My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 217

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

This week’s hometowns include gravestone repair and photo lab secrets.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We at Wondery live, breathe and downright obsess over true crime and now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C on Facebook and listen to true crime on Wondery and Amazon Music. Exhibit C. It's truly criminal. Hello and welcome to my favorite murder, the minisode. That's Karen Kilgera. Oh, that's Georgia. Heartstar. We're here to read you your emails you've sent to us. That's right. You know this vibe? Yeah, we asked for them, so it's not like you're assaulting us. It's like we're sharing. I meant the listener. Oh, no, no, I meant them too. You want to go first? I want you to go first. It's not like you're assaulting us. We demand that they send us emails nonstop. This isn't a

problem. This isn't. No, no, this isn't. We're not in a fight. Just so you know, like the approach should be, we are totally getting along great. Us and the listeners? Yes, and you and I. I feel like for myself across the board, I'm doing very good. I feel like this whole podcast was a misunderstanding. Should we erase this? All right. Yeah. Wait, am I going first? Oh, do you want to? Yeah, absolutely. Why not? Whatever isn't going to cause a fight. We're teetering on the fucking edge here. So whatever. Whatever you want. All right. Well, then I'll go first so I don't start screaming. This one's called Gravestone Repair and Archaeology. Hi, Karen, Georgia, and Stephen. I heard you talking about at Lady Taphos, which is the Instagram I recommended,

and her gravestone cleaning on the episode this week and was super excited because I am an archaeologist and gravestone conservator. I'm currently doing my PhD in archaeology, studying early 17th century graveyards. And my husband and I have started a small business to restore and clean historic gravestones in our Providence of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Okay, this is like a show you would watch. I feel like this is the beginning of a TV drama mystery you would watch. Gravecleaner, the Gravecleaners of Labrador. Yeah, they're like this cute couple. Yeah, maybe there's a mystery every time they go to a different cemetery. Is their house haunted? Is every cemetery haunted? Of course. And then they have to solve for someone's... What was that? For someone's

ancient murder? Yes. Or like have to reunite. Maybe it's not like a murder. Maybe it's like a reuniting. These two long lost loves. What was Jennifer Love Hewitt's ghost? Both dead. Yeah. Hers was Ghost Whisperer. Yes. Which I actually... Is that right? Yeah. Is it? You're right, Karen. You got it. I've never seen an episode. I actually... There was a time that I really... It was so like quaint, you know? All right. So anyways, that's it. Here's the thing. I would never argue the talent or the career of Jennifer Love Hewitt. No. She was a child actor. She was a tween actor. She was a teen actor. She's been an adult actor. She's been killing it for decades back to back. They can't argue it. Do you think her and Anne Hathaway are best friends?

Either they're best friends or they're intensely passive aggressive acquaintances. You know what I mean? Where they're like beautiful, beautiful, ingenue types who have to pretend they get along. It's a bad look for both. So they're like, good to see you. Great to see you. And the smiling is like vicious. The most vicious smiling. Do you think for each other's birthdays they send them these bouquets but the kind that when they die, the stuff gets everywhere and it's hard to clean up? You know what a gross bouquet is? No offense to people who like this. But I can't... If there's a lily in a bouquet that's odor which is straight up funeral home smell. It's just like that. I'll always go right up and just be like... Plunk. Put that outside. Yeah. All right. I'm

glad we worked that out because they love each other. That's right. Oh, and then she says it's called Black Cat Cemetery Preservation, which I feel like you'd appreciate and I do. Fully. So I was trained in gravestone repair while working for Woodland Cemetery in London, Ontario a few years ago. And I had the honor, with a U, of restoring stones for the dead who have no one to clean their stones and for family members who thought their relatives gravestones were gone. But the most amazing gravestone I've ever worked on was for a 17-year-old named Robert Cooper who died at work in a soda water factory in 1871. The large high pressure cylinder he was carrying ruptured and the force threw him into the ceiling, killing him instantly. Oh no. As a result of the

horrible accident, laws were changed around how many times a high pressure container could be repaired. So like no more band-aids on that thing, you know. Yeah, right. You'd get rid of that thing as it was a faulty repair that failed and killed him. We found his gravestone sunken under the grass and were able to raise it and clean it with water, a soft brush, and D2, which I was reading about because I want to buy it, a safe cleaner that doesn't damage stone and laid it on packed gravel for drainage. The most amazing thing is that the gravestone has a picture of the very thing that killed him carved into it. Oh no. It almost looks like a bomb. One of the most unique gravestones I've ever seen. And then she said see attached. So let's put that up on the episodes page.

