School of Strange

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Went up to Minot a few years ago for a high school reunion. It's kind of fun going back to Minot, Minot, North Dakota. One of the big things they do at reunions, Judy, is they kind of take you on tours. So they drive you around. Let's go look at Central Campus. Let's go look at Magic City campus. They'll even take you to the zoo and just different parts of Minot. There's a group of us that decide to do our own private tour. And this is at night. So we pop into somebody's car and we start driving around and checking out different things. Well, one of the things we want to do is check out Perkett, where you and I went to elementary school. On a Friday night, nine or ten o'clock, let's go down to Perkett. I got out of the car, went up to one of the entrances, and the door was there, and obviously it's closed, but they have a little gap between the door. And Judy, I stuck my nose in there. It smelled exactly, exactly the same as it did when we were going to school there. The smell brought back all kinds of memories. And it's kind of weird how a smell or a song can kind of bring you back in time and bring you right back to where you were. And Judy, that night on a Friday night a couple of years ago, that smell brought me right back to when I was an 11-year-old going to Perkin.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

You know what's funny? I've never been back for one reunion. I am going this year for the first time in 45 years, but I I've never been back.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

That's kind of weird. That's uh a little bit weird. Some people do that. I've been to some reunions, and you know, we talk about people like you where, you know, we're like, what happened to that person? And have just never seen them.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

You know what else is kind of funny? I agree with you. Smell sometimes brings you back to a place. Songs exactly like what you said. What's interesting about Perkett is that school has been completely underwater multiple times from various different floods or whatever that we had growing up.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Shocking that that school has not been rebuilt just based on the floods. And again, to your point, being underwater. But one other quick story about Perkett is that when I was up at the reunion, I also went and visited a classmate's grave. One of our classmates had passed away. While I was there looking at the grave, I turned around and looked, and the headstone just on the other side of her grave was Florence Perkett's grave. Got a picture of Florence Perkett's grave that was next to one of our classmates.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Oh, that's really bizarre. That's weird, you know, kind of weird. And here we are talking about Perkett Elementary. But you know what I remember about school in North Dakota? I have to say, it was so cold. And, you know, this podcast we happens to take place in North Dakota, and there was a lot of things that were interesting about North Dakota, mostly the things that you couldn't do in North Dakota because of, you know, legalities and whatever. But it was cold as crap in North Dakota. The schools there never closed. It's not like today, uh, where school, you know, hey, there's a threat of snow, school's shutting down, ooh, boom, it's gonna be a little cold, let's shut her down. It's not like that. I mean, it was really cold all the time in the wintertime. And that school never ever closed. I don't remember one snow day.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

I don't either. I think it wasn't until we got to high school later, maybe that they started kind of doing that a little bit. But when we were in grade school, and again, you and I walked to school every day, so it wasn't like where we got dropped off. I think every once in a while we have might have a dune buggy story with our dad later and Perkett. But for the most part, you and I walked to school, and that was including in the winter when it was super cold out. And you could have a temperature below zero, you could have wind chill factors well below zero, and you and I are walking to school, never canceled. Nowadays, again, you mentioned you get an inch of snow or the temperature gets down to 10 below, and oh, we can't go to school. Well, we went to school every single day. And not only did we go to school, and we'll get into more of the recess kind of things in a minute, but they never canceled recess. We had to go out and play. So you had the morning recess, you had the afternoon recess, and they actually sent us out in those no matter what the weather was.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Totally. And if you lost like your mittens or your hat or whatever, it didn't matter. Get your ass outside and play. And they, I think they just wanted their break from the kids, but you're right. We do have some more of those stories in a second. But school never canceled. And one other thing, and I just thought of it as you were talking, I don't believe we were allowed, and you know, I guess you could, but we weren't allowed to ride our bikes to school either. We had to walk, couldn't ride our bikes, and I think it was because the fear of getting the bikes stolen, or maybe we weren't competent enough to lock them up. In the wintertime, it was too icy, but I don't remember ever getting to ride my bike to school, which of course would have made it even colder in the wintertime.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

Well, I think that's all of the above. And you're right, in the winter, we absolutely wouldn't, you know, five inches of snow, you're not riding your bike through that. But in the fall and in the spring, it seems like we certainly could have done, you know, the bike ride to school. But again, for various reasons, we weren't allowed to. I don't know if that was an internal mom and dad thing or if that was a school thing. And again, I think it was just uh again, our parents thinking that we weren't competent enough to lock up our bikes and make sure that you know we rode the bike home and got it home safely.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Yeah, because we, you know, their fear was dawning no matter what you were gonna do. Your bike was gonna get stolen. And I know that did end up happening at some point, or if not multiple points in your life. But that I think was the reason we weren't allowed. The school did have bike wrecks.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

