Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Washington in Flight: The Boeing Aerospace Legacy with Carolyn LePine

Episode Date: February 28, 2022

In this episode, Sharon’s sister Caroyln joins her to hear a bit about the history of flight and the Boeing family. While German immigrant Wilhelm Boeing made his fortune in natural resources like timber and iron ore, his son, William, is best known for–you guessed it–taking the fledgling field of aviation to new heights. Learn about what prompted William to build his first seaplane, how both World Wars impacted the growth of the Boeing Airplane Company, and why Boeing eventually retired from the biz. Additionally, Sharon shares a small history of flight attendants–their original job descriptions and duties might surprise you! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello friends! Welcome! Today I have a really fun episode for you. I have my sister on this podcast. And I would like the record to reflect that she is eight years older than me. She definitely doesn't want me to say that. And mostly because it's a lie. But we had a lot of fun together. This is a very interesting story. And also, it's fun to hear from her. She has some fun memories about fifth grade Sharon. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon.

And welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Yay. The day has finally arrived. My older sister, Carolyn. Lies. It started with lies as i do every episode i start with lies or should i say hello hey starting the episode with some good lies right up front that you are eight years older than me oh yeah and. Yeah. No, people have been telling me for a long time. Oh my gosh. You got to get your sister on your podcast. You guys sound

the same. That's what everybody says. And also that we look the same. Yes. We've been told we are virtually identical twins our entire lives, which we find amusing because clearly we are not. No, I don't know. No. For starters, you have dark hair, right? Right. You're blonde. And I am not. For secondly, you're eight years older than me. That's, that's impossible. Lies. I'm writing down the lies. Keep track of the lies like you always do. Well, you and your husband have undertaken this amazing renovation project that so many people on social media, TikTok, Instagram have really been enjoying following along with. You found a gorgeous turn of the century brick mansion that has the M word, but that is the truth. It's not, it's not a Mick mansion. It's not a look at me. I have eight garages. It is like an

actual turn of the century mansion that has been sitting empty for a while and also has not had any updates whatsoever since the 1960s and 70s. Exactly. So 1973. So there is a lot to do structural, you know, water damage, things like that, but also just very dated rooms, every, almost every room, not every room, but it's a huge undertaking. And I'm so amazed at the number of people who have wanted to follow along and watch us do this house, but we love it. It's our dream house. I mean, it's just a spectacular home on a spectacular piece of property. And I think people also really like that. You are not an HGTV show where you're like our budget is 2.8 million. Hopefully we'll be able to make it work.

Like you guys are just a real family doing the best you can doing most of the work ourselves. We are doing most of the work ourselves. And when I say we, I mean, he is doing most of it. My skillset is very limited, but I help where I can, but yeah, we're just normal. I mean, you know, we have a budget and it's, we're doing it a little bit at a time, but we have years of renovations right now. We're working on the kitchen, which is a very exciting thing. That's the other thing too, is that normal people who don't have a $2 million budget up front, you can't do everything at one time. No, no, especially not while living in the house. So, and having six children living at home with

you. Yes. Did I mention I have six children living at home with me? Right. Exactly. So it actually helps I think to live there and live with it for a little while, live with each room, see what really you want to change and what you want to keep rather than not living there and just having everything done at one time by like a staff of people or whatever. But no, it's, it's amazing. We're very blessed to have it. And it's exciting. What are, give us something that you have found surprising about living in this house during the renovation, either something that you have surprisingly surprising about living in this house during the renovation, either something that you have surprisingly enjoyed, disliked, or something maybe you've surprisingly discovered? Well, during the renovation, I'm very surprised at the amount

of dust that can permeate, like the renovation dust, the sheetrock dust, it's everywhere and it is impossible to get rid of. Okay. So that's the first thing, but just something I love about the house in general that I didn't anticipate I would is it's in the middle of a city and in a neighborhood, but it's on almost three acres of wooded land, which I think is so hard to find. And just having that available to our children and to us has been amazing. I love it. Well, I have a story to share with you today about one of your favorite things to do. Oh, I don't know. No.

