S2 E9 - Fire & Ice

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The winters in North Dakota incredibly cold growing up. We've talked about it on some of our podcasts about how cold it was growing up in North Dakota. I think we went through a stretch at one point where it was thirty days in a row, we did not get above zero. And now it's kind of weird when you look back at North Dakota from where we're at now, you in Florida, me and Colorado, the winters don't seem as cold anymore. What happened?

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Some will say it's some kind of warming, but what I will say about those cold winters, I think it was when I was living in Bismarck, it was like 40 days it did not get above zero. Because I remember I didn't attend class once in that 40-day stretch because it was just too damn cold to go to class.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

I remember when it got above zero one time. That was later, but we had a stretch, I think, back in the 70s where it was like 30 days where it didn't get above zero. And then one day it got up to 28 degrees. And guess what? We were outside playing basketball in the driveway in our shorts and t-shirts. And now if you go outside 28 degrees, you're freezing your ass off.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Well, I think I remember laying out in the sun and what was 40 degrees because it's like a 70 degree temperature swing. So of course, you would think it's up much warmer. But what a experience as a kid. And I know we talked a lot about walking to school and stuff like that, but we had those Air Force parkas that zipped up with the those green parkas with the fur around there where you couldn't even really see our face, mittens lying in the snow because you couldn't see much that's going on. You'd lose your stuff. I remember having to knock on the neighbor's door with my foot because I lost my mittens to get them to come open the door to our house because my hands were so frozen.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

I thought you were gonna say you lost your hand. I was gonna say, wait a minute, I'm looking at them right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

No, but that would have been some fans at the Chiefs game a few years ago for they got frostbite so bad that they actually lost their limbs.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Well, the parka thing is a reality too. Just like on the TV shows when you see people on the North Pole walking around at Parkas, that was us in North Dakota back in the day. And then we also had the snowmobile suits that we wore, obviously snowmobiling, but when we were just walking the dog or walking around the neighborhood, we put those things on and we could walk around in 30 below weather and not get cold on that. You might have a little bit on your face, but other than that, you were bundled up pretty good and we were prepped for the winners. Doesn't mean we liked them. At least we could survive them.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

And the other thing that was interesting, and I know we talked about playing dodgeball before and a frozen ball that was like a weapon, but to be honest with you, the whole playground was super, super dangerous. I mean, when you think about it, it was ice. I remember being on the top of this slide that was frozen over, and from the very top of the slide, I slipped off, fell off the top of the slide, boom, into like thank goodness it was a snowbank down below.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

That was dangerous. The whole playground, the walk to school, the walk home. That's actually where I messed up my tooth walking home from Perkett one day and hit a patch of ice and went base forward and bumped my tooth and knocked it loose. Then I had to go to the dentist in town. I'm not going to mention his name because that dentist sucked. Went to that dentist and he did a root canal, and then that tooth ended up dying. So I had like this discolored tooth. I don't know if you remember that or not. I remember. Well, it was ugly. I had it for years before it ever got fixed. And then when it got fixed, the same dentist who was a Yahoo, that dentist, instead of like basically doing the two front teeth, he did just the one tooth. So they didn't really match. And people always wonder why, hmm, why didn't Donnie date? Well, that's why. I look like a moral.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

Yeah, I'm like, okay, you were in grade school, weirdo, but This was through high school.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

I went through all of high school with the darkened tooth. Grade school, yeah, it wasn't dating. Remember, I thought I got somebody pregnant in sixth grade because I kissed them. She didn't care about the tooth.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Do you remember like even the monkey bars and all of that kind of stuff? Frozen. How are you supposed to play on that stuff with your mittens and doing whatever? And then like the tether ball. The tether ball is like one of those weighted medicine balls and spin that around. It's like was unbelievable that you still had to go outside and play on the frozen toys. Donnie, do you remember having two sets of keys as we got older for our cars in North Dakota?

