Starsky & Ditch

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Sometimes I think we had our own versions of planes, trains, and automobiles, minus the train and the plane. But ours could be bikes, trikes, and cars and all kinds of nonsense that's happened with those.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

We've got so many car stories. We're going to talk about them today on our podcast, but we could actually maybe have a second podcast. So we'll see kind of where this goes. We've got a lot of stories that are kind of similar from us growing up with cars. We both went through a lot of cars. We both wrecked some cars. And we both did other things to cars. And we've got other car stories as well, not even our cars. So today I think we're going to have fun talking about some of these car stories because we got some crazy ones.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

I turned into a little bit of a hit and run specialist too as I've gotten older. But one thing that I'll say it's not just limited to us. Our folks had the same issues as only one of them was able to drive. And I'll say able, not capable. So I don't know how we want to phrase that. But there is some interesting stories about them as well. But to get us started, I was in Miami, Florida on a school trip. We get to Miami, we go to like Bob's rental car. And I don't even know. It's not really Bob's rental car, but it wasn't Avis. It wasn't Hertz. They didn't rent to the teacher who was the chaperone on the school trip, which I thought was weird. And I don't remember if she didn't have her driver's license. She didn't have a it couldn't have been a major credit card because I ended up being the one to say, oh, I'll put it in my name because I have my driver's license. I can get the car. Weirdly, they did not have a thing where you had to be 25 years old to get a car. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Now they do.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Yeah, there's no way. And you have to have like two forms of, you know, ID, all kinds of things, but not from Bob's in Miami, right? So Bob's is like, here you go to the 16-year-old and go ahead and take the car. So I rent the car in my name and I have it for a whole week. And, you know, I'm not an experienced driver, really. I mean, from North Dakota, you know, where we barely have stoplights in some places, to major turnpikes, freeways, all kinds of things, you know, rush hour traffic. I'm the one zooming around, missing exits, driving up embankments to get us to the places we need to be. That wasn't the weird part. And you're gonna think that the bad idea was me just renting the car. It wasn't. I have to tell you, it was crazy. So I don't know what was happening, but we were in a hurry at the end. I think I was in trouble. Our mom was like, hey, you know, you need to get your ass back home. I, you know, I'm like, I'm in Florida. So we're all scurrying everybody, having to hurry and hustle to get to the airport. We get there and I don't have time to go to Bob's, Bob's rental car and return the car. So I'm in a hurry and I just screech to a halt at the airline departure lane, and I run out of the car. Everybody else grabs their crap and they run out of the car. We run into the airline counter. We're like, hey, we're trying to catch our flight, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, I don't have time to return the car. Here's the car keys. The agent, the ticketing agent, is like, what? And I'm like, here's the car keys. The car's parked outside, it's in like the loading area for for the departures. And he's like, You can't leave your car. I said, I don't have time. You got to deal with it. So I drop the keys, I run, I get on the plane, and uh fly back home. And I don't even wonder what happens after that, right? I'm 16. So a couple weeks later, I'm sitting or laying on the couch, and her dad's like, Hey, Judy, there's a call for you from some car rental place in Miami. You know what that's about? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bob, it was Bob's.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Bob's on the phone.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Yeah, Bob's on the phone. It was totally like Bob's on the phone. And it was Bob. And he's like, hey, he goes, uh, where's the car? And I said, What do you mean where's the car? I returned the car. He goes, You didn't return the car. I said, I totally returned the car. I gave the keys to the guy at the airline counter, and I had the car sitting in the departure lane. And he's like, You did what? And I said, Yeah, I give the car back, not my problemo. Anyway, he checks, calls back, and he goes, We did locate the vehicle. It was in some other rental car's parking lot. The guy from the airline moved the car nicely, leaves the counter, must have thought, who's that freak show of a girl that was here?