So one thing I wanted to talk about, Judy, was my first day of school. And again, our dad's a cop, mom's a German immigrant, not really maybe knowing the ways of how things are in the U.S. and what things look like, and we'll get into some more of that coming up in a little bit in this podcast. However, the first day of school, mom dresses me up like a little man, like I'm wearing a three-piece suit. I've got a suit, I've got a tie, I've got a vest, I've got nice slacks on, I've got shoes on. I'm dressed, Judy, I look like JFK Jr. First day of school. I'm dressed up like I'm going to Harvard and we're going to Perkett Elementary. Well, everybody else wearing t-shirts, you know, maybe a few people dressed up a little bit, thinking that, you know, okay, you know, we've got a button-down shirt on or, you know, nice pair of pants or whatever, tennis shoes and that type of thing. Not Donnie. I'm showing up first day of school like I'm going to business school. And that that didn't play well in school. In Minot, North Dakota at Perkett Elementary. I got the first day of school picked on. And what happened later in the day is I'm getting ready to go home. Somebody actually took a piece of gum that they had in their mouth and they put it on my suit. Like right on my suit. Just put a piece of gum right there. And Judy, what did I do? Well, I started crying. I'm a first grader. I left it there and I run all the way home. You know, our mom's waiting for us, and I get all the way home, and my mom's like, What's going on? Why are you crying? Daddy, why are you crying? I'm like, I got somebody pullied me. I got I got gum. I got gum on my suit. And mom leans over and goes, boop, and just flicks it right off. And I kind of thought, hmm, I guess I could have, I guess I could have flipped it right up as well. Maybe I was already being a little drama queen in first grade, leaving the gum on just so I could get home and show it to mom. That was my indoctrination into public schools in Minot, North Dakota.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

I have to ask, you know, and I know you blame our mom as the one who dressed you up like the little man, but I also remember you wearing a little man outfit at Christmas one year. So are you gonna say that was her fault too? Or was that you?

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Well, that was all her. You think I went around and picked out and had a closet and said, Oh, let me wear this suit. Or let me wear that suit. I think that's all that was in my closet.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

It was I think you had a fedora uh when when you went to school too. I think you had a little hat on. But didn't maybe it was that time or another time, but didn't our mom like slap that kid? Like wait and slap him, or was that another kid?

SPEAKER_00 7:48

That was one of our neighbor kids that got slapped for well, we'll get into that in the future podcasts. Again, things happen and our mom gets involved, and uh she didn't slap this kid. In fact, I don't even know if that kid was ever confronted, but lesson learned, day two of school, I I wore regular clothes.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

I think there was something else too with that kid that I don't know if our folks called that kid's parents. Something happened because the mom of that kid that put the gum on you said, if you wouldn't dress your kid like a little man and made some comments, so there was some confrontation with the parent. So I'm not quite sure. Listen, nobody's calling you little man now, but it was little man then.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