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Barely.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Well, the reason we had the two set yet. The reason we had the two sets of keys was like if you went to the mall or out to a restaurant or the bar, you would leave your car running with the keys in the inside. They didn't have that automatic shut-off stuff, but you'd be your car would be running for three, four hours while you were out to dinner or drinks or whatever. That's what I need, because didn't want to be, you know, having a dead battery.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

You had two sets of keys. I had one set of keys. I just left the car running. My only set was in the car and I left it unlocked. So if somebody wanted to steal the car, they could do it. Now we maybe that was your goal. Well, yeah, but there was a couple of cars that I wished would have gotten taken. But that was the deal back in the day. And it was there was actually it's called puffing, where you leave your car running, and it's illegal now in most states to do that. Except for now, you got the keyless entry and you can keep your car running without the key in it. But yeah, maybe you had two sets of keys. I had one set of keys. I do remember though, the one thing we've talked about it a little bit is the plug on the front of the car, which people always thought, especially if you went to a different state, they thought, wow, you have an electric car. And this is like the 80s and 90s. As like, no, no, I don't have an electric car. This is we had to plug our cars in.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

We did. Otherwise, you had no chance of getting that car started. When you were talking about puffing, well, one that was it's kind of a funny word for it now when you think about it. But my neighbor, when I was older and living in Denver, and it was it would get cold in Denver too, but she was from Iowa, used to the cold, but she had her car in the garage and she used your approach, and it got stolen. You're very lucky that that never happened to you, but I remember that her car got stolen right out of the garage.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Judy, I remember one time dad and I are driving and it's well below zero, and we're driving down 2nd Avenue right there by Arrowhead Shopping Center, and all of a sudden a loud explosion, like a really loud bang. And dad, being a cop, immediately goes to, hmm, that sounded like a gunshot. And I was like, What? Is somebody shooting at us? This is my not North Dakota. This kind of stuff doesn't happen in my not. Then I thought, well, maybe I had a tire blow up. And I was like, what's going on? So we pull over, and dad and I are inspecting the car. He's looking for bullet holes. I'm looking, Judy, I'm looking at I'm looking at the tires, and all of a sudden I look in the back seat. In the back seat on the floorboard, shredded was a can of Coke that had exploded and sounded like a bomb going off in the back of the car. Or a gunshot at least. And again, you know, we go to dark places right away. Dad thinking it's a gunshot. I'm thinking of we lost a wheel, you know, a tire came off, we had a blowout. That just shows you how cold, because you don't have to leave a can of coke in the razor a long time before it explodes. This is in a car and it exploded. Crazy. Again, cold winters in North Dakota.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

It was insanely cold. And one thing, especially in North Dakota, is they had something called snurt. I don't know. Do you remember snurt?

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Snow and dirt combined.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

A snurt alert of all things. It's blowing snow and dirt together, and it was like ugly, dirty snurt. Well, the other thing, I know it's weird, but it would the a lot of places like in Colorado, it would snow, and then the next day it's 50 degrees and it's nice. In North Dakota, that wasn't the case. When the snow came, the snow usually stayed, at least when we were growing up, it would stay for months. And on the highways and even the roadways, local roadways, they would have ice that thick on the road with ruts in it, and that's what you drove on. But even on the bottom layer of the rut where you thought there was no, it was a layer of ice all the time. You had no fear when you're like 16, 17 years old. You're driving 70, 80 miles an hour, zooming down the road, not even understanding the magnitude of the risk that you were taking.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Well, those piles of snow, you're exactly right. Because of the traffic and driving on them and the exhaust from cars by springtime and they were still there, they were black. So it was basically this black ridge that was solid ice that would line each side of the road. Yeah, you're right, it was solid ice. So if you walked on that or took your car over and drove on that, you could slip. But I remember just driving around a mine out in the middle of the winter, you know, either pulling the handbrake or trying to pull a cookie or something in the next thing, you know, you're spinning a 360, you're bouncing off a curb, everybody's laughing. Now when you do that, it's not fun anymore because you can wreck your car pretty easy if you bounce off a curb or do something like that. I don't know, cars I think back in the day were made a little bit better where we could uh bounce them off curbs or do all that kind of stuff. But Judy, one other thing I remember is the car wash. Remember the indoor car wash? We'd go wash our car, and you had to be really careful that you dried around the door and the inside of the door because literally on the drive home in 10 minutes, your door would freeze shut. Yep. You couldn't get it open. And sometimes you'd be like in your car, trapped.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Yep. You had to get a hairdryer or something to get your car door open. By the way, I actually really like those car washes where the doors came down. It was very nice. It was a self-serve wash. It was just, it was unbelievable. I had a friend, Terry. I remember she had, and I you talking about your emergency break and ripping that up and always doing all the crazy stuff that you did, but she had a brand new transamp. She was at the bottom of a hill. And it was like I think it was the first day she had the car. And she obviously couldn't get up the hill with her transam because it was rear-wheel drive. Well, this car is sliding down the hill, and she's in there and wham! It totaled her car on the very first day she had it. She got just totally cranked.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

