Herb's House

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Just the other day, I was talking to our neighbors about you know growing up in North Dakota in the 60s and 70s. And I'm like, oh my god, they're like, Well, was that even like so boring? And I'm like, no, it wasn't boring, but it was kind of a safe time in the world, except in our house. It was the biggest thing we had to fear was really ew.

unknown 0:21

I mean each other.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Wow. Judy, before we get into all of that, this is our very first ever podcast. This is number one. This is episode one. We're giving a little bit of history. We're talking about growing up in the middle of nowhere. You just kind of got into North Dakota a little bit, and we're gonna get deep and not into just the snow. We're gonna get deep into North Dakota. Also, real quick, a couple of things before we get into that and start getting into detail. I want to throw it out there. Don't try any of this stuff at home. We're gonna talk about some crazy stuff that we did 40, 50 years ago as kids. And I think it goes, you know, common sense. Hey, don't do what we did. I think for legal reasons, we just have to say, hey, don't try any of this at home. And if you're, you know, a little kid watching our show, hopefully you're not. This might, we might have an R rating on this show at some point. But if you're a kid watching this show, don't do what we did.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

What's kind of funny uh right off the bat about that is I want to answer one question that everybody always has about North Dakota. And it wasn't a question necessarily in the 60s or 70s, but it is yes, we had telephones. Yes, we had cars, it was a real place, it wasn't Little House on the prairie, it was cold, but there's like normal people that live there, except for maybe in our own house.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

One comment I always get about North Dakota is never been there. And you know, people, in fact, I talked to a guy the other day, he's been to 49 states. Think about how weird that is. 49 states. So he's been to, and I'm gonna say he hasn't been to North Dakota. That's where I was going with that. But he's been to Montana, he's been to Minnesota, he's been to Alaska, he's been to Hawaii, not been to North Dakota. So us naming our show Stories from the Middle of Nowhere makes a lot of sense from many different angles. We've got great stories. We grew up in the middle of nowhere. I think a lot of people, especially people from North Dakota, or people that still live up in North Dakota, are gonna be able to relate to everything we say in regards to the stories that we tell and the time and capturing the essence of the late 60s and growing up in the 70s. But even if people didn't grow up in North Dakota, if we've got somebody watching, you know, from the West Coast or the East Coast or overseas or anywhere in the world for that matter, hopefully we can paint a good picture of the unique aspect of where we grew up and how many cool things that we did and went through growing up, but also how many kind of weird and goofy things we went through as well. As a kid, Judy, I remember not liking North Dakota, hating North Dakota, wanting to get out of there. And I hate to say that now because I actually love North Dakota, and I go back, we go back, and we go back on trips, and we're going back for reunions and state fairs and stuff like that. And now I love North Dakota and just even driving in North Dakota, super cool. You pass somebody on the highway, and you know, I remember I was driving up to a reunion a few years ago, and a car's coming the other way down by Dickinson, and the guy waves at me. And I'm like, what? Did somebody just wave at me on a highway?

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Everybody waves at everybody there, even on a tractor, somebody's driving down the road and they're waving at you. But one question we will not answer on this podcast. What is wrong with you people? That is something that we're totally not going to answer. And what we might be able to answer is what's wrong with Donnie. And oh, by the way, this is a brother and sister podcast. I'm Judy.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

I'm Donnie. We're uh 15 months apart. You know, we're not twins, but I think a lot of people when they see us or talk to us say, wow, you remind me of your sister. Or, you know, to you, you remind me of your brother, or your brother sounds just like you, or your sister sounds just like you. So yeah, we're brother-sister. You are gonna legally, we can't slander anybody or defame anybody or say bad things about other people. That's not what this show is about. But is it about slandering us and defaming us and telling horrible stories about some of the things we did? Absolutely, all day long. Were we good kids?