SPEAKER_00 4:16

I thought you were going to tell me they found the car and it was involved in a major crime, and the car has now been impounded, you know, that kind of thing. So you had me kind of worried there for a second. But thank God they found the car because it it could have got stolen.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

It was like the Griswold mobile. It was a station wagon with the wood panel, whatever. Totally abandoned, you know, and I had a very small car. So again, none of it seemed out of the ordinary to me.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

I have a car abandoned story as well. We're gonna save that for the end of the podcast. However, I want to talk a little bit about the two cars that you had at the same time when you were just barely old en well, I shouldn't even say that, probably not even old enough to drive. I found it very interesting on how you were able to get your first car from a motorcycle. From you and I had twin motorcycles. We both had Honda XL 70s that we drove around. You took great care of yours, mint condition. I did not. I beat the crap out of mine. Not that you you didn't do jumps, maybe you just didn't tip yours over, but my bike tipped over numerous times to the point where the turn signals were falling off.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

It was well, I also wasn't baked when I was riding mine, so big difference. Sober motorcycle driver versus wake and bake motorcycle drivers.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

Yeah, it wasn't wake and bake, it was bake and bike. So I went out, I got baked, and I went out and uh, you know, did crazy stuff. But again, very cool that you were actually able to trade yours in on a car. Mine got sold for scrap metal.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

You know what's interesting is mine cost, and our folks bought these for us. I think they paid like $607 for each of them. I got $600 for it on a trade in years later.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

You got $600 of the $607. I got the other seven. They're like, okay, we'll credit Dottie seven bucks. Go get a burger.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

What was really interesting about trading that motorcycle in, I bought that car when I was 14.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

The other weird part of that is you eventually had two cars before anybody else even had a car.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

I did. And I have to tell you, first of all, it was weird in North Dakota that you could even get a car at 14. And I know our dad co-signed or whatever, but I was on that loan. So that was kind of weird. And I had to have a job to get that car. And my first job, which, you know, this isn't a podcast about my first job, but I will tell you that I almost didn't get the job at the local dairy queen because I was with one of my friends in their car and some lady cut us off pulling out of the high school, and I flipped her the bird. I am totally flipping her off. And anyway, it turned out that she was the owner of the dairy queen that I was applying for a job. And she still hired you? She did. So she said, but she brought it up. She goes, you know, I almost didn't hire you because you flipped me the bird. And I said, But I'm a hard worker, I'm really good. You know, just, you know, give me a chance. And then I worked there for like a week for a couple of reasons. One, I was a little overwhelmed because we had to make our own dilly bars. I don't know if people know, but at that time, we're in the back room making dilly bars and buster bars at the same time. And I only got paid like a buck fifty an hour because it was seasonal work. So that was also really strange. And I quit that to move on up over at Taco Johns. But anyway, those jobs afforded me the opportunity to buy two cars. And I thought I was a high roller at that time because all I did was work all the time. The Honda that I had very first day hit the telephone pole coming out of the driveway. And then sadly, the second car, I also ended up totaling that car too. So I had a lot of issues running into things.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

It's just weird that insurance companies even insure us, they probably look and see the Schneiders coming across the policy request and say, nope, nope, not gonna do it. Because Judy, I had two cars as well. And I had at one point a nice car, and then my second car, the car that I drove during the winter, was a 69 white Volkswagen bug Beetle. Just like Ted Bundys. I've got pictures of that 69 bug. In fact, we'll show one. Uh it looks exactly like the Bundy Mobile. But a couple of funny stories about that car is that it had no floorboard in it. So when I bought that car on the driver's side, there was no floor. You could see the street. So it was just like the Flintstones, where you're driving down the street. And hey, slow down. I had an option of either using the brake or sticking my foot through the floorboard. And you know, I use the brake. I, you know, I like my shoes and I didn't want to break my foot. But so anyway, dad, dad ended up taking care of that. Dad, obviously, really good building things and you know, improvising and stuff. So he built out of wood a floorboard in there and kind of took care of that issue.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

I have to ask, because you call it the Bundy Mobile. But what's really strange, and I think Ted Bundy was a thing at that around that time you had that car, so it was also weird. But you actually looked like I hate to say it, one of your high school pictures, you look like Jeffrey Dahmer. Even kind of the same kind of glasses. Oh, wow. Hey, listen. Well, listen, good thing you're wearing out delivering sandwiches. Who wants roast beef?