Judy, one other thing I remember is going to Mine Hot High football games at the stadium back in the day, and again, the weather was really cold. And I've told people this about this beverage that they served, and everybody's like, What? Or thinks that it's really weird. Do you remember you go to that concession stand and the really cold nights, they would serve hot Dr. Pepper? And it was in a styrofoam cup, and the hot Dr. Pepper was just like hot coffee, but it was Dr. Pepper, and it would warm you up on a cold night in Minut, North Dakota. And I'll be honest with you, I actually liked it. But when I tell people now about it, they're like, What? That's gotta taste gross and this and that. And it's like, nope, it was good. Do you remember that or no?

SPEAKER_01 9:54

No, do not remember that. Just hot chocolate.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

Of course, I wouldn't have had it anyway, probably. You know, it was more Mr. Pibb versus Dr. Pepper, but hey. So the other thing, too, we always drove with survival kits in the car, too. Do you remember the survival kit?

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Dude, I had one set of keys, no survival kit. I was living on the fringe.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

I don't even know why I asked that question. But you had to have like a little candle in your car and blanket and some snacks or whatever. I always had that because I did a lot of driving back and forth between Grand Forks and Minnut. And I always say that one year I drove home, it was like 50 some below, and it was 120 below with the wind chill. So those things weren't uncommon. And Grand Forks was actually colder than my nut.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

I remember playing Minot hype football. We had a game, it was sophomore year. We had a game in Devil's Lake, and it was probably in the teens. The wind chill factor was down around zero, and we're playing the first half of the game. And then you always look forward to halftime because you can go in the locker room and warm up. At Devil's Lake, we didn't get to go in the locker room. So the options were we all huddle in the end zone or we get on the team bus, which were basically just school buses. These weren't the Greyhounds, the nice buses that everybody rides now. We were on these like yellow buses and we would go sit on the bus at halftime, freezing our ass off. I remember coming back out for the second half, hoping, just hoping that I wouldn't get to play, and I would just be on the sideline wearing a jacket and staying warm because I couldn't feel my hands. And when somebody hits you, just like you see on TV in the cold weather, when somebody drills you and it's zero degrees out, or the windshield factor is zero, it's like a rock. It hurts. That's one of my memories from North Dakota is going to Devil's Lake, freezing my ass off.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

I remember our grade school too. It wasn't part of the grade school, but kind of that area over there. They had put in ice skating rink, and I had asked for, because this is when Dorothy Hamill was all famous for the skating. And I was bummed that I got Dorothy Hamill ice skates, because I, again, spoiled brat, that I wanted hockey skates and not Dorothy Hamill. Not that I played hockey, but it was so freaking cold to go ice skating that you would just not even want to go. But they had a small, really small, looked like a shed that you went in. I don't know. Did you ever go do that? I did. And uh did you have hockey skates?