SPEAKER_01 4:09

No. And it's funny because I asked you that before we even started the podcast. I'm like, were we good kids or bad kids? And you're like, oh my gosh, we were great kids. And I'm like, okay, what house were you living in? We had to like research some of these things because a lot of the stuff that we're talking about, I'm like most of it is illegal. And it's, I'm gonna just say there's a lot of things wrong with you. And I'm gonna say, I don't know why you ever bought a Ted Bundy car later in life, but that puzzle will also kind of solve itself over the course of the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Well, that's a future podcast. We're gonna look at the Bundy Mobile, and again, kind of weird that, you know, we're talking about the evilness of me and some of the bad things that you and I both did together when we were little. It kind of may correlate to some of the goofy things that that guy did when he was a little kid. But I think we're gonna both be prime examples of you can do bad, goofy, maybe evil things as a youngster and still turn out good. Or in my scenario where you don't turn out, not kidding.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Look, listen, the jury's still out on you. Jury's still out on you. That might be a hung jury. That jury might not ever come back. One of the other things that was kind of crazy when we started talking about doing this podcast, and it was a memory that just came back to me this past Christmas because I gave stocking stuffer photos. I always like to give those to our family. And one of the photos we were with our relatives, which was unusual because we didn't spend a lot of time with our relatives, but it brought back a memory that I'm like, huh, I don't know quite what happened at that time. And it ended up being a 60-year secret. We're gonna talk a little bit more about that in a second.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Yeah, some of that is still a big mystery. So before we actually get into that podcast in the future, we might have to do a little more research on that. Our mom and dad are still alive. They're still a little secretive with us on certain things. So we'll have to kind of pry and manipulate the discussion a little bit so we can get some detail on that. But that's gonna be a great episode.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

It is. And one of the other things that I remember growing up, and I'm like, oh my gosh, were we kind of good kids, bad kids, that whole thing? In I know you've said horrible kids, you've kind of come full circle, but that actually started super young when we were toddlers. And not only were we bad kids, we were horrible neighbors too. And it started, I think, as simple as I think we were like three or four years old. We were small. And we're like, oh, hey, remember, let's go outside, let's paint the neighbor's fence. Except we didn't use paint. We were like, hmm, what's in our garage? It was like an old house, detached garage. We were in a rental house. And if I if I remember correctly, we went and what looked like black paint, and we're like, let's go paint the neighbor's white picket fence with this black paint. And it wasn't black paint, it was oil. Our dad had just changed the oil in the car earlier that week. So you and I are out there with paintbrushes. We're painting the neighbor's fence while they're at church.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

I remember that very well because we got in a lot of trouble for that. We found oil in a pan out in the garage. We thought it was paint, black paint, and we went out and it was a white picket fence. And I think we got quite a bit of it done before mom saw us doing it and freaked out. And the scenario was mom and dad actually had to repaint that fence white before the neighbors got home, before they found out. So I don't know what kind of fire drill that they were doing to kind of fix what we had messed up. By the way, that house was Herb's house. Our landlord's name was Herb. And uh, we lived in that house just for a couple of years, but we have some great stories from that house getting into massive trouble, including painting that fence, which uh was kind of the start of a lot of evilness.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Well, yeah, and good thing that church lasted a long time back then. I mean, it was like is church ever gonna end, but it was a long time and it gave them enough time because we must have been like super fast painters, and they were out there, you know, getting everything cleaned up before the people ever got home from church, and nobody knew any different from the neighbors. But I also think you had a crazy little obsession with paint. There was another time that we're my mom's inside, you and I are outside playing because we were always outside playing together. And then my mom is screaming to my dad that, oh my God, there's a Martian outside. And she had just, you know, in the last few years, they moved from uh Germany to to North Dakota, which, you know, of course, she must have thought for sure what's the middle of nowhere coming from Germany. But anyway, so they my mom is screaming that there's a Martian in the yard. And oh my God, where are we? And you would think in the middle of nowhere there maybe could be Martians. It wasn't a Martian, it was me. And I was spray painted head to toe, silver, and you were the culprit. You had the silver spray paint can. No, I don't know what, but you did my eyelids. You did everything totally head to toe. And I could have been the tin man's daughter at the time.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

You were the original tin man's daughter because you were completely silver. And again, I don't know, Judy, what my obsession was with paint. Again, the black oil, we painted the fence, and you're right, we got an early start on that. Everything got cleaned up before they got home from church that day. Kudos to mom and dad for springing into action. But somehow we had an obsession with this garage, what was in the garage. And again, it was an old detached garage, had all kinds of just old, dangerous stuff in it that kids shouldn't be playing with. And again, I don't know if our mom was not really kind of supervising us, doing her own thing, or just assuming that we were good kids, because a lot of kids, you know, can send them outside and hey, they're playing, look at their having fun. Not us, not us. We're going into that garage. And mom at that point is probably trying to figure out where are they at. We find the spray paint, silver spray paint. And I think you actually was it weak? Was it like no? I found the spray paint, but listen, you're part of this, and you were like, Yeah, I'll be a Martian.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Go ahead and I don't know how you got me to stand still for that whole time. You closed your eyes.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Yeah. You posed, you put your face up and went, and then I and then your whole body, and then I think you must have freaked out or something and went running out into the yard. That's when mom saw you and thought she saw a Martian running around the yard. Well, kind of the back end of that is I don't know if you remember the whole Wizard of Oz story with the original Tin Man was Buddy Epson. Buddy Epson, the guy from you know what show I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