One other quick story about again getting bullied a perk it, there was another time where I had those big snow boots, and they were probably like about, you know, I don't know, 12 inches high, and you put them on. I think, you know, you actually just, you know, take your shoes off and you put these big snow boots on. Well, on the way home from school, I got bullied, I got picked on, and somebody took my snow boots and packed them full of snow. Packed them all the way full of snow. So what did I do? Yeah, I ran home crying, carrying the snow boots. Well, I left the snow boots in the garage. I didn't get did Donnie empty the snow out? No, Donnie left the snow in. Well, what this meant was later I went out to check on, you know, the snow boots, or maybe it was the next morning to put on the snow boots. Well, now all the snow had melted and they were completely full of water. I had a foot of water in my snow boots because somebody had packed them full of snow, bullying me, and I didn't have the foresight to empty it out. So I just kind of left it that way. And then the next day, you know, obviously trying to get to school, I didn't have snow boots because mine were sitting in the garage all full of water.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Good thing those those galoshes could hold water, right? Because otherwise we would add ice all over, you know.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Oh, yeah. They were watertight. They were actually really good boots. In fact, uh, I wouldn't mind having a pair of those boots today because nothing got out of those.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Our our Perkin Elementary had this courtyard, and this is kind of one of those recesses. But we would play games. So you'd get picked for games or whatever. Pom-pom, I think, was a game. I don't really quite remember what that game was. Except I think it involved charging at each other or whatever. I I don't know, but it was a courtyard, so it was a little contained area. And in one of these frozen winters, right, where we had to go outside and play, we had to play dodgeball, right? And I don't mean to say we had to play dodgeball. And I know in some states it's called suicide ball. Well, it could have been called that in North Dakota too, because you're like whipping this like gold ball, which is now frozen, right? So it's like a weapon, and you're like whipping that at people and like, oh, you know, I mean, why is Susie bleeding over there? You know, it's because we're playing frozen dodgeball in North Dakota. It was just crazy, again, that we had to go outside and, you know, again, dodgeball was a little dangerous at that time.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Hey, if you were a nice dodgeball player, you were throwing at people's legs, their feet, a lower half of their body. But some of the kids, again, we'll go back to the kind of the bullying aspect of it. Some of the kids in our grade school were not necessarily super nice and maybe even a little bit bigger. And when they got a hold of that dodgeball and they saw you on the other side of that courtyard and are, you know, eyeballing you and getting ready to drill you, you better be nimble, you better be ready to dive, you better be ready to jump because they're gonna go after you and throw that thing. And you're absolutely right in the middle of the winter, that thing hurt, that thing could could maim you. And again, you know, how'd you get your black eye, Johnny? It's like, well, dodgeball at recess. Yeah. But Judy, sticking with recess and again getting back to the cold weather of North Dakota, and again, we went to school, they never canceled school. 20, 30 below, windshield factor. We're walking to school. I think I can count on one hand how many days our dad actually drove us to school. And that might have actually been during nice weather. Yeah. Because we drove the dune buggy. He drove us in a dune buggy. But anyway, back to the recess. They would send us out. They'd never cancel recess. So they would send us out. There'd be a big snowstorm. We'd have like 15, 16 inches of snow. And the next day we'd be in school. And then the teachers at 1015 would be like, ah, class, recess, everybody get outside. And even if you didn't want to go outside, they forced you to go outside. So you had to put on, like you said, hopefully you found your mittens or you brought your mittens to school and your hat, your stocking hat, and your coat. And you go outside and you play and you have fun and and this, but you're freezing. And now all of a sudden, okay, we're outside. We're playing. Let's it's 15 inches of snow. What can you do? Let's make snowmen. Let's play in the snow. Let's build snow forts. Well, the problem with that is when recess was over, we came inside, and the teacher got pissed off because our pants were completely just full of snow in the creases and and half wet and just caked. Remember the old days of, you know, when you're out rolling around in the snow and your pants are just full of snow and the creases and and all this, and the teachers got pissed off, and they don't want to send you home in wet clothes or clothes full of snow. Now they're at fault because they're the ones that made us go outside and play in this, which is what we did. We played. Well, there's a solution to this. Judy, I've told this story to a few people, and nobody ever believes it. But what they did at our grade school when you came in and your pants were soaking wet and caked in snow, they made you wear a paper skirt. A paper skirt. And what they did was those big art rolls. They'd roll them in over.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Yeah, you knew you were in trouble when they were rolled it over.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

Yeah, they'd bring it over and it'd be like five, six different colors. Well, they didn't use all the colors, they just gave you the white one. Yep. So you just got the white roll, they'd unroll it, they'd make a paper skirt. I don't remember if they taped it on you or pinned it on you or whatever it was, but you know, stapled it on you. You're right. They stapled it on you, and then they took your pants and brought them over by the heaters. And, you know, hopefully by the end of the school day, those would be dry. But for the next couple of hours, you're walking around class, and it wasn't just me or you or, you know, a couple of us. There'd be like seven, eight of us, and it was usually the guys, seven, eight of us that are walking around in paper skirts, and very weird, very uncomfortable, and super weird if you had to go to the bathroom.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

I had a paper skirt too. Uh, you know, there was multiple times because it was not uncommon to get soaking wet outside and have all that snow stuck to you, which is actually a great little reminder. Hey, if any of you guys have any pictures or anything that you want to share with us, please send them to us at hello at stories from the middle on nowhere.com and follow us on Instagram and Facebook. We'll be happy to put some of those pictures up. They don't have to be about paper skirts. They don't have to be anything about North Dakota. But if you had kind of silly things that you did at recess or whatever, anything that's kind of a representation of that time, please feel free to send us those things.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

Well, I think the paper skirt thing too was uh exclusive to Perkett because I've talked to other people from Myanot that went to other grade schools and I have said, Hey, did you guys have to do this? And they're like, No. And and uh I was even telling somebody about it a a year ago, and they were like, No way, no way. And I go, Yeah, no, we had to wear paper skirts. And they're like, No, you didn't. I'm like, yeah, we did. And so then actually, I think you and I had a conversation subsequent to that where I said, Do you remember wearing paper skirts at Perkett? And you're like, absolutely. And I'm like, okay, not out of my mind. That actually did happen.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