SPEAKER_00 12:02

I had regular skates. I had used dad's skates. Remember, he had black skates, and then somebody, it might have been you or our other sister, definitely not our mom, but somebody had white skates. And I don't know. Never mind. That's what I thought. I had to use dad's black ones.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

It was so cold you couldn't even really skate, and everybody's huddled inside that shed. They're shaking like crack horse. It's so cold.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Well, you watch Charlie Brown, the Christmas special, and everybody's skating and the songs playing in the background. That wasn't us. That was not us in North Dakota. We were like falling down, going into the warming hut, wanting to go home, calling it a skating night early, because we were just freezing our butts off.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

It was miserable. There was nothing about it that was good. It was just you really physically hurt your so cold.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

Judy, when all that snow went away and spring rolled around in my knot, obviously we were excited because the weather was warming up. But it seemed like every year we were dealing with a flood or water or getting evacuated a few times, going to different schools. The big flood everybody talks about is the 69 flood. But we had a couple after that that were just as intense, were just as impacting. And again, we had to evacuate. We'll talk about that a little bit, but we had to evacuate, we had to go to different schools.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Which was not convenient at all because when you're going to your rival school and it was the enemy. But your whole life was really uplifted. I remember we would carry a lot of our stuff from downstairs to upstairs. We went on a trip, came home, everything was ruined. There were multiple times where there was water on our street, flooding, but there were some massive, massive floods. And there was one, and I don't know if it was the flood of 69 or not, but I was you and I were on the other side of the block. We were, I don't know if we were playing on like an army truck that was helping evacuate people from their homes. I don't know if I the story was that I fell off the truck or was I pushed off the truck. I don't know. Because I was concussed. I mean, you did throw stuff at my head, you know what I mean? So it wasn't inconceivable. So they have to do a rescue. They send and there's water on the street. Do you remember they said a boat to come get me? Do you remember all that?

SPEAKER_00 14:07

That was the 69 flood. So I was seven, you were like six. It was, I do remember the boat coming because there was no other access to get you. And then the boat where the water ended, they had a helicopter waiting. So it was like flight for life. And this was like this big event going on in my knot during the flood that there was this little girl that fell off a truck, fell off the truck. You got airlifted to was it Trinity or St. Joseph's?

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Yeah, it was. It was like Trinity Hospital, but there's military helicopters over there dropping the line.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

This was like rescue 911 back in the day before that was even a show. You turned out okay. Again, like you said, concussed, had something going on. But you know, back in the day, and even now, I mean, obviously, if you get a head injury, that's uh serious business. I know we're talking about the flood. I got to backtrack back to one winter in North Dakota where I had moved back and I'm working at K-I-Z-Z Radio in Minot. We had a massive blizzard, like 20 inches of snow. I'm thinking, hmm, I'm gonna get the day off. Can't get my car out of the driveway. Well, I get a call from my boss, you're gonna do your show today, and we're gonna have somebody come pick you up in a snowmobile. And I'm like, what? He goes, get dressed up. You're doing your show, two to seven. We'll pick you up at noon in a snowmobile. I had the snowmobile suit, I put it on, I get a backpack. And at the time I was dating a girl, I wanted to go to her house after the radio show. So I made sure that the snowmobile driver, who was one of the engineers at the radio station, I said, Hey, rather than drive me home, can you drive me to my girlfriend's house? If I'm gonna be stranded somewhere, I want to be stranded there and not at mom and dad's house. Well, mom being again somewhat cool. Remember the care packages where we got cigarettes, they'd come visit us, they'd buy us a bottle of wine. Donnie, I have vine for you. All that kind of stuff. Well, you know what mom packed in my backpack to bring over to my girlfriend's apartment? I can only imagine. Judy, a bottle of rum. So I just had to call her and say, Hey, do you got any coke at your house? I'm coming over on a snowmobile and I'm bringing rum. So not bringing food, not bringing supplies, not bringing winter survival gear. You ask about survival gear in the car. No, it didn't have that. So anyway, I just had to jump back real quick and talk about that. But again, we got those big snows like that. It always turned into chaos in the spring with the floods and being displaced.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Speaking of the flood, I thought one of the floods that was later, we had to evacuate, and they were projecting that the actual dikes were gonna break in town. And where's one naturally right across the street from us because the other side of the railroad tracks would always flood? We were under strict evacuation orders. And then they had the Corps of Engineers and the National Guard making sure people weren't at their house. Did the Schneiders evacuate?