One of your favorite things to do, we all know, is flying on airplanes. Oh my gosh, no. You love to fly on airplanes. More lies. Write this down on the list. I hate flying on airplanes. It's really unreasonable, like an unreasonable hate. So I certainly understand because I have flying

fears as well that I, that I've worked on for years to get better at. I really have worked on it for years and it's better now than it used to be. Let's talk about flying and you don't actually have to take any planes. Okay. All right. No, no plans are required. We're going to go back in time to 1910, which is about seven years after the Wright brothers had their first flight, which by the way, their first flight was about one minute long. People, people think that the Wright brothers were up like, let's blood of Cincinnati. No, it was like 60 seconds, 59 seconds of being aloft before they, and then they landed. Yes. They got up about 800 feet, but the country was transfixed. The country was enamored with aviation. This of course

is the time period that creates the runway to Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart and all these people that we still have enduring fascinations with surrounding aviation. So there were a number of people during that timeframe that became famous for their daring flights. And you probably would not have enjoyed the company of Charles Keeney Hamilton, who was a Connecticut native. He was a very well-known aviator, and he eventually made his way out to Washington state. And in, according to the U S centennial of flight commission, this is what he was known for, known for his dangerous dives, spectacular crashes, extensive reconstructive surgeries, and ever present cigarettes. He was frequently drunk.

Sounds like a dream. So he's up there like smoking, drinking, flying plastic surgery, flying of his plane. And at the time, his plane that he became very well known for flying over Seattle literally looked like a chair with a steering wheel in front of it. No. Completely out of the open with like, you know, with like two sets of wings off of each side, but absolutely zero pilot protection of any kind. Literally a chair and a steering wheel. No, thank you. But he pilots this plane, which was a brand new kind of plane over the city of Seattle. And everybody was like, wow, this was in March of 1910. So he decides to go up again the next day because he had such a successful flight in this brand new

plane. He goes up drunk. He made no qualms about the fact that he was intoxicated. This is not hyperbole. Like he was actually intoxicated. I'm drunk and I'm going to fly. That's right. So he's like swooping and dipping. And eventually, you know, one of the things he was known for is he would purposely plummet his plane and then pull it up out of a nosedive, like five feet above the ground. This is the second day he's out flying his plane. He was trying to plummet the plane to see like, what happens if I do this? And he was unable to pull it out of the nosedive quickly enough. And it crashed into a lake. Okay. And he was pulled out of the lake he only suffered minor injuries wow he lived he didn't die okay he had a total of 60 airplane crashes i shouldn't laugh because that's a lot of it i know he did

he brought it on himself he was drunk drunk. Yes, it wasn't. He deliberately took unnecessary chances. That's right. He was basically trying to see how far he could push planes without a death wish. I almost wonder. Yeah. And 60 of them didn't work out. So yeah. Can you, how much would, I mean, there's just no amount of money that would be like, would you like to crash a plane 60 times? The answer is I'd rather watch paint dry for the next 60 years. Exactly. There's no chance. None. Well, okay. So this aviation really began to take off in the state of Washington. I want to zoom back in time just a little bit to another man who lived in the state of Michigan. He lived in Michigan in the 1870s and his name was Wilhelm Boeing.

German. German immigrant. Yes. Lived near Detroit and Wilhelm became extremely rich despite having no financial support from his family. He became extremely rich by investing in lumber in portions of Michigan and made all this money and started investing in other pieces of real estate, got invested in mining, et cetera. And he purchased a large plot of land, or actually several plots of land that were adjacent to each other in the city of Duluth, Minnesota. And Duluth, if people don't know, is at the very tip of Lake Superior. If you look at the Great Lakes and it comes to a head at the tip of Lake Superior, it is the world's largest inland port. And this was a time of incredible development with the arrival of railroads, the discovery of iron ore in mines nearby, timber barons. Like this was the time that tycoons were made and the tycoons.