The clampets.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Yes, the clampets. So Buddy Epson was the original tin man, and they spray painted him silver. This is maybe where we got the idea from. Well, it almost killed him. He had some kind of reaction to it, and they had to take it off him, so they had to bring somebody else in to be the tin man. Well, this was kind of in our mom's head was that you now spray painted silver. Paint's hard to get off. And it's not like we're rubbing paint thinner or you know, paint remover all over your face.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

We were on the phone with the poison control center, and it was like a silkwood scrubbed down, you know, with the radiation from the Silkwood movie that whoop whoop, because they're in there doing everything they can to scrub me down. And I'm telling you, I don't know if I was bleeding, what happened, but it was just ultra traumatic. We look back at it, funny story. Don't try that at home.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Between the oil painting, the fence, spray painting your face. I think I missed my calling in life that I could have been maybe a painter, a professional painter. Went out and uh painted houses or, you know, painted something because my obsession with painting as a five-year-old.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

I don't know if it was an obsession with painting, maybe it was an obsession with evil. Uh, because you had a little streak in you about something. Don't leave Donnie unattended with his little sister because he's gonna hurt his little sister. Whether it's that or something else, you were always uh, I'm gonna say, kind of up to something. Good thing you had a sister that stuck up for you at the time.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Well, we got into a lot of trouble, and that's not where the trouble ended. I remember a story as well, Judy, living in the same house, Herb's house, across from Arrowhead shopping mall, just a street away. I remember we've got an episode coming up in one of our future podcasts where one of our stories is called The Rock Fight. Well, this story involves rocks as well. And we decided you and I, again, our mom's inside or she's out back, I think, sunbathing. She's in her bikini, she's out back in the backyard catching some rays. Donnie and Judy are in the front yard. By now, we've been banned from the garage. We're not allowed in the garage anymore. So we're in the front yard. Well, what kind of trouble can we get in in the front yard? Well, we can get in trouble with rocks. We pipe rocks and decide this might be kind of a fun game to throw rocks at cars as they're driving by. And, you know, I think we made it maybe to a couple of cars, and I don't know if our aim wasn't that good at the time or whatever. At least mine wasn't. This is a story. Our other rock fight is the other way around where I had the good aim and uh you didn't. This one is where you had the great aim because I believe you actually, and it was it wasn't a small rock, it was a bigger rock. And again, I don't even know how you heaved that. It was you were you were practicing shot putting back in the day when you were like four or five years old. But you throw this rock and it goes through the guy's back window, shatters it, and he pulls over, and he is livid. And you and I are again five and four, six and five. We're extremely young, just old enough to be able to throw a rock through the window, which you did. This guy pulls over, he is furious. Well, mom comes around, finds out what's going on, or I think maybe he had even said, Where's your mom? Or where's your mom and dad at? And we're like, Oh, our mom's in the backyard. And so we all go around to the backyard, and mom's sitting there in her bikini, in her bikini, sunbathing, thinking that, hey, got a nice private day in the backyard. No, no, here comes a stranger with the kids coming around because you had tossed a rock through the back window of that guy's car.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Well, you know what else is crazy about that story? A couple of things is crazy about that story. One is we were playing by the street, right? We were we're totally playing by the street. And uh, you know, and again, different time did we know not to go in the street, but it was okay to throw things at cars. So crazy, mom's out back, and you know, I don't mean to make her sound like she was negligent or anything like that. Again, different time, probably didn't have to worry about things, but it was crazy. And then while the guy was in the back talking to our mom, and I was getting in trouble. Here comes our dad, who was a cop at the time, comes in the backyard with his like patrolman uniform on, and the guy's like, hey, I didn't call the police or anything like that, and you know what I don't know how that ended up turning out, but I didn't get in trouble for the I didn't get in trouble. I don't even think I don't even know if we had to pay for the rocks and I don't know how it it turned out, but you know, listen, not ever a good idea to throw rocks at cars, but we had a little thing with rocks too.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Again, you alluded to it. It was a sign of the times. Again, most kids are probably going to be good in that scenario. And back then, Judy, you didn't never had to worry about getting abducted. Now you wouldn't let your kids play out front if you're in the house or out back sunbathing because you'd have to worry about, you know, evilness or bad things kind of happening. We grew up in a time where none of that stuff happened. We didn't even lock our doors. I don't even remember ever, ever having a key to our house. It was just that the door was always unlocked. Did you have a key?

