S2 E6 - Hide the Meat — Mom’s on the Loose

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Judy, here we go. It's episode number six. We're almost halfway through season number two, kind of crazy when you think about it. E6. And altogether, 18 episodes. The chaos and craziness continues. Our last episode was a lot about dad. Today I think we're going to focus a little bit about the instigator of a lot of the stuff in our lives. Mom.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

The true meaning of mommy issues. And she's still like that today, at age 91. Exactly an instigator.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

One story I got to start off with real quick because this will kind of set the table for the entire podcast. I remember when I was a little kid, like five or six, and this is when I had my room upstairs at the house. Later I moved into the basement, but I'm upstairs at the house. You're already laughing. And mom and dad be like, go to bed, Donnie. And I'm like, okay. And I'm laying in bed upstairs next to their bedroom, but they're still up watching TV or doing whatever. You could sometimes through the wall hear the TV. But I'd be laying in bed, just getting ready to start dozing off. And all of a sudden, jumping out of my closet was mom. So when it was like me brushing my teeth before bed, she would actually sneak into my room, hide in the closet. Who does that? Whose parents do this? So I'd be like just about ready to doze off, and all of a sudden, what? She'd come like flying out of the closet. I'd start screaming. I was like almost in tears, going, What the heck? Is this some monster? That was mom scaring the heck out of me.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

That fear was real. One thing that I totally remember, and it was also, and I think you and I had maybe we had bunk beds, we were little kids, but we had just watched this movie about frogs. And not like happy frogs, but where frogs had taken over the island. It was like some remote island. They had Spanish moths everywhere. It started off with like a couple of little interesting frogs here and there. Pretty soon there were tons of frogs, and the frogs were bigger and bigger. Well, you know the frogs ended up eating the people, so they had to be huge frogs. Weirdly, in our backyard, we had a pretty sizable statue of a frog. Giant. Mom had it sitting by the pool. Guess what happened to that frog? Later that night, after watching that movie, mom is in front of our bunk beds making like a frog sound, holding that giant frog, and we're screaming and yelling, like, what the hell? But yeah, that's an example of the kind of pranks that she pulled. It didn't matter that we were little.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Judy, it led to nightmares. I gotta tell you about this recurring nightmare that I had as a kid growing up. This was one that kept coming back, and it was the same dream. And the dream was I'd be running down Second Avenue as a kid in the middle of the night. I'm running down Second Avenue, right over there by Arrowhead Shopping Center, and I'm kind of running back to our house. There's somebody chasing me. And the whole time I'm running and I can't really figure out who's chasing me. And then kind of at the end of the dream, I turn around. It's mom. It's mom, it's mom chasing me. I think from hiding in the closet, hiding a giant frog in the room to scare us. This just led to nightmares. Thanks, Mom. Thanks for the thanks for the thanks for the memories. No, thanks for the nightmares.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

She was the ultimate practical joker, but she was also, I have to say, probably one of the most courageous people. How she came to America on her own and navigated her way to the US from Germany by having to negotiate with the American consulate in Germany. I know you were born in Germany. Our other sister was born in Germany, and she was nine months pregnant with me, and she came over all on her own to figure it out to try to find my dad without speaking a lick of English or being able to write a lick of English, which I think is also interesting. But super courageous, I tell you, she was really, really smart and could outmaneuver almost anybody on any single day but her practical joke off the hook.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Flying back, nine months pregnant with you. There's actually a little story behind that. They weren't gonna let her fly. And I remember mom's response to that was, I have twins. So she so she was pretending she was only four and a half months pregnant or five months pregnant.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

And she was a terror at Halloween, too. So she loved Halloween to almost scare little kids and to scare our Aunt Vivian, which we'll talk about Aunt Vivian in just two seconds. But I have to say, we'd be out trick-or-treating, it would be awesome. And we always gave out nice big candy bars. We were the house that gave out cool candy. But every now and then, every now and then, mixed in with the candy, would be a raw egg. That would go into somebody's that would go. I listen, I know I'd probably sick that I'm laughing about it, but it was funny. You know, somebody's in there and all of a sudden there's like a cracked egg in there and their bag of candy.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Back then, you actually had to worry about candy being tainted. And I remember they always, your parents had to check your candy because there was always those weird stories where somebody would put a razor blade in candy or something evil or a needle in a candy bar. Mom was an evil, but mom, again, that was just her goopy sense of humor. And Judy, I can't believe a kid would get home and go, I got an egg. Somebody tainted an egg, and not knowing where it came from. But you're right, we gave out those full-size candy bars. People love trick-or-treating at our house.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