Yeah, that's true. And I've talked to people who also grew up in other states where it was cold as, you know, not quite as cold as North Dakota, but they thought the same thing. Okay, wack-adoo, you know, with the whole paper skirt thing. But you knew you were in trouble when they started rolling out the big thing uh of the paper. You know, it's like you're wrapped up like like meat in a butcher shop.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Well, and what was really wacky, Judy, I don't know if you remember this, but the second recess we had in the afternoon where they sent us outside in the paper skirts.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Yeah. I'm like, I don't remember that. I'm like, you know. Uh well, I don't, yeah. Okay, then we came in naked.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

The skirts fell off outside, then we just came in, we had no pants on.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Yeah, no, it's not true. Liar.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

I know, I made that up.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Um, but one thing is we used to have this little uh announcement with the principal would come on the little PA speaker, and you would think that it had to do with the, you know, it's cold outside, it's recess or whatever. But he would come on and he'd have this announcement of cold, cold, cold. And you're thinking, you know, it's cold, it's gonna be about that. But that was actually a drill for we were under attack by nuclear weapons. And it must have been for the Cold War or something, maybe that's what it stood for. But like it's gonna help for us to, you know, roll up in the field position and hide our head under one of those stupid little desks, you know. So anyway, that was just another little strange thing. And that was at Perkett, but I know also in junior high, we used to watch all these horrible videos of all of that stuff, you know, it scared the bejesus out of you.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Well, I talked to or have talked to my kids about the bomb drills that we did in elementary school, and they can't believe it. Again, almost kind of an unbelievable thing that in the time that we grew up, late 60s, early 70s, you're right, Cold War still going on, and we actually had bomb drills where we would practice what we would do in case we were under attack. And North Dakota was uh kind of a unique state in that we had a lot of military stuff going on up in North Dakota, the missile silos, Minard Air Force Base, Grand Forks Air Force Base. I think I heard at one point in time that if mine not, or if not mine up, but if North Dakota had become its own country, that it would have been the third most powerful country in the world. That's how much uh stuff we had up there. So again, bomb drills, all that was real. And Judy, when you're 10, 11 years old and you're hiding under your desk because there could be a nuclear bomb, that's scary, weird, freaky stuff to be dealing with as a kid. And again, with my kids who are all grown now, but with my kids, if I would have ever had to have that kind of discussion with them, or you know, they had to go through that in grade school, I would have been freaked out. And they would have been freaked out. They would have been like, oh my gosh, what's going on, Dad?

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Yeah, yeah. And it was real. And even the high school, and I know we're talking about our our grade school, but our high school had a state-of-the-art bomb shelter for like a nuclear bomb. It had like a whole underground indoor track. It had all kinds of kind of strange stuff, but it was a very real thing. The movies, all of that stuff, haunting, and especially as a kid, it left an impression.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

The high school had a great bomb shelter. We were all gonna potentially maybe be safe in that. In grade school, it was just hide under your little flip-top desk. Nobody was gonna survive that.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Well, wait, wait, wait. I gotta tell you that bomb shelter uh we would have been safe there, but it stunk. It stunk like from the wrestling mats. It was the wrestlers were down there all the time, and it was totally stinky. All right, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Sweaty, dark, and dingy in the bomb shelter. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

But we had people from other countries come check out the schools because it was all state-of-the-art stuff.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Back in the day, it was totally state of the art. I do want to segue into show and tell.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

Okay. Well, there was we had this really mean secretary. I'm not gonna say her name, but um to protect her, because she was like mean. And I don't know what it was at the time, and if it was like this in everybody else's schools, but at our school, our secretary was also the disciplinarian. She would slap you, she would spank you, things you could not do to this day. She was hateful, mean, at least in our minds, and maybe because we were always in trouble, that we had that impression. And I mean, I was always in trouble. I was always in the office writing a hundred times, you know, I will not do this, I won't swear, you know, I won't do all these things. But she was a mean, nasty lady. I mean, she was so anyway, it's show and tell. We got a new dog, Snoopy, our little poodle, who's a grouchy little dog. But anyway, I bring him to school. I'm all excited. I think Snoopy almost ripped her toe off one time. But anyway, I bring Snoopy to school for show and tell. And on cue, I could not have paid. And everybody's like drooling over Snoopy, thinking Snoopy's the coolest thing, because not everybody had dogs then. But Snoopy on the way out, stop by the office. Totally peas on Mrs. What's her name? So I almost said her name. P's on her door, all over the door, and like he had been holding it all day long just to do that for me. So that was my little show and tell surprise for that mean old secretary.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