So much money. Yes. The tycoons were made largely via natural resources, natural resource development, and then all of the industries that supported that. So all of the industries that were things like trains or ships or, you know, all of those types of things. So the city of Duluth actually was in a heated contest with a city nearby the city across the river, which is in the, in the state of Wisconsin. And in fact, the state of Wisconsin sued the city of Duluth because the city of Duluth had constructed a large shipping pier to permit ships that they're on the Great Lakes, they're called boats, to permit boats that had come up the Great Lakes and ending at the port of Duluth to pick up large quantities of grain, constructed a very large shipping canal in the city of Duluth. And eventually this case went all the way to the United States Supreme

Court, where the United States Supreme Court had to determine basically who had the rights to the water that went in and out of this very deep shipping canal in the city of Duluth, Minnesota? The shipping canal is at the, essentially what is the mouth of the St. Louis River. And the St. Louis River kind of diverts into two different areas. One of them goes out Superior Bay via Wisconsin into Lake Superior. And the other now was essentially heading right through the shipping canal into Lake Superior via the city of Duluth. And the state of Wisconsin was like, listen here, by diverting some of the current from the St. Louis river into your state without our permission, you are making it so that we are not able to get like the full economic enjoyment, the full,

et cetera, benefit of this river. And you should not be able to, you should not be able to just take the section of the river and tab dibs on it. And the United States Supreme court was like, Wisconsin, go away. Was that the official ruling? That was the official opinion. Uh, go away. You don't have any claims to the river current. That's essentially what they were trying to make, make a case on is right. Claim to the river current. Wow. Well what they were trying to make a case on is claim to the river current. Wow. Well, it just so happened that Wilhelm Boeing owned most of the land that had been taken to build the shipping canal. And in the 1880s, in 1889, he published a the Bay of Duluth

will be denied by me to all boats and vessels. A rope will be stretched across the canal on my property, which lies in and upon either side of said canal, and the owner or master of any boat or vessel breaking the same will be promptly proceeded against in the courts. So he felt like he owned the water, the water, he owned the land that had been taken to build the canal. Right. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yes. And so he, he felt like it had not been taken from him fairly. And what he wanted was the city of Duluth to pay him $100,000 for this land, which is an exorbitant amount of money in 1889 dollars. Right. Exorbitant. And the city was like hard. Nope. So he instructed a man named Marshall Allworth, who worked for him, to go down and string up a rope across the shipping channel.

Now, understand that the shipping channel, the shipping canal, was extremely busy. It received over, once this canal was dug, it received over 1,500 boats a year. Wow. These are not, we're not talking about small fishing vessels, sailboats, iron or boats and things. Yes. These are large boats that carry iron or taconite grain, et cetera, that they can be 500 to a thousand feet long. Wow. That's how large these are. So he told his compatriots to go down and string a rope across the canal. That would keep out the boat. That's right. A rope will keep out the boat. That'll show them. port of Duluth, there is a very, very recognizable and iconic aerial lift bridge where the platform of the bridge goes up and down and cars can drive across it. And then when a boat is coming through,

it lifts up. And that's where the rope was. Yes. Yes. There was no, there was no bridge there yet. But that's where the rope was. And a police officer came by and cut the rope. And of course, Wilhelm was not pleased about that. And so he decided that he would, because he owned the property on either side, that he would drive a stake deep into the ground, wrap chains around it, and then connect the rope to the chains so that the rope would not be stretched taut across the canal. It would be underneath the water. The weight of the chains would hang the rope under the water and people would not be able to come by and cut it because the rope was embedded in chains. Wow. So eventually, short, Wilhelm Boeing ended up dying. He died of influenza and ended up having to not get paid for his land that was taken to build the canal. There's no record that I can find anywhere that he was ever paid any amount of money for the land that was seized for the canal to be built. His descendants tried to for briefly to make a claim. And the city was like, listen, the Supreme Court has already

talked about this canal. And that was like 10 years ago. Right. And we're done. We're done talking about this. So they ended up getting nothing, but the land surrounding the, what is now this lift bridge and the shipping canal was owned by Wilhelm Boeing until his estate essentially relinquished or abandoned claims to the land. I'm Jenna Fisher and I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast office ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It's my girl in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests.