She uh at another Halloween, and this was Aunt Vivian. And what my mom did is she wore that scream mask that everybody had. And then she had a sign around her. And the sign said, I'm deaf and dumb. And that's what I know. Oh no. I know. But she rings the doorbell at our Aunt Vivian's house. Aunt Vivian looks and my mom kind of groans. Vivian's like, Oh, well, you're a little big to be trick-or-treating. Aren't you a little too big? Mom's like, groaning with this mask on.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Grunting.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

And holding up her little pillowcase for the candy. Aunt Vivian's like, Well, aren't you gonna say trick-or-treat? Well, then my mom's pointing at her sign that says, I'm deaf and dumb, because obviously she has a thick German accent, and my aunt would know exactly who I was. Anyway, my aunt's like, I'm sorry. So she starts to give her some candy, and then mom doesn't leave. Vivian's getting like a little strange, concerned look on her face. She's like, Oh, I gave you candy already. And she's like, I'm gonna close the door now. All of a sudden, mom puts her foot where the she can't close the door. And she's making that groaning sound. If that's not enough, eventually she leaves, but she goes on her back deck and she's peering in the slider with that scream mask. If that's not enough to freak you out and tell you everything you need to know.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Poor Aunt Vivian almost called 911. She got so freaked out that there was this robe trick-or-treater, then all of a sudden it turns into like mini Halloween trick-or-treater stalker scream mask freakazoid that only mom does. One other quick Vivian story. I remember one where dad and mom went over to Vivian's house. Vivian had her own house in like Havasou City. They get into the house and Vivian's cooking a steak in a pan. And while Vivian was out of the room, mom takes the steak, takes the whole pan, and puts it in the oven and hides it in the oven. Five minutes later, Vivian comes back out. She's, you know, thinking she's cooking a steak. Maybe time to get it off the stovetop, think about eating it and whatever. And she walks in there, she's, huh. Mom's like, what? And Vivian's like, I could have sworn I was making a steak. And mom's like, nah, I don't see a steak. And Vivian's like just losing her mind, going, Wow, what happened to my steak? Well, the steak was hiding in the oven.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Our mom must have been the original where's the beef person? Because she loved to play pranks with that. So she was working at I Keating Furniture. And the owner, Irv Keating, had just gotten himself some McDonald's. He left the room for a second. He had like a burger or something like that. Well, of course, Mom goes and steals the patty. The beef patty off the burger. Irv comes back in and he's eating it and he's eating a bun, basically, with ketchup and mustard. He's like, wow, he goes, McDonald's is really kind of crummy with their burgers nowadays. There's barely anything on there. She was laughing so hard, she never ended up telling him when it was her that stole the beef off of there. It was so damn funny. It's where's the beef?

SPEAKER_01 7:57

One thing we got a real quick preface with mom, and we've talked about it in past episodes, is that mom couldn't read or write English very well, spoke broken English, spoke to us always in German. She was a great, great salesperson. And at IKEA Furniture World, she kicked butt, was probably their top, if not, you know, one of their top salespeople. The funny part of the story, Judy, is that anytime she got a sale, there was associated paperwork that had to get done with that. And you know who did the paperwork? Dad had to do it every night after work. Poor dad gets home from being a cop fighting crime in the Magic City. Not that that was a big thing, but you know, dad dad would come home from an eight-hour shift, and also he'd have to sit down and do all of mom's paperwork because she couldn't read it or fill it out.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

One other thing that was kind of interesting. I always worry about her being able to, to this day at 91, I worry about her being able to call 911. And I, you know, especially with cell phones, are they gonna be able to locate where she is? Will she be able to say her street address? And I don't think she actually knows their street address. And why I bring this up as something interesting is because they were at Blake Avasu. They had just gotten a brand new boat, and dad is getting ready. I mean, they're going to a cove, they're gonna go hang out. Our dad throws the anchor over the side of the boat, they're gonna anchor in. All of a sudden, that anchor rope wraps around dad's foot. Whoosh! And it rips him off of the boat. He's going underwater. And it's just him and my mom. And he's going down, down, down, you know, having to navigate all of that. And I'm gonna just say right now he ends up okay. He was almost like a Navy SEAL guy down there trying to get himself undone, and was successful at doing that. Mom's panic was how do I call 911? And what do I say? And where are we? She wouldn't have known how to drive the boat, wouldn't have known how to do anything. It was a kind of a really scary moment. I know we're talking about her at the practical joker, just crazy in that kind of situation.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