Snoopy knew that she was a mean old lady and just said, I'm gonna whiz right on her door.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Whiz a matic. Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

And you're right, Snoopy was kind of a mean dog. One of the things he did always was that if you stepped on his toy, he didn't like that. I would be walking through our house and accidentally step on one of his toys, and he would come flying out of the other room and attack my foot to the point where he would rip my sock off my foot and I had to dive onto bed. But Snoopy was a good dog. We had him for like 15 years, lived a long time, and peeing on the secretary's door at Perkett was kind of uh a little poetic justice for that mean lady.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

One more little story about that mean old lady, because I, you know, I was in trouble a lot. And surprising shocker, shocker, but I was in trouble all the time. And I remember one time I had to go home and get our mom sign off on something. And um, and this is where some of the nonsense for me that carried into later years began in high school or whatever. But I got in trouble and I needed my our mom's signature, and she didn't write any English. Um, and I'm like, and this will be the first time that anybody ever sees her signature. So I don't know if I'm like in fourth grade and I'm like forging her signature already on a note that I had to have signed off that, you know, that she acknowledged that I got in trouble for something and you know, had to stay after school.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

Wow. I had the same thing. We're we're going on a field trip. I had Forgot to take home the permission slip the day before to go on the field trip. Well, if you don't have that signed, guess what? You're staying at school, everybody's going on the field trip. I run home before school starts, and I'm basically have a blank piece of paper and I'm trying to fool our mom, which she was easily foolable on a lot of things, but certain things she would bust you about. And this was one of those things where I got, I just said to mom, hey, well, you sign this, and she's like, What's that for? And I go, Oh, it's so we can do something at school and you know, et cetera, et cetera. Well, that got back to dad, and dad actually came down to the school. And that's how weird this got, where he came down to the school and said, Would you have mom sign? And I was like, Well, just a little permit, you know, so that got got a little bit weird.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

And our mom was the mom that would never let anything slide, where you sometimes you hear or you watch a show on TV where you're like one parent doesn't tell the other parents something they kind of cover for you. Yeah, that never happened at our house. Never.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Well, a lot of parents do the good cop, bad cop thing in parenting. Not our parents. We had bad cop, bad cop.

unknown 23:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

And uh, you know, they both, you know, kind of just beat up on you, and you didn't get the flip side of that. So you're absolutely right.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

Right. Right. One detective, two detective.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Judy, we're gonna have a sports podcast at some point coming up where we talk about all kinds of sports. You and I involved in sports, playing in sports, but I gotta real quick tell you the sports thing starts at Perkett, Perkett Elementary, because in fifth and sixth grade, they introduce you to sports. So we're gonna play basketball. I'm gonna play basketball at Perkett, Perkett Panthers, and tried out for the basketball team. Made the starting five at Perkett, which woo-hoo, you know, that that's a big accomplishment in grade school. Not. But anyway, I'm on the starting five, going to my first game at Perkett. The first year we're playing, I think all our home games or all of our games were a Perkett. Or maybe it was uh fifth grade, all our all of our games were at Lincoln. Then at sixth grade, all of our games were a perket. Anyway, mom and dad are gonna come to one of my games. And again, our dad, being a cop, you know, obviously he's cool, he knows what's going on. He played basketball in high school. Our mom, no knowledge, no knowledge of American sports. Might have a little bit of knowledge about soccer, football, baseball, basketball, absolutely zero knowledge. And again, our mom, and you have to know our mom to kind of visualize this, but our mom, wearing a mink coat, made up, hair up into the beehive, diamond rings, all made up, shows up in my basketball game, walks into the gym, and basically everybody stops what they're doing to look and see and and wonder, what the heck is that? Who is this person rolling in? Is this the Queen of England? Is this, you know, is this like she did look like a movie star.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

She looked kind of like Sophia Loren, right? So she did kind of have that going for her. She was really, really nice looking.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

Well, to go to a basketball game, a grade school basketball game, a little bit overdone. Well, that's not the topper. The topper is, Judy, she starts cheering for the wrong team. So the other team scores a basket and my mom starts cheering. And my and I look over because I can hear her cheering for the other team. I'm like, wait a minute, they just scored. Why is why is my mom over there cheering? And my dad had to tell her, Donnie is on this team wearing the blue jerseys, and when they score, put a basket in. That's when you cheer. So the memory of when sports all kind of started back in grade school was me playing basketball at Perkett, fifth and sixth grade, mom and dad being supportive, being supportive, showing up at the games, but again, mom looking like Sophia Loren, all made up, full makeup, diamonds, mink coats, cheering for Bel Air.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Weren't we the Panthers?