And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Ladies 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. After he died in 1890, one of his children who had an Americanized version of his name, William Boeing, inherited his fortune. And William's mother remarried and shipped William off to a boarding school in Switzerland. As they did. As one did when you were a wealthy family and you were remarrying,

just like the Baronessess in the sound of music wanted to ship those bomb trap children to a boarding school in Switzerland. That's what happened to William Boeing when he got back from his boarding school in Switzerland and he enrolled at Yale as one did. As one did. As one did. Yes. And eventually decided, I don't, I don't need this education.

I'm just going to get into the lumber business. So he decided to head to Washington State because there were people out there that had connections in the timber industry. And of course, he had a large personal fortune that he wanted to invest. So he begins a timber company. And while he's there, he started getting very interested in aviation. He continued to acquire land, making bigger and bigger deals. But the interest in aviation was very personal to him. Just kind of like, that is super cool.

He traveled to Southern California to watch some of these flying exhibitions. He asked somebody to take him up in one of their aircraft. While he was there, he met this man named George Westervelt. And George Westervelt was a graduate of the Naval Academy. His nickname was Scrappy. And like Boeing, they became more and more fascinated with all of the developing, emerging technologies surrounding aviation. So in 1915, after five years of interest, Boeing got his first chance to fly in a plane. And it was a plane that was amphibious, you know, a plane that can land on the water. And 1915. Oh my goodness. Wow. That's really early days. Yes. In order to take off Boeing and, and Westervelt had to sit on the wings of the plane and hold on while the plane took off and then climb into the seats. No.

Sounds like something you'd enjoy. Yeah. It seems like exactly right up my alley. He begins taking flying lessons. He eventually acquires his own airplane. Airplanes of that time period cost about $500, which is around $13,000 today. Wow. It arrived in to Washington in pieces and like big crates. It had to be assembled. And so this is the cusp of world war one, right? And Boeing gets very into this idea of national preparedness and he felt like even

though the war was overseas that americans should be vigilant and prepared especially when it came to these emerging technologies in aviation so in november of 1915 bo Boeing goes up in his plane and flew over a crowded football game at the University of Washington and dropped cardboard bombs on the crowd to prove to Americans that they were vulnerable to attack. Well, that'll wake you up. On the cardboard bomb, it said this, protection through preparedness. On the cardboard bomb, it said this, protection through preparedness. This harmless card in the hands of a hostile foe might have been a bomb dropped on you. Airplanes are your defense with five exclamation points. And he signed it Arrow Club of the Northwest. Wow. So he was out there trying to show people like this is a big deal and this is the future. And he wasn't wrong. And he wasn't wrong.

Right. So eventually his plane that he had purchased became damaged and the company that had made it told him that the replacement parts would not be available for many months. And so Boeing and Westervelt decided like, we'll just make some parts for it or, or we'll mess around and see if we'll just make some parts for it or, or we'll mess around and see if we could just build something better. So they eventually constructed a new plane that they called the B and W for Boeing and Westervelt, the B and W sea plane, or what later became known as the Boeing model one, which was an amphibian biplane. So had like the two wings and could land on water.

Boeing nicknamed it the blue bell. And he was so enthralled with this idea of building airplanes that he decided to go into the airplane business. And so for the first year, Boeing and Westervelt worked together and they called their plane, the Pacific Aero Products Company. And Boeing literally took his entire personal fortune, all of the money that he had inherited from his father, Wilhelm, and sunk it into this company. When the United States entered World War I in April of 1917, Boeing changed the name to the Boeing Airplane Company and secured an order from the U.S. Navy for 50 airplanes. And this was the beginning of what is now the largest aerospace company in the world. Right. And that recognizable name, that's right. So Westervelt got transferred by the U S Navy. And so he had to go back East.