She said to me one time, to your point, recently, not too many years ago, trying to figure out or learn the address of where they live, just in case something happens to dad or they need to call help. But I remember specifically mom saying to me, Donnie, can you show me that my phone how to call 911? She that was, you know, and again, not dissing on mom, but with just the German world and the lack of technology in the environment, she asked me, Donnie, what's the number for 911? Well, you know, it's a secret. It's 622. You know, it's come on, mom.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

Well, it is a thing.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

We're talking about mom. Sounds like we might be dissing on her a little bit. We're not. Again, we're talking about her great sense of humor, how funny she was, the pranks, the practical jokes she played. But I gotta tell you, mom also had a giant heart. And she was the driving force behind you and I getting twin mini bikes. She was the driving force behind us, knowing what was in the Christmas presents weeks in advance, and getting our birthday presents three, four months in advance. Couple of stories. Mom bought dad a Corvette for Christmas. The deal was they had to deliver the Corvette on Christmas morning. So dad would wake up and there'd be a brand new Corvette out in the driveway for him. Kind of similar to your story with the brand new car that you got, all lit up with the bow on it. Well, mom buys dad the Corvette. They're supposed to deliver it on Christmas morning. The guy calls up Mom that morning and says, I can't get the car started. And mom's like, Listen, if you can't have it delivered here, cancel it. I don't want it. That was the Corvette that almost was. Dad never got the Corvette. This is Mom again going above and beyond, doing just something fantastic, whether it was for us or for dad, or she did just some really cool things.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

She bought a motorcycles as surprises, and you're right. And it wasn't like that we got twin motorcycles. It was that she couldn't stand the thought of one of us having to wait a turn. Super thoughtful.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

She did buy dad a motorcycle, same kind of deal. It got delivered to the house, and it was a really nice blue motorcycle. Wasn't a Harley. Yamaha. It was a Yamaha, you're right. And it got delivered to the house and it was gorgeous. Dad, being dad and being a cop and being a Harley guy, didn't want that. He wanted a Harley. So anyway, they ended up returning that motorcycle. They ended up buying, and this is another story, they ended up buying a Harley Davidson, a brand new one in Minneapolis. Mom and Dad take the train to Minneapolis. They get there. I don't know how they got to the Harley dealership. They probably called a cab or figured it out that way, because there's no Uber back then. So they get to the Harley dealership and they buy a brand new Harley Davidson black motorcycle. Gorgeous. Only problem is it's got a Cobra seat on it, which is one of those tiny little seats. Dad's seat was, you know, okay, but mom's little section to sit on was literally that big. Mom didn't have a big butt, but you know, mom's butt's this big. That seat is that big. So you're sitting on a tiny little seat. Well, they're gonna drive this thing all the way back to mine up from Minneapolis. And what's that? Like seven, eight-hour drive? Yeah. So they get on the road and they're driving for a little bit. And mom pulls a kid where she says, Don, how much further is it? Or dad's like, oh my God, that's we just got on the road. We got seven, eight hours ahead of us. And mom's like, Oh, okay, I just uncomfortable in this seat. And then dad's like, driving a little further. How much further? And dad says, 15 minutes. And mom's like, My God, did we just drive six hours? And I spaced it out. And mom's like, Oh, dad, we're 15 minutes away from home. And dad goes, No, we're 15 minutes away from the Minneapolis airport. I'm taking you to the airport. You're flying home. You're not riding on the motorcycle home, you're flying home. The airport story is hilarious because mom gets to the airport and she's got her helmet. Mom's got to fly home with the helmet. So she's holding onto the helmet, gets on the plane or boarding the plane, and walks up. The pilot, and there's flight attendants there as well. The pilot is there standing and greeting everybody. Well, mom walks up, she's holding a helmet, and the pilot says, Huh, that's interesting. You're bringing a helmet onto a plane? Mom's response was, yeah, that's in case we crash. To the horrified people around there listening to this, and to the pilot, in case we crash, mom's got a helmet. So she goes back and sits in her seat and is holding on to the helmet. The final part of that story is when the plane's getting ready to land and the pilot gets on the intercom. But ladies and gentlemen, we're nearing our destination. We're going to be landing soon and my not. And uh it's time to fasten your seat belts, buckle up. We're going to be landing shortly. And oh, by the way, if you brought a helmet, now's the time to put it on. He says this on the intercom. Well, what does mom do? Puts the helmet on. Can you imagine people around mom like looking around and going, oh my God, there's a lady in row 11 wearing a helmet? What the hell's going on here?