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Hey, that's a pork sandwich. I thought you were going down the path of that. Hey, you kind of, and I was getting ready to get complimented that you kind of looked like Ted Bundy because he was a good-looking guy. No, you pull out the Dahmer card. Wow, thank you. There is some truth to that thought process, and we'll throw up a picture of me when I had the tin of glasses. And yeah, it did have uh a little bit of a Dahmer look. Again, I was working at Taco John's selling burritos.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Not offering sandwiches to the neighbors.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

No, and if I had been, they probably wouldn't have been taking them. I don't think anybody was buying what I was selling. So the second part of that is two things is that car had no heat and it had no radio. And, you know, the radio thing, where the radio's supposed to be, it was just a hole. Well, driving in the winter in North Dakota, cold air is blowing through where the radio's supposed to be. No heat. I'm driving with Parka. One morning, it was 40 below. That was the actual temperature. That wasn't the windshield, that was the temperature in Minot, North Dakota. 40 below. The windshield might have been 70 below, but it's 40 below. I get in the car, I'm like, oh, got to scrape my windows. So I get out, I, you know, scrape the windows, I get in the car, and I notice for the first time ever, and the only time ever in my life, I have to scrape the inside of the windows. I have to, Judy, while I'm sitting in the car, scrape the inside of the windows, and I'll get, oh, okay, you know, now I can see. So again, first time that's ever happened. Well, now I start the car up. This car fires up in 40 below weather. Best starting car I've ever had. And then I'm driving down the road and I'm like, what is going on? And I realized the flat part of the tire that sits on the pavement and then the rest of the tires round froze that way. It was so cold, it didn't turn into a circle until about a mile or two down the road. So I'm driving down the road. It's like I'm driving over railroad tracks. I'm like, what is going on? I thought I had a flat tire, and then I pull over and realize that, oh yeah, my tires aren't circles. They're semicircles with a squared off part that literally took about a mile or two to get down the road, where all of a sudden this turned back into a circle. So that called.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

So the wheels in the bus weren't going around in roads?

SPEAKER_00 11:36

No, they weren't.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

There was no going round. Interesting that you had a Volkswagen bug, you know, German-made vehicle when our German mom never could get a driver's license. And we had driving lessons with her. I don't mean like when we were teenagers. When we were little kids, our dad took her out because he was Mr. Policeman. And if anybody could teach her how to drive, it would have been him. Lessons all ended very poorly. And in oftentimes, with many of us, you know, ending up in a field, a wheat field in North Dakota. And I think you might even have a photo of it, but it's a great photo.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

Judy, that could be a before and after picture because that was the picture before we got in the car. We all look happy and we're sitting there by the 60 dad's great car, the 69 charger. And then the after picture is us in the car crying. Crying because we were scared.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

We were scared we were gonna die. We were, and I think she wanted to kind of show off, but probably not a great idea to bring us along for the for the driving lesson anyway, because you got kids wailing in the background, ending up in a field. And I think they even left us in the field for a while and then took the car without us because there was so much commotion in the car when everybody was screaming and crying.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