It's an honor to share his story with you all. Thank you for taking the time to read it. The best part of my job is helping these gravestones stick around a little longer so we can help people long past still tell their stories. Hope to see you live again one day when things and groups are allowed again. Robin L. Wow, that's very cool. Yeah. I love that. That's like a whole kind of niche. I won't call it an industry, but like area that I've never even thought of that like, I've seen several things on Twitter now about that restoration, that type of restoration. It's so cool. And it just reminds me of the things that I always wish like, don't only listen to your school guidance counselors about what you can do with your life. You know, it's

not just fucking business and industry. There's so many cool passion projects that you can turn into a business. That's really cool. I feel like these younger generations know that because they are such internet children that they're like, that's correct. Everything's possible where it's like, oh, sorry, we're from the 80s where you had four choices of everything. That's right. Four choices of TV channels, jobs, with the soda at 7-eleven, like whatever it was, there was four, make the best of it. They had to come up with the number five just to give us more options. And it happened in 1986, ironically. I don't know what a missed opportunity. Oh, you know what that also is going to make me say, and I don't think we said this last time, but this is a strangely coming

full circle because we have merch. I wonder if we still sell it. The merch that has the decoration with the skull and the wings, that is a design that was taken from a Victorian gravestone. Yes, you're a good tie-in, Karen. Right? The artists that designed that t-shirt for us went through old Victorian, like old fashioned 1800s or 1700s gravestones I think in Boston and found that design to put on that shirt. We were thinking ahead of even the podcast that we didn't even know this would be a thing. No brag, but we're visionary. At least the merch team is. Send us, I don't know, do you do that for a living too? Send us the coolest gravestone or like story from a gravestone that you've uncovered. We'd love to hear

it. I was on a road trip one time and we were in way Northern California, like way up by Arcadia or the way north, northernmost city that now I can't think of. But anyway, Stephen. Oh, I was going to say Arcada or Arcada. Yes. But there's another one up there that is the main one that like where the skunk train goes and stuff. Humboldts. Like above, yeah, it's above Humboldt, above Fort Bragg. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Too bad for me that I can't remember anything anymore. So we're in these back roads. We basically took a super interesting way to get, you know, where we were going. And we were. So we were on a two lane back road. There was nothing around. It was just fields on both sides. And on the left side of the road, it turned

into like this hill that had big oak trees on it. It's kind of spooky. And I looked up and on one part of this hill, there was a tiny, very old cemetery that went straight up a hill. And it was the coolest looking. And it was the kind of thing where it happened like two seconds. So I was like, it was that real. It was like a family's small little plot. Yeah. And in this very, like, tucked away. I can't even explain how tucked away it was. Or just like that felt like a little maybe or that I was hallucinating like lightly. Well, aren't hallucinations gifts too? Gifts from the lard? Or whoever. Or Satan. Or Satan who loves cemeteries. If you're Satan and you love cemeteries, email us at my favorite murder. Put in the subject line. I'm Satan who loves it. Like,

just so we know it's you. Yeah, just be like, it's me and maybe put the, put the devil's hand devil on there just so we recognize. Okay, I'm not going to read you the title of this one. It gives it away. Greetings and salutations. In the recent mini so do you ask for our rabies stories? So here is mine. We did. Well, we're smart. Yes, we did. Last November, I was taking the compost out to our bin in the backyard at twilight. It's a short distance. It's a short distance. My wife and I live in Kansas City with a rather small backyard. As I was making my way back to the house, I saw something fly up my face. I stopped completely shaken but went on. I suddenly noticed that my shirt felt heavier than normal. I looked down and there was a bat staring up at me