SPEAKER_01 15:25

No, no key. And it was also kind of strange because we could go leave our house in the morning, and you and I played outside all day. All day, and nobody checked on us. And at the end of the day, or when it was dark outside, and sometimes even after it was dark outside, we would hear our mom kind of call in our names, but nobody checked on us, none ever.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

And remember, this is North Dakota in the middle of the summer. It didn't get dark out until 1030. So we're outside, to your point, playing at least till 1030. And then there was some other times where mom's yelling out the window because the streetlights are on, it's dark out, and now it's 11 o'clock at night. So we're just coming in. But one other quick story about the street there and being able to play, one of the other rules we had was don't go near the river. Across the street, right across the street, the front side of the house was Arrowhead Shopping Mall. To the east of us was the Mouse River, just across the street. We were never allowed to go to the Mouse River to go near the river for obvious reasons. Again, we're five and six years old or whatever age we were. But I remember one time being over there and again getting into trouble and doing things that we weren't supposed to be doing. And one of the things I did, and again, this is maybe early signs of am I going to take the high road to being a good person or am I going to go the Ted Bundy route? I hate to even say that. And I'm joking about that because, you know, never intentionally hurt anybody or, you know, a soul or anything like that. I'm the nicest guy in the world. But at five years old, maybe not that nice. I ended up, Judy, there's a little kid playing with us by the river, and I ended up pushing him, like pushing him into the river. And then I ran. I ran home. I thought that I had killed the guy, that I had pushed him into the river. The river swept him away. He drowned, you know, the whole nine yards. And I had this just sick feeling in my stomach that I have actually done something extremely evil. Well, then the next day we're outside playing, and there's the kid. There's little Johnny. I'm like, Johnny knows how to swim.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

Well, that river had a current, too. So you're like totally lucky that nothing happened. You know, we don't recommend throwing anybody in the river, but I have to say something else kind of crazy. For 60 years, I've been trying to figure out where I got my fight or flight, my fight or flight from. Well, now I know. I'm glad we had this podcast because it's solving, you know, what the hell happened with uh why I I tend to run if there's any kind of trouble at all.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

You saw me do it, but there's many other stories, Judy, and we're gonna get into them in a future podcast where one line that you always yell out in a certain scenario is.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

It is. I always use that line. I use that line and my whole life I like run.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

So I'm like, hey, that's funny. You've told me stories from a couple of years ago that still involved running. And in the future, we're gonna do a couple of fast forward podcasts where we're gonna talk about current events and we're gonna get you caught up to date with our mom and dad and what's going on and some crazy stories that still exist. But one of yours from a couple of years ago, and we're not gonna get into detail now, but it was a it was a run. It was a run situation.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

It was a fight or flight. I'm a runner. I'm a total I'm a runner. I tell people to run. I don't know, I just must panic. One other thing, and this kind of goes back to alluding to a little bit of that 60-year secret, but I remember you and I staying at our relatives' house. And when what triggered that in that photo was when I saw the relatives and I saw the house, I remembered having a taste of soap in my mouth. Cause I, you know, I don't remember I I know our parents never washed out anybody's mouth with soap, but that was something our relatives did. And I had to be like that show, uh, where that kid, that little BB gun show, the Christmas story or whatever. But I had soap in my mouth and had to wash it out, and I gotten there, but you and I could never figure out why we were there. And we were there, it wasn't an overnight trip, it wasn't a weekend. We were there for quite some time, and we were pretty small kids. That's my memory.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Well, that was kept from us, so we didn't know why we were there, and we're still trying to piece that together. And at some point we're gonna have that episode coming out. It won't be that long. We're not gonna tease it and and not do it soon, but we'll bring you up to date in regards to the 60-year secret and what happened and why we were down in Bismarck. Uh, we had a kind of a unique situation where a lot of that detail wasn't shared with us. And again, our our parents, and we talk a little bit and we will in the future as well about protecting the brand. It's almost kind of where this all started, where we didn't disclose private information. Now, here we are on a podcast disclosing all the private information. It's out the window. All the rules are gone. Our mom and dad, if they knew we were doing this podcast right now, and by the way, uh they they wouldn't be fans of this. They would be okay, I think, with some of the stories, but how they are with just keeping things close to the best, private, within the family. We never talked about things outside of the family. And that still kind of holds true today because if we said something to our folks, hey, what happened, you know, back in 1975, or you know, this or that, and our mom has a great memory, can give detail about all these stories about her growing up in Germany and uh as a youngster, but all of a sudden we're asking a story about the 60s or 70s that involve us, and then things might potentially get a little bit foggy, not because she doesn't remember, but because she doesn't want full disclosure on that. And then again, us maybe talking about it or sharing information. And again, God forbid that we're doing it on a podcast.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

