mean, there wasn't that much, but man, I saw a lot of potential for the area. You know, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to kind of get involved in whatever, whatever small way I could help influence some things. And, and, you know, people have fun along the way I thought was a, was a good thing to do. And I, I felt fortunate at our, our city leadership supports all that. I mean, I've, you know, we've done star wars on the square. We've done superhero night on the square or Halloween event and, and everything else. And I'm, I'm, I'm thankful our, our local leadership supports all that. I think it helps make Celina unique and, and a great place to live and, you know, whatever small role I can play in making that happen.

Philip Ferguson:

It it makes you feel good. You can go to sleep at night knowing that you made a difference somewhere. And who knows. I mean, what, what started with the whole star wars thing? Just on a quick sign note is I remember when we first started talking about that and I thought to myself, you know, as, as kids, most of us something, somewhere, someone took us to and dent, you know, it could have been our parents, aunt, uncle, whoever, maybe you weren't with friends, but there was something you went to that even today, you kind of looked back on and you thought, man, it was so cool when we did blank, whatever that is. And for me, when we started planting star wars, that's what I thought, cuz I thought it was gonna be one shot deal. You know? So I said, let's try to make it as best we can this one time cuz who knows I'm, you know, these folks need to sign I'm nuts and won.

Philip Ferguson:

Won't want to have me around or anything. So, you know, we try to make you the best we could. And, and luckily it was a success. And you know, from, from that, we were able to build a, a lot of the things that we have today. So I mean, that's one of the things that I like about Celina is you can, if you want to get involved, you can, there's a lot of ways to do it. You're supported in doing it. The people here are fantastic. I mean really that's what it boils down to is the people are, if the people are good and willing, then everything else kind of takes care of itself. So we're lucky we got those kind of folks here and that seems to be the kind of folks, the area track. So the that's that's good. And yeah, you have a fun time while doing all this stuff.

Ron Lyons:

Absolutely. Well, Philip, thank you so, so much for coming on the show. I know it's been very informative for a lot of people and you are our first of several interviews you know, regarding, you know, and involved in the race and that sort of thing. But, but tell me this, will you come back on the show again later regardless of how the race turns out?

Philip Ferguson:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. If, if we're talking star wars and Godzilla or Halloween type stuff, then yeah, I'm, I'm your guy.

Ron Lyons:

So that is Philip Ferguson or at least that's a little bit more about the person behind the name. And I just appreciate very, very much his willingness to come on, CelinaRadio.com and open up a little bit about who he is, what he likes, just it was greatness and I am so very appreciative of that. So anyways guys, these folks who put their name out there on the ballots to run for office, they, they endure of scrutiny. They go through a lot of stress. It's hard on their families. It's hard on them. So I, I feel like the least we can do as Celina residents is get out and vote. So learn about all of these folks, learn what their platforms are. Try to find out a little bit more about who the person is behind the name and then get out and use your vote to help turn Celina into the kind of city that you wanted to be.

Ron Lyons:

All right, guys, that is episode two in the books. Thank you so very much for listening to CelinaRadio.com. I hope you're getting his much out of it as I am. It it's an amazing experience and it is, it's just really, really, really fun to do. So if you would, if you're loving the vibe, if you're loving the show, do me a favor and share the show with people, put it on your social media, share the episodes, talk to other people about it, who you think might be interested in what we're doing and you know what? You can always give me feedback as well. If you go onto CelinaRadio.com down on the bottom, right? There's a little blue button down there and all you've gotta do is hit that button and it'll give you an option to record a two minute up to a two minute message.

Ron Lyons:

That'll be then sent directly to me. And if it's something that, you know, we need to play on the one of the episodes coming up, then we'll certainly do that. Or if you just wanna say, Hey, here's a suggest or here's what I love, or here's an idea for you then, you know what, by all means, do that as well. So on that note, guys, I'm going to close out this episode and tell you that episode three, Dan Williams, running for school board, and I had a fantastic and fun time with him, him as well. He's a great guy, very,

very passionate guy about what he's doing. And I think you're just gonna love that episode. So anyways guys, God bless and I'll see you on the next episode.