SPEAKER_00 16:45

The Schneiders don't do anything they're supposed to do.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Everything that people hear about kind of the things that we've done, would you only evacuate the kids unattended to a hotel? What part of that's his good idea?

SPEAKER_00 16:57

What the this could be a recipe for disaster. It was Yeah, it was.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Sure enough, dad's peering through the window of the hotel going unexpected, people are smoking in the room, it's craziness going on. Yeah. Who leaves? They were gonna guard their house until the very last minute.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

I remember I got tired of staying at the hotel and I ended up staying with a buddy. You guys stayed at the holiday in. I think I got tired of staying with two girls on the holiday in. So I stayed with our buddy, but I didn't plan it well because I didn't really have a lot of clothes to bring over. I remember like waking up in the morning and not being comfortable there. They'd say, Hey, do you want to make your own cereal or do whatever? And I was kind of shy, so I didn't, and then I would go to school hungry, and I'd be wearing the same clothes from the day before, and then I wouldn't have a toothbrush. What? This was like a week of just like what the and again, probably another reason why nobody wanted to go out with me or I never dated was because I came to school all disheveled, my hair was all messed up, hadn't taken a shower, hadn't brushed my teeth. Well, day three of this made a trip to the holiday inn and made sure I got my toothbrush at least, but still kind of struggled with the clothes aspect of it and taking a shower and all that. So I remember that was just one of the worst weeks of my life was going to school every day, living with this guy. And real quick, Judy backtracking to Bel Air. I remember, you know, we got displaced to Bel Air when we were in grade school, so this must have been like the 72 flood. We're going to Bel Air. And we did that for a couple of weeks. But Judy, I took that as a sign that, hey, I don't have to really do anything because I'm in a different school. Nobody knows me here. And I remember the teacher calling on me and me just kind of shrugging and pretending like I wasn't even in the class, not doing my homework, and basically just taking all kinds of liberties with not really focusing on school like I should have been.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Gosh, we talked about the snow, we talked about the flood, the water. We haven't talked about the fire.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

Fire and ice. This is the fire portion of the podcast. And Judy, I'll be honest with you, I had a little infatuation with fire growing up. Not a good thing for Donnie to be involved or to be thinking about something little pyro animal that I was back in the day. But I remember like playing with matches in the basement one time when I was a kid, and I got caught. And dad took a match and lit it and basically touched it to my hand. This is what you do not play with. Well, did Donnie learn his lesson?

SPEAKER_01 19:09

You did not, because I remember you playing with matches in Germany too, getting in trouble and getting busted over there for play with matches.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Well, then later in high school, I remember going with a couple of buddies and we would try to go set fields on fire. Nowadays, if we did that, that would be a major thing. I remember one time the fire truck showed up because we had set like a grass fire, and we were just goofing around and not really again realizing what the ramifications of that were gonna be. Set a grass fire, and then all of a sudden a little bit later, here comes like fire truck, and I'm like, and we had to run away and then make sure that you don't get caught doing that.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Good that you outgrew that, and I'm gonna just say it was good, but didn't your ex-wife's house burn down?