One more 69 Charger story, Judy. I don't know if you remember this. You and I were little, about the same age, and dad's gonna do something downtown. I don't know if he has to go to the courthouse, go to an appointment, go pick something up. We're on the back seat of the charger. He drives downtown. This is my not Main Street or somewhere down there, and parks the car, runs in. You and I are sitting in the car. Nowadays you can't do that. You can't leave the kids in the car. Back then, no seat belts, kids in the car, totally acceptable, even when a cop does it. Well, dad's in the store, you and I are in the car, somebody bumps into us, and we're like, hmm, you know, and didn't think too much of it. But dad comes back out and we immediately tell him, we're like, Dad, somebody just ran into us. And dad's like, what? What? We're like, yeah, that guy right there backed into us. And dad's like, what? And all of a sudden, we're like on a high-speed chase downtown Mineot, North Dakota. It's like 69 Charger, and he's gunning it to follow this guy. I don't know what happened if he ended up pit stopping the guy. I don't I don't think that really happened, but I think he ended up catching up with the guy, and you know, pleasantries were exchanged, if you will, and everything was okay because I don't think there was any damage to the car, but we might have overembellished a little bit, you know, dad, we got run into dad gets in the car, you know, and uh starts chasing the guys. This is what we grew up with.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

This is how we learned how to drive. And seatbelts were not a priority because remember when they traded that car in and they got that blue Ford LTD that was, you know, you go from a really cool Dodge charger to this LTD, and the first thing that happened with that car, our mom cut the seatbelts out. You know, she cut them out.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Dad went from being cool to not cool when he went from the charger to the L T D became a dad.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Could have been one of those progressive commercials, you know. So just say it.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Yeah, exactly. Don't be your dad.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

You had a little bit of your own buffoonery, and it wasn't even with a car.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

We did talk about bacon bike. This wasn't a bacon bike episode. This is a 10-speed episode where I'm trying to get to baseball practice. I think I'm playing for the the midget baseball team or league in my I need to get a kick out of that. I don't think it was Pee-We. I think it was midget. Hey, back then that was a thing. I know. So I was playing, I was playing baseball, and we had to get up to the South Hill complex, and I had to ride my 10-speed up there because again, dad's at work, mom's not driving. So I have to, you know, ride the bike for 10 miles, or probably not 10, but you know, a few miles to get up to South Hill to get to baseball practice. Well, it's early in the morning, 7:30, 8 o'clock in the morning, 2nd Avenue, just down the street from Arrowhead shopping center. Chateau apartments are across the street. Second Avenue is a little bit of a busy street. I get on my bike, there's cars parked, and I have to, you know, kind of weave in and out of those parked cars and you know, not stay on the road. I'm not taking the sidewalk. It's gonna take forever doing that. I'm driving in the street. Well, I wasn't paying attention, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, in front of like cars and people, boom, I I hit the car in front of me on my bike. And I'm like, oh my God, I just rear-ended a car. And I was actually doing a pretty good clip. And I thought the embarrassment would be kind of the bad part of that. It really wasn't. When I tried to get back on the bike, I realized that it was not functioning anymore. It was no longer a rideable bicycle. It was it was bent from the front to the back, and and the force of hitting that car bent the bike. So I'm like, oh my God, what do I do? So I actually had to drag that bike home and didn't want to miss baseball practice. Had to get to midget baseball practice. So stop saying that. Might have to be able to do that. Hopefully the sensors don't blow this this podcast up. But anyway, I I borrowed dad's bike and then I drive that to practice. And then of course later I had to explain to dad why I'm driving his bike and my bike is hidden in the garage.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

It's interesting because that was a nice bike. And uh it was a Sakai. Uh we just had Sakai and we bought Sakai 2500 Grand Tour.

SPEAKER_00 16:51

Ooh, well, look at you. I mean, Mr. Fancy Pants Blue.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Well, what I will say about those and the cars and everything, so people just understand we weren't uh spoiled. We bought all those things on our own. All the cars, every single penny for the cars, other than the car insurance, which probably was the higher expense for us at some point. But we the bikes, the cars, the motorcycles they did buy for us in the snowmobiles, which by the way, didn't you have an episode on that too?