clinging to my shirt. My high pitched scream was epic. My wife inside the house thought that there was a cat in distress, but alas, no cat. Just me with a bat hanging on my chest. Oh no. Luckily, I was wearing my leather gloves. It was November after all. So I quickly knocked it off my shirt and it flew away. Oh, of course, I did what any millennial would do. I went inside and posted about it on Facebook. Within minutes, friends began to comment that I needed to get a rabies vaccine. Some frantic Googling determined that the CDC recommends a rabies shot following any contact with a bat. Wow. So off I went to the ER and I discovered, yes, I did need to get the rabies vaccine. A total of six shots that night with another three over the next month and a

half. It is no joke to get that vaccine. It's for real, for real. In order to get me out of the ER quickly, the head nurse decided that they could give me three shots at once and grabbed two other nurses. Oh dear. This is my mother in action. Oh no. Nurses are like, what's the problem? We need to get it taken care of. You're going to feel pain either way. Let's do all the pain at once. I'm going to decide for you. You aren't in a position to decide. Here we go. Here we go. Counting down from three. Okay. One stood at each of my legs. The third stood next to my arm and when the head nurse said one, two, three, poke, they administered three shots simultaneously. After a few moments to catch my breath, it was one, two, three, poke again. That was all six shots. I had to come

back to the ER for my additional shots three times in the next six weeks for 10 shots in total. One time I could hear my nurse talking to the head nurse about my shot when suddenly the head nurse who had been there the first night shouted, I know this guy. The Batman is back. Despite my ordeal, they're rather terrifying appearance and the fact that they can carry rabies. Bats eat millions of bugs a year and are incredibly important to our ecosystem. They could use a little more love from people. I think, oh, I want to thank you both for being so mental health positive, listening to old episodes during the pandemic encouraged me to start seeing a therapist again. Stay sexy and get a rabies vaccine if a bat flies into you, Patrick. I feel like that they planted

something in his brain that makes him like, you know, how cats can do to make you the mouse, not afraid of the cat because he's like, but bats are still great. I still love that. It's like he's been, he's been mind work. When he looked down at the bat that was on his shirt, the bat looked up at him and sent sonic sonic sound waves of transness into his earhole. Trans music. And now he's a raver. He's a raver for bats. He's a pro bat raver. Beautiful. I don't know why. The idea of a bat flying at him wasn't as bad as the idea of a bat hanging on his shirt. Like when you said, and my shirt felt heavy, I was out. Yeah. Because that means that bat had some real heft. Heft. Thank you to it. Heft. I was going to say gravitas.

Maybe he was a playboy at bat too. Listen to this. Did I ever tell you about the time I was at my old house? I was, I think sitting at the kitchen table writing and I got a weird feeling like I wasn't by myself and I looked down and there was a praying mantis on my arm. And when I looked down, it turned its head and up at me. And they're so creepy. They're, it's like having an alien, a tiny alien on your arm. And I screamed but didn't do anything because I didn't want to hurt it. But it jumped off or like moved off. Where are you living that praying mantises are just like coming in your house. Burbank, baby. Burbank. Anything can happen. They didn't tell you that in the, in the brochure of Burbank. You got to move there if you love praying mantises.

Oh, but they're pretty cute. Okay. Yeah, they are. This is just called hometown story and it goes, hello. Congratulations on five years at the pod. You guys are truly amazing. I know you love savior pet stories. So I'm writing in to tell you mine. Yeah. Yeah. This is a good antidote to the bat story. When I was three years old, my family went camping at a local lake. I was the youngest of all my cousins and siblings and I was constantly trying to keep up with them. I was a three year old. They started climbing on some loose rocks near the edge of the water and of course I followed. I was an incredibly, incredibly clumsy child. And then I was like, you're three. Three years old. Yes, we all are. You're so sweet. And immediately slipped and fell

into the lake. My mom's Rottweiler Hannah jumped in the water before any of the delts even had time to react. Hannah swam under me and I was able to grab onto her back. No, no, no. She carried me back to the land. She saved my life. Yes, she did, Hannah. She was probably smiling the whole time too with her big old Rottweiler. She's like, my big jam. Hannah was an absolutely amazing dog and she was such a protector of me and my brother when we were little. My mom recently told me about what I did as a five year old when I first got my black lab puppy, Casey. I carried her to the garden where Hannah was buried and introduced them to each other. Oh, no. Are you kidding me? I told Casey how good of a dog Hannah was and asked her to be a good dog too.