SPEAKER_00 19:46

I have an alibi for that. I had nothing to do with that, but was watching nine news one day here in Denver, and Cassie and I are here where I'm living, and we turn on the news, there's a helicopter flying overhead showing video of this raging house fire, and it was my ex-wife's house. And my first thought was, you know, hey, hope everybody's okay. You don't want anybody to lose anything. My second thought, I swear to God, my second thought was, do I have an alibi? Because I could be considered a suspect. I could be a suspect in this thing.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Yeah, you know, it's just crazy. It is funny, and I remember seeing it on the news too, and I think I actually donated some money to her to help buy some things, even though she was your ex at the time. It just was kind of funny that we're talking about fire and you starting fires, and then your ex-wife's house happens to burn down.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Coincidence? Some people are gonna watch this and say, no, wasn't a coincidence. Donnie snuck over there and started the house on fire. No, absolutely didn't. We had a situation like that in mine out too at Taco John's. We had a big fire at Taco John's that started in the basement and closed uh Taco John's for a couple of weeks because of that fire. Ultimately was determined that it was a smoldering cigarette that had started some towels or some paper on fire. Again, here comes the fire department. Donnie's there, doesn't look good for me. I got cigarettes hanging out of my shirt. I will tell you right now, I was not the only kid that worked at Taco John's that smoked. We had a couple of other smokers there. Were you there the night that the fire happened?

SPEAKER_01 21:12

I was off, so I actually have an alibi for that night.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Wow, I don't.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

This is, of course, I was older and this isn't me setting a fire, but I have to tell you, my RV, people always laugh because I've had crazy things that happen with the RV running into the fence, the said deer, all kinds of weird stuff happened. Well, I am in Pueblo, Colorado. It is super windy, and I'm camping with like four or five girls, and I'm inside, and they've been out there, and it's like uh almost to the point where you can't have any kind of fire, but they've been working on trying to get a fire lit for an hour. This fire's raging, and it's like the flames are snapping up against the side of the RV. What the hell? I mean, look around. So I go out with water and I'm throwing water on the fire. Well, they're all pissed at me because I put the fire out that they just worked on for hours. And I'm like, hello, those flames are whipping right where the gas is on the RV. What are you doing? Anyway, I digress, but that was just kind of one fire, non-fire thing that happened. Totally not related to that, but something else kind of interesting that happened when I was, I had a job. I'm not gonna say what job I had, but I had a job where I was responsible for about 30 people and I was very young. And I'm like, hmm, why would you have Judy responsible for any people? Again, I'm in my young 20s and the security people come up to me and they're like, Judy, you need to evacuate your people. And I'm like, why? What's going on? The lady's got like tears in her eyes, and she's like, You just need to get them out calmly and quietly. What is going on? You gotta tell me. She's like, There's bombs in the building. What? I look at the people. I'm like, get out, get out, get out. There's bombs in the building. Well, so much were the evacuating people carefully and calmly. That all went out the window. And there were for real bombs in the building.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Wow. For real? People are crawling over each other.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Yeah, it was just nuts. And I'm like, I'm like, I'm not gonna do anything unless you tell me what is wrong.

SPEAKER_00 23:07

Yeah, one more fire story. We're living in Orlando and we're shooting off fireworks. And you think Florida's wet, and Orlando's wet, it's not that big of a deal. Well, we're shooting off bottle rockets. One of the bottle rockets goes off, lands in this big bush. Well, the second it hits the bush, spontaneous combustion, the whole bush explodes, and this raging fire in the middle of Orlando, 4th of July in the summer, and I'm like, oh my gosh, somebody ran and got a fire extinguisher and then immediately put out the fire. That was just kind of a little thing again with fireworks. And I told that previous fireworks story, the firecracker story from Mineot High, where I put him in the bathroom and set off the big fireworks explosion at Minot High.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

Well, and that friend of yours, that roommate I'm gonna say, that they were setting them off inside their house, okay, freak isoids. I'm just saying, who does that? And then who invites them to come live with you? Weird. Hey, I just want to remind folks to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Reach out to us if you guys have some funny flood stories or snow, ice, we'll play not too many fires burning down the house, stories like that. You can email those to us at hello at stories from the middle of nowhere.com. I also want to say this is episode 10. We're getting ready to wrap up the season with episodes eleven and twelve. I know we have a fast forward coming up, and some stranger things of our own that have happened.