SPEAKER_00 17:21

Dad and I are driving on the snowmobile out on the Mouse River in the middle of the winter, obviously, the river's frozen, and we get into an accident. We're coming around a bend in the river, and we're with a couple of other snowmobilers, and the kind of the opposite way is the snowmobile at a high rate of speed, headed right for us. Well, what happened was we veer to the right, he veers to the left, and he ends up clipping us. Dad and I both get knocked off the snowmobile, we both get injured, and the ambulance has to come and pick us up. And the weird part of that story is mom's back at home, and mom always has premonitions about things, whether it's losing your glasses or getting a speeding ticket or don't get hurt or whatever it is. She heard the sirens and immediately went to the dark place of, oh my God, that's Donnie. That's Don and Donnie. And you know what? She was right.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

I was outside shooting hoops, and the ambulance went by you know, the ambulance wasn't going by all the time and in mine up, but it was going by that day, and sure enough, she came outside. I bet something happened to them. I'm like, get back in the house, nothing happened. Here comes our dad all by himself. You know what I mean? Rolling up on his snowmobile, and I'm like, oh, she starts crying.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

She starts wailing. Two left on the trip, one came home.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

I have to say, sometimes you didn't even damage your own car, your own bicycle, your own snowmobile. Sometimes you wrecked somebody else's stuff.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

Judy, I wrecked a couple of your cars, I wrecked Gobby's car, and not rectum, wreck 'em, but you know, had episodes. Hey, listen, you know. When our sister was out of town, I took the Camaro out. I took your Honda Civic out. I never took the T-bird out. You didn't have it long enough for me to take out. In fact, I barely remember you having that car before you wrecked that yourself. You're right. I wrecked other people's, not just my stuff, other people's cars. Later, I ended up damaging your cougar in Bismarck. And you never believed me on that story. And we'll save that for kind of the Donnie bad luck story at some point down the road and get into specifics about that. But I was working, this is the story that you were alluding to. I was working at Jerry Standard in Mina, just across the viaduct on the way to the state fairgrounds, and I'm working at Jerry's Standard. Why anybody would ever hire me to work at a car place or you know, I guess maybe I could pump gas, you know, and maybe I could check oil. No, no, can't do both those. Can just maybe pump gas. You know, if there would have been like the diesel versus regular gas thing, I probably would have wrecked a lot of motors back in the day. But what happened one day, Judy? This is a crazy story, is a guy comes in, he goes, fill her up. And I'm like, all right, you know, and I got my Jerry Standard shirt on, I'm thinking I'm cool. And he goes, check the oil. I'm like, we'll do. And then put up his hood, you know, and I'm pulling out the dipstick, and I'm like, yeah, okay, yeah, oil looks good. Put the dipstick back in. And I, you know, go to pull his hood down and it's not moving. It's it's like stuck. And, you know, rather than work the problem and figure out why it's stuck, or hey, does the hinge need, you know, a little bit of oil, or is there something that's preventing this hood from coming down? Rather than doing any of those logical things that somebody would do to say, hey, how can I solve this problem? I just went with all my might and and I'm gonna pull this hood down, whether it wants to come down or not. Well, it did not want to come down. And just like my bike got bent into like an A-frame, this guy's hood got completely bent to the point where he couldn't drive the car, couldn't see out the front hood. He's like looking, and you know, there's the hoods in the way. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm gonna get fired. And the owner, Jerry, was super cool about it. He came out, told the guy, hey, insurance is gonna take care of it. Things got figured out. I didn't lose my job, but I did get the look. I got the look. And then that look led to me later not having that job anymore.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

I'm just thinking, well, that guy must have been absolutely horrified to see that. So so now we have the bike, we have the cars, we have other people's cars, and I know that as you got older, I think you even borrowed my golf cart and ended up driving over my golf clubs, bent the clubs and didn't think anybody knows. So it doesn't matter if it was the car, anything that was moving.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