Yeah, and that 60-year secret, too. What's really fascinating about that is when we ask them, and we have asked them, why were we there? It's like everybody ignores that that was even a thing. But it is interesting that you talked about the family brand, and I'm glad you brought it up because people always ask me, Well, you guys weren't a product. What is the family brand and why was there a family brand? And I think you described it really well, is they didn't want our family business discussed with anyone, but that was a big piece of it. It was nobody's business. And part of it was also that they didn't want anybody to know what we have. They ended up having very I'm gonna say, especially for being in the middle of nowhere, pretty pretty prestigious careers. And uh it was protecting them. So folks wouldn't really know much. I think our rules were stricter than a lot of people. Some things were, but again, that's kind of part of the, I think the intrigue of of all of this and us finally kind of waiting all this time to tell some of these stories. And some of them are really bad. And I don't mean really bad, like it's a terrible story. Well, they are terrible stories in what we define as bad, but there was a lot of things that I'm like, oh my gosh, totally illegal. And I can't believe how many things were illegal, especially because our dad was in law enforcement. But it's just kind of interesting that that's what it was. And we had this brand in the shroud of secrecy. It's you're right, still lives today.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

Well, and you're right that a lot of that had to do with dad being a cop. I don't think we were protecting mom's brand. I think mom was protecting dad's brand of being a police officer and always worried about that we would do something that would jeopardize that, even at a young age, which is kind of weird because you know, what can a five and a six-year-old do? Well, I guess we could throw a rock through a window. That could you know, oh okay, there are some things that we can potentially do. But other than that, and we kind of paint this picture that we were unsupervised, which we were part of the time. And there were times where, again, mom's out back, we're up front, or vice versa, we're in the garage, mom's in the house, we're you know, getting into things that we shouldn't have been getting into. But to your point, the flip side of that is that they were pretty strict with us. And then again, when we got older, very strict, and again, always scared that we would get into trouble. And I think trouble with the law, which I guess to you know, their thinking is probably you know not that far off a base, but you know, strict with us. We had curfews later in life, we had a pool in our backyard, we couldn't have people over swimming, we had nice toys and cars and different things, and we couldn't share that with anybody, we couldn't have anybody over to the house. So, as free as we were with a lot of things we did, and as unsupervised as we were with a lot of things we did, we were also under the rule of thumb at that time, where they knew pretty much everything that we were doing and getting into. Now, that doesn't mean we didn't sneak and and get away with some stuff or get into trouble because you know you're gonna be able to see over the duration of all these podcasts that basically our whole childhood and our whole adolescence was nothing other than getting in trouble.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

Yeah, that's uh that's exactly right. In North Dakota, it was a place that was ripe for getting in trouble. And we'll talk about kind of the crazy of North Dakota too, the some weird laws that they had in place. We'll talk about that too in future episodes, but that almost set the stage for what do you do when you're bored?

SPEAKER_00 24:40

Well, what's that saying that idle hands is the work of the devil or something like that? Well, that was us. That was us. We had idle hands, we had nothing to do. And again, with your reference to North Dakota and not a lot going on, and then again, having kind of a sheltered existence under mom and dad, the only thing we could really do was stuff that wasn't good. And I don't know if if there were choices of, hey, let's do this, which is fun and good, or let's do this, which is not good, and we could get in trouble for. We could take the high road or we could take the low road. And you and I took the low road. And to your point, with North Dakota, especially on later in life, you know, with the blue laws and Sundays, there's nothing to do. Nothing to do. And, you know, until we later got into sports, and by the way, we're gonna have uh a sports episode coming up uh down the road as well, because you and I are big. You can't there. Well, is that what you're calling it? Okay, no, I don't know what we call it. Maybe an attempt at sports, which is still true today. But you know, you can look at your background there and and look at your sports memorabilia. And you and I have, you know, done sporting events and been involved with sports our whole life, and we'll have a funny kind of sports podcast coming up in the future. But until we got into that, it was just getting into trouble.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

I'm like, we were their original latchkey kids, and everybody's like, oh, I was a latchkey kid, and then they have like, I was left at home alone. Help me, help me. I have problems. Ours is a little different angle in that. We were latchkey kids, but if you're our parents at some point, why the hell do you keep leaving us at home alone? Because we were if you left us unattended, just wait and hear what we did.