Walker is still illegally holding my dad, and now we have less than a month to move.

Walker County is still illegally holding my dad. Our lawyer has advised us to hold onto the retainer fee for now and see if the department will do the legal thing and release my dad on the 27th during his preliminary hearing so that if they do we can use it to pay a civil lawyer and if they don't, we can pay her. This mostly stems from the fact that she has apparently talked with someone about what a reduction in his bond would likely be. Too high for us to pay. She says it would be financially responsible to leave him in there, since they have already held him longer than his 30 days between arrest and preliminary, because otherwise we are looking at a more than likely $15,000 bond and a $150 dollar ankle monitor with a daily $10 maintenance and surveillance charge. She has said that if they do not release him on the 27th, despite not having any evidence, then she will finally step in, but otherwise to hold the money and be packing our house up. Yes, that's right. Our lawyer has advised us to be packing the house up "to be ready to move the very week he is released."

She has told us that while she was out shopping someone approached her and mentioned our visitations to her office and inquired if she would be taking our case, after which they reminded her the local lake is deep. Smith Lake is a well known body dump in our area -- it is reportedly under constant surveillance (going out on a boat with no lights is a very quick way to get arrested too because of the body count they have supposedly pulled from it). Now, I admit, I have no idea how true this story is but, I can't imagine our lawyer would make this up for no reason; let alone insist we move within a single month for no reason. Granted, we were planning on moving this year. Maybe around September or August, but not this soon.

Several times now people have swerved at my car like they are attempting to swipe it off the road, I have had slurs and curses spit at both my sister and my mother, and we have found my little sister's dog poisoned. We are scared to leave the house unattended and scared to go out into public alone. We have a friend order any food in his name to be sure that we don't get anything 'extra' in it. Like spit, trash, or anything else. It my seem like overkill but we have actually upset a woman once who worked at our Domino's -- she bragged that she had scraped along the bottom of a dumpster with the cutter she used to cut our pizza with. On Facebook, no less! A repeat of the incident is what we are trying to avoid.

On another note, I have still been in contact with my dad. According to him the jail there is only legally equipped to hold 13 inmates, and currently holds 23. He says the other 10 sleep on the floor and everyone is fed the bare minimum. "Last night's dinner was a weenie." I want to state that my dad is very specific with speech, and I even checked to make sure I had understood correctly. A hotdog is a weenie and a bun. They had just the weenie, no bun! That was dinner! From what he has told me that was a common occurrence! He has also notified me that he is not the only man being held in there illegally -- one man was able to prove in his preliminary that the arresting officer was lying and that man is still in the jail. Another was arrested with a friend while they were in their vehicle. His friend had drugs on him and the officers arrested them both. Despite both his testimony at the preliminary, and his friend also stating that he had no drugs and that it all belonged to that friend, they are both still in the jail under drug charges.

And so we wait hoping that the legal thing will actually happen and he will be released. Honestly though, we're prepared to have to go to court over this nonsense. Until then we're trying to pack to move away. We have listed all of our redundant equipment for sale, as well as the jump tents that we used to use at charity events to try and get the funds to stay above the red line; however, someone keeps reminding people of my dad's current whereabouts and telling people we're thieves, frauds, and not to buy anything from us because we likely stole it. Thanks to a generous family member, we at least have our power on so we don't have to try and move in the heat and dark but, we can't even resume the station's broadcast. Not only will none of our patrons (who we have worked with for years by the way) help us right now. After the power was kicked back on, I went to check on the radio equipment to get the station back and on the air. I had even planned on starting a radio segment called 'Know Your Rights', where I was intending on tackling the topic of rights being violated, why our rights exist, and what they mean.

However, the moment I turned our transmitter back on and checked the power output versus reflected power I was amazed to discover that, despite the 200 watts, we were somehow reflecting 600 watts. An impossibility, according to my dad who has worked as my engineer. "Check the heliax and make sure those idiots didn't cut it." I have inspected the portions of it that are visible but I did not find any cuts. Still, our transmitter insists we are reflecting everything it pours out back into it, and then double that. It doesn't sound too bad, but as a bit of an idea of what that can do -- A few years back, a violent storm took our antennas down and that caused reflected power. We smelt a burning ozone smell for a few hours the next day before anyone went to check. We found to our dismay that the reflected power had melted the -now partially detached- antennas, overheated our heliax cable, and *fried* the internals of our transmitter. Overall, a few thousand dollars worth of damage as well as a good scolding from dad about the importance of inspecting towers right after a storm. Reflected power is no joke when it's over half of what the transmitter puts out, and right now my engineer/tower climber/dad sits in jail.

Our station sits still off the air unable to help, our equipment listings are all being flagged as fraud, and the one other form of income (through engineering work) sits in a jail cell hoping someone will let him out.

--And so it is with great regret that I am once again posting here asking for donations. Now for a moving fund, that we were hoping to be able to provide ourselves by the selling of our extra and backup equipment. If any one needs any equipment for their own station just send me a PM, tell me what you need, and I will see if what we have is up to the specs that you need and we can talk from there.

The current goal set by family members older, and so therefore somehow 'wiser' than I, is $10,000 to cover any extra court fees or surprises, the moving fee, a partial fee for someone to climb our tower and help disassemble (unless someone here can help with that) it so we can move it, as well as the general price of living while we try to find a new home to move into. Also the rent to get into the new home. The bare minimum we need is $5,000 but I'm being told $10,000 will ("Had better damn well." actually) cover everything. I know it is a lot to ask for but this has really wrecked our business and we're looking at a minimum of 4 months of recovery. We have to pack up our house and disassemble our station, find a new home and rebuild our station, and then pretty much go door to door hoping to find new patrons before the first power bill comes in and we get shut off the air again. It's hard to get patrons when the station they're thinking of supporting isn't even on the air for them to hear.

I hate to ask for money given it is generally our job to help others in need but this entire situation has put us in that place right now.

Any little bit helps; I feel bad enough having to ask for anything at all.