He was not able to stay and help run the company, but he did have a lifelong career in aviation. He designed aircraft that ended up being used by the military later. So he abandoned the company out of necessity and it left William Boeing to continue to run it. After the war, he continued to concentrate on building and selling commercial aircrafts. And one of his biggest areas of focus was on airmail. aircrafts. And one of his biggest areas of focus was on airmail. And he wanted to start his own airmail company, which he did called the Boeing air transport. And he had pilots that began flying routes between the United States and Canada to demonstrate how important airmail was going to become the faster you can communicate, right? You you know there's a ton of advantages to be

able to fly mail via air instead of having to wait for things to be telegraphed or shipped on a boat it changed the world it absolutely did to communicate that quickly yeah yes yes so in 1921 Boeing got married to a woman named Bertha and she had a couple of sons from her first marriage. She moved into his expansive bachelor pad in Seattle, and they had a son together named William Boeing Jr. in the 1920s. Boeing merged with another aircraft company, Pratt & Whitney, and they formed the United Aircraft and Transport Company. So at the time, Boeing's air transport owned 30% of the airmail and passenger air market in the United States. And there were a lot of people who were grumbling about Boeing's monopolistic practices of like, you own too large of a market share.

We don't like it. Right. So in 1930, this, of course, is immediately following the stock market crash of 1929. The postmaster general took this new act that was passed called the Air Mail Act and wanted to modify air mail contracts. He wanted to spread out the air mail contracts amongst four different companies, but it just ended up giving Boeing even more business. They were able to dominate on even new levels. And then the postmaster general was like,

you know what? That did not have the intended effect. I revoke your contract. And now the Army Air Corps is going to deliver all of the airmail. So Boeing was like, okay, have fun with that. And within a very short period of time, 12 pilots died from accidents while delivering the airmail. Oh no. These airmail routes were not easy and the public backlash from 12 army pilots delivering airmail was too significant. The United States government was forced to be like, nevermind, fine, go ahead and deliver the airmail. Fine. So by this point, Boeing was bitter. He was annoyed. And he was like, I'm, you know what, I'm getting out of this game. I'm going to retire. I'm going to take my millions and I'm going to

just buy a yacht. I'm going to go golfing. Eventually Boeing's companies became the Boeing airplane company. As I mentioned, the United Aircraft Company and United Airlines. Wow. So, which obviously still exists today, United Airlines. Yes. So he loved to sail. He loved to golf. He and Bertha just, you know, relaxed and did what they wanted to do. They, they invested in horse racing. He had horses that did very well in the Kentucky Derby. And in 1956, before his 75th birthday, he died on his yacht, which was called Taconite. Oh, and for anybody, it all came back around that's right if anybody doesn't know what taconite is it is a rock that contains iron ore and iron ore is one of the raw materials that is used to make steel and minnesota has one of the largest iron ore deposits in North America. And it is widely mined, has been widely

mined for over a hundred years in certain iron range communities. And then the taconite is processed into small pellets, the size of like a marble. And that is how, rather than trying to load large chunks of rocks onto boats, they are much more easily able to load these pallets because they're much more self-leveling in a boat. It makes way more sense. Yeah. Giant chunks of rocks, hard to ship that in any way. Over the course of Boeing's life, it has produced so many planes that helped us win World War I and World War II. It has produced the most popular passenger airplane of all time, the 737. At any given point in the world, there are over 1,000 Boeing 737s in the sky. That's crazy.