Hannah's proof that the scary Rottweilers in the movie slash media is not the true narrative. I've always advocated for the breed and I truly believe there are no bad dogs, only bad owners. Thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope you all have a wonderful day and I hope you snuggle your pets a little extra. They truly love us more than we will ever know SSDGM Courtney. Mine are all feel good today, by the way. That's good. I mean, hey, we need it. Courtney, that was a lovely story about your dog named Hannah. I'd like to tell you a story about my dog named Frank who woke me up at 3 30 last night barking, barking like someone was outside, scaring the shit out of me. Then he went outside and I stood there at the sliding glass door

at 3 30 in the morning waiting for him to come back and he didn't come back for like 10 minutes. And then I was like, he went he went and had an adventure by himself and I was like, because it's 3 30 morning. I can't actually call for him in any meaningful way. And when he finally came back, he was crawling. He was walking super low like he knew he was being bad because he just like he hears me calling and he just chooses not to come. So may we all have a Hannah in our life. But I guess I'm the bad owner because I got a Frank that's so goddamn frank. It's unbelievable. I should come back with like an arm bone that she had. True. But I had I had I've been hearing noises. And so I of course was standing there.

I'm like, what if his Frank was like walking around like backyard? He got pulled into a bush and there's someone back there like he was working at a person in his mind or someone tried to grab him. Can you imagine? Oh, that's right. He doesn't like being like kind of held or he can't be picked up. You literally can't pick him up off the ground. He's a tank. He's serious. I think you're good. But it is like it's almost like sending him out to go find them with the problem is and then he doesn't come back. You're mad at him. Not like, well, he found the problem and the problem is still there. Yeah. Now he has a problem. It was a little it was like a little bit of like a horror movie mixed in with like Lilo and Stitch or whatever. No, no, no, that's the

wrong one. Milo and Otis. Milo and Otis. It was like Milo and Otis has a dark turn where it's like, wait, why he didn't he was supposed to and George wouldn't go outside. That was the other thing that was scaring me. Anyway, keep your doors closed this time. Call the police, Karen. You don't even be opening the doors for the intruders. And you're like, yeah, I thought I just figured I thought he was going to pee and come back in. George just runs out and literally runs back in. Right. Like goodbye. It's 3 30 in the morning. Okay. Frank's like, I'm restless. I'm tired of quarantine. I want to go walk around. I'm not going to read the title. It gives it away. Hi, guys, gals and furry four-legged pals. Wonderful. The college bombscare in my hometown from

Minnesota to 14 reminded me of a similar-ish story from my high school. I went to a small K through 12 school in Lafayette, Colorado, Colorado. Wow. Colorado. Right outside Boulder. Yes. A lot of seniors smoked weed behind the dumpsters. Yes. I know you're thinking that. Colorado. Let's just say it. One morning on my way on went on my way to school with the carpool. Several police cars were redirecting traffic well away from the school and no one would tell us why. So we went back home and turned on the news to find that a suspicious black duffel bag was found in the student parking lot around 7am that morning. Naturally, the police were called suspecting it was a bomb. Other students and teachers held a lockdown at the school. A bomb robot was brought in to handle

the duffel bag and when it came to finally open it, law enforcement found several cans of spray on deodorant and a Kermit the Frog doll. The doll was colored with a Sharpie and cut up to look like it was beaten and bloody. What? Apparently a few junior senior boys thought it would be funny to quote unquote kidnap Kermit from a teacher's classroom and pass it around giving it its wounds. Two of the guys arranged a drop off of the doll. One guy didn't want the doll and threw it out of his car into the lot where it was found the next morning. They didn't get into any trouble with the police for this weird-ass prank and I can't remember if the school punished them or not. But for the rest of my high school career, every January 25th was Kermit the Bomb Day.