SPEAKER_00 14:31

It was kind of crazy to me that they became bikers, if you will, in their 60s. You know, dad's wearing a skull cap and she's got like leathers on, and they're like riding around on Route 66, which is how they found the donkey place. But they actually became a very avid motorcyclist, so which is cool.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Some of the mom goofy stuff also led to pranks on our end. When people ask, where did we get our dark sense of humor or the craziness sometimes that you and I share with other people, for me, my kids, and you, your friends and family. And you know, you had asked me one time, I could, did you ever play any pranks on your kids? And I'm absolutely. I got the mom stuff. I didn't hide in the closet. I have girls. I didn't want to have them scream or cry or or that kind of a thing. But I remember specifically with Crystal, my oldest, where she'd be sleeping on a Saturday morning. She goes to bed Friday night, no scroll this weekend. Oh, blah, blah. Saturday morning when she was sleeping, I'd go into her room at like seven, eight o'clock, and she's fast asleep. And I just walk up to her and I go, Crystal. She starts waking a little bit. I go, Crystal. She's like, What? I go, Your teacher's here. And she's like, trying to like process this information. She's like, What? I go, Your teacher's here downstairs. She's here to see you. What do you think that would be? And you should have seen the look on her face and just confused and trying to figure out where she was and what day it was and why the hell her teacher would be there coming to see her. So again, that was just a little goofy thing that I did with my kids where I'd play pranks on them like that as well. You heard the story too, where I'd call Crystal up on the phone. She'd answer the phone and I pretended like I was Barney.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

And she I was there when Barney called.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Yeah. She thought Barney was on the phone and got like all excited. And she was like talking to Barney. Yeah. Same thing with Christmas. I'd pretend like I was Santa Claus and I'd leave the note. Or they'd leave a note and then I'd leave a little thank you note. I'm left-handed, but I always wrote the note with my right hand because I didn't want them to recognize my handwriting. I remember Cassie or Katarina one time Christmas morning, Santa has terrible handwriting.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

I have to say, I know I used to tell your kids, I'd try to scare them all the time, and told them that there was to make sure that they checked behind their seats in the car because there was a coyote a coyote in the car. So they were always scared. But one more mom and dad prank, because they were both in, they've had some elaborate pranks. Well, in Lake Havasoo, they were also practical jokers. So they had this beautiful landscaping, all these really nice palm trees. But their neighbors, who they were really good friends with, did not have their palm trees looked like stumps. They had nothing on them. Well, they were gone for the day, and our dad had just been trimming up their own tree, so they had all these extra palm fawns. So he climbed up on the neighbor's tree and he's tying rope around them and tying these fawns with wire up so it looked like his tree sprouted, became this beautiful multi-thousand dollar palm tree. It looked gorgeous. Well, those people get home, they call and they're like, Oh my God, you would not believe you gotta look outside. Look at our palm tree. My mom and dad are like, What? What happened? Did you guys use special fertilizer? Whatever. And they're like, no, we just left for the day. It was the craziest thing. Then my mom and dad are just laughing their asses off because they had pulled this prank on them. Oh, anyway, I thought that was funny. The neighbors thought that was funny. And then the neighbors ended up getting them back by calling them, and I think doing one of the pranks you used to do, which is saying they were from a radio station, and my mom and dad just won something.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Judy, one other quick story. Mom and Crystal. Crystal's up visiting mom and dad up in North Dakota. And this is when she's little, probably, I don't know, seven or eight or whatever age she's at, or driving around, and mom and dad go through the McDonald's drive-thru. They're gonna get burgers, and they get Crystal a burger. And again, Crystal's seven or eight. They order the food. Mom, just again being the way she is, cuts Crystal's burger in half. And she's gonna get half to Crystal and she's gonna eat the other half, thinking that Crystal can't eat the whole burger. They're driving down the road and whatever, Crystal's eating her burger. Mom's sitting in the front seat, you know, she'd eating all her food. And all of a sudden, from the back seat in a tiny voice, Oma. Mom's like, What? Can I have my other half of my burger? No, no, there is no other half.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

She ate it. Didn't one of your kids always, whatever they would see, they'd be visiting Oma and Opa and they would like they'd see a cop and they would like dive and hide.

SPEAKER_01 18:51

That was Katarina. They'd be driving down the street, Judy. Police car would be coming the other way, and all of a sudden Katarina would hide in the back seat because she thought she was either not in the car seat or doing something illegal, or maybe it was mom saying, hide because she wasn't in the car seat. Mom and dad, you know, they didn't. Judy, when we grew up, did you ever wear a seatbelt? Ever? Well, no. They cut them out.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

She cut the seatbelts out of all the cars.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

We talked about that. Yeah. I think we went on a trip to New York City one time where we drove the charger and we were actually sleeping. One of us was sleeping up in the back window. How dangerous and illegal is that?