That was down in Arizona. You had your golf clubs down there, and I'm gonna borrow the golf cart, the clubs. Dad and I are gonna do a photo op. And rather than do a selfie, we get some other guy that's gonna take a picture of us and he's backing up. And dad and I are sitting on the golf cart, and then all of a sudden I'm like, oh, you know what? This isn't the great spot. To be and let's back this thing up. And and I jerked forward, and without me knowing your clubs had fallen off the back. I didn't have them strapped in, or I think I had them unstrapped because we thought we were done golfing until this photo op came up. And then all of a sudden we're like, oh no, let me back up. And all of a sudden I'm like, and I'm like, what was that? And then all of a sudden I realized, oh my God, it's the golf clubs. So what do you do? Do you drive forward and go back over them? Or do you continue and just drag them backwards? Well, no, we ended up getting like two or three guys, like like you see in the movies, lifting the golf cart up, pulling out the clubs, and then just putting them back in your garage, saying, hopefully that goes unnoticed.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Yeah, it took years for you to tell me that story, but I'm like, seriously, you're the only person I know that can high center a golf cart on our own golf clubs.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Judy, one other story. We're gonna talk about me abandoning a car as well, like you did at the Miami Airport, which I can't believe you did. And again, that car later allegedly used in a crime. Kidding, that didn't happen. I like embellishing and throwing that in there. I think that would make it a great story. Yeah, no, even greater.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

That did happen to a stolen car of mine, but we'll get into that in a later episode. That actually did happen.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

I do remember that story, and that ended in Las Vegas, if I if I'm not mistaken. We might have to have a part two. So, anyway, my abandoning car story is I had a great car. Again, it was a second car. I got rid of the Bundy mobile, and I get Starsky and Hutch. So I go from a crime mobile to a police mobile. I get a car exactly like Starski and Hutch, except it's green, and it's in beautiful mint condition. This car looks amazing. And I'm like, wow, except under the hood, the motor. It did not run well. So driving around Mina, getting me from point A to point B, probably an okay second car to have. Well, what happened was I'm going to a Minnesota Twins game in Minneapolis. So I have to drive from Minot to Minneapolis. I want to bring a couple of buddies of mine. Well, my other car was a two-seater, so I couldn't get three people in there. I'm like, I'm going to take the Ford Torino. I'm going to take the Starskan Hutch car to Minneapolis against everybody's best advice. Dad's like, no, I wouldn't do that. That car's not going to make it. And I'm like, I know better than dad. And I'm going to take that car to Minneapolis. And the car drives all the way to Minneapolis. We go to a twins game. My buddies and I are like, okay, this is so far so good. Well, the next morning we get up and we're going to drive to the gas station, put gas in, drive back to Myanot. The car starts shooting blue. There's blue smoke coming from it. And we're like, what the? And we pull over to the gas station. Judy, there's no oil in the car. Not one drop of oil. And I'm like, wow, did that all leak out on the way from my hot to Minneapolis? Did it leak out overnight? Did has this been going on for a while? And again, me being a car aficionado and just being really good with cars and knowing what's going on. I'm I'm saying that in just type of.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

I don't think you looked at a gauge till you were 40, but okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

Hey, listen, I could barely get the dipstick out, the hood down without.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

You won the dipstick, but okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