What a holiday. Stay sexy and don't mess with Kermit, Lauren. Oh my god, teenage boys should just be locked up for four years. Also, I think this is such an indication of like if somebody saw a like a suspicious duffel bag in the parking lot of my high school, people have been like somebody go get that duffel bag. Okay, but like you can kick that the furthest. Exactly. These days it's like call every authority you can get on the phone. Yeah, which isn't what which look is how it is these days. It is. Looking for a better cooking routine? With meal planning, shopping and prepping handled HelloFresh has you covered. HelloFresh makes home cooking easy and affordable so you can stay on track and on budget in the new year. HelloFresh meals are convenient, seasonal and

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free shipping on your first box when you go to hellofresh.ca slash murder 20 and use code murder 20. Goodbye. Hey, I'm Aresha. And I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wondery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about the incomparable diva, Whitney Houston. Whitney's voice defined a generation and even after her death, her talent remains unmatched. But her incredible success hit a deeply private pain. In our series, Whitney Houston, Destiny of a Diva, we'll tell you how she hid her true self to make everyone around her happy and how the pressure to be all things to all people led her down a dark path.

Follow Even the Rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Okay, this one's called I'm the teen photo lab worker in 1998 who knew all of your secrets and shit. Oh, and I think this one because my sister who was who's a photographer now had the same career job all through high school at the photo one hour photo lab. And so we got to see a lot of cool shit and got a lot of free I have some of those terrible high school like dramatized photos of me that my sister took that we got. I bet you do. Oh, you know I do some some glamour shot. I was a fucking glamour shot. Do you ever wear a feather boa in any of them? No, there were these were artsy ones, you know, like up in a tree. And then when she was learning

how to like do superimpose like another you and you're so you're looking at yourself. But I was like super into like, you know, raves and shit. So I get all dressed up with the fake eyelashes in the way. Sure. This was you were very heroin. She I was heroin. She thank you for saying that. I've been waiting for you to say that for five years. I give you the credit. You are so rightly deserved. Thank you. Okay, this says hi. Okay, so you did never ask for this specifically, but I think you're going to like it. My first job was at the neighborhood one hour photo lab in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and then Cherry Hill, New Jersey. That's where that mall is all caps, not Pennsylvania. Lesson learned. That's right. I was 17 years old when I got hired.

And 20 years later, I still think about that job every single day. I worked there for about five years. And wow, what a time. Something that most people never realized with that was that we had to look at all your photos, every single one of them and ordered a balanced color, control the exposure and check for dust. Every printed photo was looked at by myself or another one of the three employees. We were a standalone professional lab offering one hour service, so quality control was super important. And for someone curious by nature, checking every picture was the most thrilling part of my job. You're shaking your head. No. I mean, it is until that day, until the day. Well, it would take me a year to tell you everything I saw, but here are some highlights.

Every suburban mother who got breast implants would take titty picks in her bathroom mirror every single one multiple times. Oh, you couldn't, you couldn't see what they looked like until you looked at photos, you know, not like now. You can't see in the mirror. Yes. But that's the other way. You only able to see them that way. Oh, you wouldn't. You couldn't just take a selfie. Whatever. The county coroner's office had an account with us and processed autopsy photos. Once I saw someone I recognized being taken apart, no one even bothered to get NDAs, which still baffles me. I was 17. What the fuck? They should have worn these. Yes. That should be in the training manual. Yeah, absolutely. That's insane. So many people taking secret

weekend vacations with their side piece and then coming straight back home to their real life and finishing out the role of film with a family birthday. No. Once we're throw the negatives away on the spot and ask for an extra envelope for the separate picks, the stupid ones do not. Battling grandmas, two old ladies in the neighborhood had shared grandkids and they hated each other. Grandma A would ask me to automatically crop Grandma B out of any of her picks from the holidays. Well, Grandma B would try to give slip me a $5 note and she said that's not enough to sabotage Grandma A's photos with bad printing, but also make her a copy of good picks of the kids. That's genius. That is genius. I can't believe they both were like, I bet they would have,