SPEAKER_00 19:22

It was terrible. But you know, I guess look at us. Here we are. No head injuries. Everything's all good. But I think I got a lot of my sense of humor and practical jokes. I know I used to prank people when I worked for a big company. I would go into the one of the top dog's offices and I would be prank calling people. I thought it would be fun just to dial their number, watch them. Because this is I could see, you know, people leaving their cubicles. They'd leave their cubicle, so I'd dial their number, and then they'd run back to their cubicle to go get it. Then I'd hang up. And then they would leave again. And I would, eh? This entertained me for hours. So anyway, I digress.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

I gotta tell you one other thing, because again, the practical jokes, and mom did the whole cocaine tray thing, and we talked about that on one of our podcasts. I did something similar. I was working at a broadcast school here in Colorado. I had an office, I was the director of education, and the guy in the office next to me was the placement director. He was always kind of high strung a little bit and you know, uptight about the job. And one day I had white powder donuts that we had gotten, and I'm eating them in my office, and there's a couple people in there hanging out with me. So what I did was I took the white powder donut and I rubbed it all over my face. Like all over my face. So I have like white powder literally like all over my face. And I remember I snuck over to his office and I peek in through his door and he looks up at me and I got white powder all over my face. And I said, Hey, Mark. And he's yeah, I go, We're doing cocaine in the office if you want to come join us. He almost fell out of his chair, scarface, hey, we're doing coke in the office. Come on in.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

It's so funny. That came from mom. I have to say, I had a coworker that was going to go to Mount Rushmore, go on a family vacation, take her kids to Mount Rushmore. I said, when you go to Mount Rushmore, it's really cool. If you go, I said they have a secret elevator where you can go, you can go up to Teddy Roosevelt's eye. I said, and it's crazy because you become the twinkle in Teddy Roosevelt's eye. I said, because there's other people up there. I said, you're out looking at all these people looking at you. It's just insane. So you have to make sure that you do the Teddy Roosevelt thing. Wow. They go there. She walks up to the security people and she's like, hey, where is the elevator? They're like, well, we want to go on the elevator to go to Teddy Roosevelt's eye. Well, I have to say, Donnie, she's still pissed about this. Her kids were all horrified, shaking their head that mom one fell for the joke, but two, that they actually thought it was there and I humiliated the mom. Wait, you gotta hear this. So then somebody told me the other day that there really is behind Lincoln a secret room. Did you know that?

SPEAKER_01 21:58

No.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

Yeah, there is.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

Are you pulling my leg?

SPEAKER_00 22:00

No, I am not. I am not pulling your leg. I'm gonna Google. I'm Googling it. Google it, Google away. Yeah, it's that's a thing. And I'm like, well, how random is that? And you can go up there.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

That's crazy. I'm gonna conclude my mom kind of stories with one last story. She can't do this anymore because of caller ID, and nowadays you know who's calling and all that kind of stuff. You kind of alluded to it earlier with the prank calls. She used to call me before the caller ID days, and I'd answer the phone, hello, and it would be whose mom calls them and is heavy breather on the phone? And I'm freaking out, going, Oh my God, somebody's stalking me. Again, mom jumping out of the closet. This is mom calling me as an adult, heavy breathing under the phone. And then just about when I'm ready to lose it or to hang up, she goes, Donnie. And again, scary raspy boys, Donnie, Donnie, this is your mother. And I was like, what the? And so again, Judy, thank God there's caller ID now because when the phone rings, it says, Oma. She's not getting me anymore.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

She's a trickster. So please follow us on Instagram, on TikTok, because that's new for us, and Facebook. Send us any photos. Feel free to like and subscribe to anything that we have, and obviously subscribe to the podcast if you haven't done that. And feel free to email us at hello at stories from the middle of nowhere.com.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

Love the feedback, love the Facebook comments, love emails, pictures. And again, if we don't end up using them in a future episode, they can end up on a photo dump on our website or social media. Keep those coming.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

We don't have a phone number because we don't want the crank calls. Excellent point. Mom would probably dial in and call in a Donna, are you guys talking about me?

unknown 23:41

Yeah, yeah, we are.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Well, I'm looking forward to our next few episodes. I know we're talking about a lot of different things. We're talking about kind of the freezing cold in North Dakota, one of the topics. We have a whole bunch of other things that are coming up. We got a few more episodes to go.