Boeing also has the largest building in the world by volume. So not the tallest, like the Burj Khalifa, but the largest building by volume, which is one of their factories in the state of Washington to build the airplanes, to build the airplanes. It has its own fire department, its own medical clinic, its own security force. It has its own water treatment facility, its own electrical substations. Wow. It's a massive building, but we currently employs 345,000 people. Wow. That is a large number of employees for one business. It sure is. And one of the things that people, of course, we associate the name Boeing with airplanes, right? Like we know we see it on an airplane, et cetera. But what many people don't

know is that Boeing has a very integral role in space exploration. Like they built the International Space Station. They make many of the components that NASA designs to go on like Mars exploration missions, lunar landings. I didn't know that. They make satellites. They deal with weapons systems. So the impact of Boeing on the United States is difficult to overstate. Would the United States be what it is without our missile defense systems, without our space exploration, without our incredible aerospace

industry. This is a little bit unrelated to Boeing, but this is how we got to have flight attendance on airplanes. So if you think about passenger air travel at the very beginning, it wasn't particularly comfortable. You know what I mean? Like the planes were not engineered for like, Ooh, what a smooth, relaxing flight with a flat bed. No, right. But in 1930, a woman named Ellen church, who was a trained nurse, but had her pilot's license. But of course, because sexism women were not permitted to fly commercial planes. She convinced somebody at Boeing Air Transit, which is again, the predecessor of United Airlines, to carry a nurse aboard a Boeing plane to serve as a steward and to ensure passenger safety. So she and seven other nurses became the first, what they called stewardesses. We now call them flight attendants.

And the nickname for them was Sky Girls. Of course. Of course. And they had to be a registered nurse. And this was the criteria to be a Sky Girl. Single. Of course. Single is important when you're doing a job with airplane safety exactly very

important that you exactly younger than 25 again very important if you're 26 you cannot possibly save a life on a plane no no you must weigh less than 115 pounds. And stand less than 5'4". Wow. That was the criteria. So teeny tiny little nurses. Young, single nurses. That's right. And what they would do is serve lunch. They would tend to air sick passengers. Okay. Again, because there's probably a lot more air sickness. Oh yes. We did not have the technology that we do now to be able to predict weather in the same way to be able to be like up ahead is rough air, ascend, descent, you know, like this was, this was in 1930. So it was assumed that it would be a bumpy ride.

Right. The stewardesses, the sky girls would help load luggage. They would put fuel into the planes and they would help push, push the planes in and out of the hangars at night. So of course it's very important that these tiny little 115 pound women are pushing the airplanes. That's right. It's important that you be tiny. if one wants to push an airplane and you'd be under 25. Right. I just thought that was really funny. That's really interesting. The first flight attendants were called sky girls or stewardesses and they were tiny nurses on Boeing passenger planes on the predecessor of United. Wow. Well, that is amazing. I've one more little tidbit to give you,

which is in 1943 in the state of Washington, nearly everybody was involved in the world war two effort. And one of the things that has made Boeing consistently successful is that it has always adapted to the needs of the market. What do you need? Helicopters? We can make that. What do you need? A space station? We can make that. So it has always adapted to what the market has needed. So of course, during times of war, it ramped up production, making war planes. So because so many men in this community were off fighting in the war effort that left women to work at the factories producing the planes that were needed for the men who were fighting to actually fly to win world war ii so at this just one specific boeing plant this is an example of that rosie the riveter

paradigm that you see where like women are wearing the coveralls and they're like, we can do it. This is a great example of exactly what they were doing. And they worked in different shifts, 24 hours a day, assembling Boeing aircrafts. And of the 517 workers on this one facility's payroll, 415 of them were women during the 1940s. So isn't that cool? That's very cool.

Women were serving such an integral role. Such a huge part in that. Yes. That's amazing. What are you going to fly if you don't have any planes? Right. Explain how that's going to work. It doesn't. I didn't realize it was that high of a number though. So, wow. I think it's cool. Yeah. It was not just a couple of random women. Like

they really switched the workforce majority to being women. Well, this is really fun. I think people would really like to hear from you being my older sister. People would really like to hear from you what fifth grade Sharon was like, because that is a picture that I put up of myself as my fifth grade school picture. lies. She is the oldest sister. And so as such, she was a little bit, shall we say, bossy, a little bossy. And I grew up with a lot of projects and lessons and crafts. This is what you are going to spend your time doing. Sit down. I'm going to teach you about this today. You've always been kind of a teacher and that has definitely continued today. You were not cooperative. Well, I was more laid back, a little more lazy. I was a little more interested in like really really cool things like uh musical theater and I was obsessed with Gone with the Wind and I made