So anyway, we put oil in the car, we're gonna drive back to Mina. We're trying to make it back for a softball game. Me and my two buddies, we have a game that night in Mina, softball game. We don't want to miss it. We're on a good team. We're three players. If we miss the game, we might have to forfeit the game. So we get in the car, we start hauling ass back to Mina. We're on I-94, get about 100 miles outside of Fargo, and also the car breaks down. Just pull it over on the side of the highway, blue smoke coming out. Thankfully, the whole car didn't start on fire, but we're sitting on the side of I-94. What are we gonna do? Are we gonna call a tow truck? Are we gonna try to get to Fargo? The decision was made. Let's try to make it back for our game. We'll deal with the car later. So we start hitchhiking on I-94. So we're out on the highway, I-94 for five minutes hitchhiking. Some guy pulls over, some old 80-year-old dude by himself pulls over. He's like, Where are you guys headed? And we're like, uh, we're going to Minot. And he goes, I'm not going to Minot, I'm going to Winnipeg. And we're like, Winnipeg. And he goes, Yeah, I'm going to Fargo, and then I'm going north to Winnipeg. I'll take you as far as Fargo. He has one of us drive. So I'm driving the car. There's stuff in the back seat, only room for one person. So it's him in the middle, and then one of my friends on the passenger side, and then one of my buddies in the back. So there's three of us in the front. He's sitting right next to me. Speed limit's 55 back in the day, driving down the road. And this guy's leaning over, you know, his head's almost on my shoulder. Yeah, head on my shoulder, kind of weird old man. And he's checking, dude, he's checking the speed limit. And he's checking how fast I'm driving. And I'm driving like 52. And he goes, slow her down. And I'm like, uh, I'm not even going to the speed limit yet. And he's like, nope, you're driving my car. You're slowing it down. I'm like, oh, okay. So it takes us like forever to get to Fargo. We get to Fargo. We're going to get gas. We're going to buy him some gas, put a little gas in his car. He's going to go to Winnipeg. We're going to go to Mynot. Well, he comes out of the bathroom in Fargo and says, I'm going to drive you guys all the way to Mynot. And we're like, hmm, is this a good thing or a bad thing? You know, it's good that, hey, we're going to get taken all the way to Minot. Bad in that, okay, we got creeper old guy. And also, why is he going 200 miles out of his way?

SPEAKER_01 27:29

Bigger question, what was in the back seat that was taking up all the room? Was it zip ties and duct tape? You know, I have to ask.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Well, I don't know, Judy, because it was hidden by the tarp. You couldn't see.

unknown 27:40

It could have been a body. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

I'm kidding. I don't think there was a tarp, but hey, there might have been zip ties in there. And for whatever reason, we don't know. So, anyway, to make a long story short, we get all the way to Mina. We're trying to figure out how to get rid of this guy. And we just have this fear that he's going to follow us. He's going to want to come to our game. He's going to say, you know, want to hang out afterwards. Hey, why don't we go grab some dinner or beers or, you know, whatever it is. And we're like, no, let's. So we get about a block away from the softball complex. And we're like, hey, you can pull over here and drop us off. And he's like, here? And we're like, yeah, here. And he pulls over and we get out, we grab our bags, and we start running and freaking just hightail it. We left the guy on the side of the road. I hate to say it kind of sad because you know, maybe 5% chance the guy was, you know, an okay guy. 95% chance, Judy. No, not okay. Yeah, weirdo.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

Sounds like a creeper. I would have ran too.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

We ended up running and get to our softball game, playing our game. We won our game. Everything worked out okay. Never found out what happened to the guy. You might be wondering what happened to the car. Do I go back and get the car? Do I get a toad? Do I spend money to get the motor fixed? I don't even know what the problem is at this point. So I just kind of did what you know a lot of people do at that age in life, kind of like what you did with your bapted McGarr. Just didn't think about it anymore. Just like, okay, get on with my merry life. And so the same thing happened to me, Judy. I'm at the folks' house. The phone rings, and dad goes, Yeah, I think it's for you. And I go, okay. And I get on the phone. It's not Bob's towing, it's Ted's towing out of Minnesota, Fergus Falls, wherever it is, somewhere in Minnesota. Some tow truck place is calling me. And I'm like, hello. And he goes, Yeah, you have a 74 Port Torino. I go, yeah. And he goes, Did you leave it on the side of the highway? I go, yeah. And he goes, we have it. He goes, we towed it. What do you want us to do with it? And obviously there's a tow bill. There's, you know, again, am I going to take it somewhere and get it fixed and whatever? So I ended up just saying to the guy, and mom and dad still pissed at me to this day. But I ended up saying to the guy, keep it. I'll send you the title, keep the car. Week later, sent him the title, never saw the car again, never heard about it again. You left a car at the Miami airport. I left a car on the side of I 94 in Minnesota. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

If it wasn't for bad luck, you would have no luck.