myself a hoop skirt out of wire hangers and duct tape as well you know what as well I wore it you did I remember I wore it you wore it outside of the house I wore it. You did. I remember that. I wore it. You wore it outside of the house. I wore it outside of the house. Oh, yes. Yes. And so I was sort of the cool one, as you can tell from that anecdote. Obviously, obviously. But no, you were always very driven and you always had so many things you wanted us to do. And when you went on your paper route, how many mornings did you wake us up to come with you to help you do your paper route daily? Daily? I didn't want to do it alone. I understand it was five in the morning. You were you were very I mean, for a

kid your age to have a paper route that was pretty impressive. But I just remember you being very in charge, very motherly, very bossy, little bossy. I always, okay. So here's something that we grew up about three blocks from a river that had several swimming holes in it. And we went swimming there frequently when we were growing up and our mom would let us go swimming in the river unattended yeah and this this was just like it was very acceptable it was normal it wasn't that she did anything wrong it's that parents were just more likely to do that yes yeah this was in the era of like go out and ride your bikes and come home when the streetlights come on. Yes. Yes. And mom's instructions were always, it was never like, don't get a head injury. No, don't get any TBIs. It was always be nice to each other. Yeah. Your version was to push my head underwater and hold it there as long as you

could until i was sputtering and dying what that is not true it is true no you know if if you would have just cooperated right then i had just done what you had said right which is I wanted to choreograph a synchronized swimming routine which we did if you had just cooperated with my synchronized swimming routine then I wouldn't have had to have punished you by pushing your head under water. Looking back, it was, it was justifiable. And I do remember going over and over and over that synchronized swimming routine. You wanted it to be perfect for what? For the Olympics? Why did it need to be perfect?

Who's watching us? You were bad at it. And I wanted you to get better at it. I wanted, I wanted more free. Sorry. I was trying to push you to be your best. You helped me to a higher standard and I did not reach that standard. I apologize. I always felt like our synchronized swimming routine was not long enough. You know what I mean? Like it was, we only, we only learned about 15 seconds of synchronized swimming and it was, we only, we only learned about 15 seconds of synchronized swimming and it needed to be like, that's not, that's like not, that's not

enough. You know what? It's hard to sing and swim and dance at the same time because you had to like hum the music while you're in a river with the current. Yeah. It was difficult. The situation made it difficult, you know, do you remember once deciding that you were going to teach art classes? I do remember that at grandma in grandma's neighborhood, um, where there were a number of children that lived on the street. And so I decided I would facilitate the teaching of the art classes. And so we made some signs to put up on trees. Yes. Carolyn's art classes. Yes. And they had like the little things, little snips where people would take, take the little snip of paper so that they could register for the art class I was 11 I'm assuming 11 or less or less yes and the next day we came back to see how many people had taken the pieces of paper do you remember what happened

this is such a good memory that it's all coming back to me now somebody had taken down the sign for carolyn's art classes and replaced it with a side of their own and the side of their own said is dumb poor carolyn poor little carolyn back in She was trying to teach an art class. She was just trying to teach art classes. You were extremely qualified. I was always more interested in the assemblage and dissemination of facts. That has always been. That is brand new information. What happened to that? Where did that go? Why don't you make use of that skill in everyday life at all? Well, we'll have to do this again. We should. This has been fun. Yes. Thank you for coming. Thanks for learning. Thanks for letting me subject you to my facts. I find them more and more interesting the older that I get.

And this is true. This is very, very true. So I thought it was really interesting. Thank you for inviting me. Yes. All right. I will let you go. Okay.

Bye-bye. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. This podcast was written and researched by Sharon McMahon and Heather Jackson. It was produced by Heather

Jackson, edited and mixed by our audio producer Jenny Snyder, and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. I'll see you next time.