if they had known the other one was doing that, they would have become friends because they were both so fucking sabotage. Yeah, exactly. You're a bitch. Yeah, same. I knew about major life events happening with my schoolmates that they didn't realize I was privy to. Cancer battles, divorces, home sales, financial trouble, deaths of pets, car crashes. I hold secrets like a fortress, but that lay mass saying, you never know what battles people are fighting is absolutely true, except I knew. And then she just said, porn shoots. I never figured out the location. The billing address for the account was a PO box, but there was a professional porn set somewhere close by in suburbia. Wow. And they were, quote, required to take photos of sets and actors during

production, quote, for compliance, whatever the fuck that means. I never understood it. This was the late nineties, many years before the era of inadvertently stumbling into porn on Twitter once daily. So the images were shocking to teen me. And yes, extra copies got printed out and put in a drawer, but not by me. So think back to your nineties photos and realize that some curious local art teen was re-running your titty pics and side pieces because the color balance was off for the first time. We need that shit to look its best. Stay, stay sexy and never go digital, E. Oh my God, that's first of all, thank you, E, for, for knowing us so well that you would know that we would adore this. Yes. It's perfection. Yeah. And the idea that you are stupid enough to cheat

on your spouse and take fucking photo. I think it's cheap enough to not be like, well, I only took 16 out of 24. It doesn't matter. Yeah. But also it's just like, so sorry, you're going to go away for the weekend with your secret lover, man or woman, and then be like, can't go over by that rock. Click. This is so lame. It is so unsexy. Oh, I have a couple more pictures in my camera. Let's just use these real quick. I'll use these up. That's fine. It's just like, wait, so do you have a secret photo album? Like what's, what are those secret photos for? Yeah, it's called your glove compartment where you stash all year. Nerd, nerd cheater. There's nothing worse than a nerd cheater. God, that's so good. Yeah. If you also worked at a photo mat or did you ever see that

Robin Williams movie one hour photo? Oh, so good. God, it's good. It was so good. It's good. If you have a, if you had a job that you're like, you don't, you never like a, I'm sure bowling alley workers are like, what was your job that you're like, you don't understand what it was actually like here because this person worked there was a weirdo and that old timer was this. Send those into us. We want to hear about your jobs. Your bar back at the local bar. Things went sour. What did you see? We love lists, bullet pointed lists. A creepy, weird, odd, the underbelly. This is the David Lynch email series where it's like, it's suburbia, but suddenly you're the 17 year old holding the secrets for everyone in town.

You're the only person in town who hasn't drank the Kool-Aid and you're like, I see all because of course you do your art team. Like that's what your, that's what your job is to be bummed and like observe it and also it'd be just awesome if then you were like in school and then your math teacher is like, well, you didn't turn that paper in. So you're going to get enough and you're like, I don't think so. I saw what you did this weekend. And then you're just like, you do understand how printing pictures works. Don't you, Mr. Hegel? Yeah. Yeah. I always got a plan. Use things to your advantage. Strategize. Okay. My final one, this is an email. I'm not going to read you the whole thing because it gives it away, but part of the title of this is pre-cell phone times.

Oh yeah. Which I think it's good to talk about these times. That's right. This was two guys. I forgot to mention it. You might not know. This is priests. You have to get all of your photos developed and they'll share it. You have a fucking studio in your house, which nobody does. Yeah. Okay, cool. It was such, it was so different. Everything was. There was only four numbers as we told you. Look, there was four numbers. There was four possible picture choices. Birthday, blowing out a birthday cake, standing in front of a rock. Please don't blow out a birthday cake. Blowing a birthday cake off a table into your mean grandma's face while your other mean grandma laughs at her. Okay, ready? Yeah. Pre-cell phone time. Hi everyone, human and otherwise.

One of my favorite stories happened when my sister's family came from Wisconsin to spend December 24th through January 31st with the rest of the family in Illinois. Too long. And right. That's a good long visit. That's a month. This was a big deal because they were dairy farmers and it was difficult to get someone to care for the cows when they traveled. That's true. They had to be back for the five a.m. milking on January 1st, but my sister didn't care. She was going to visit with tons of relatives who would get to see how her toddler boys had grown. On January 31st, her husband said that they should get going at 5 p.m., but she wanted to stay for my aunt's New Year's Eve party. They compromised by going to the party, but only staying till 10 p.m.

It was a five hour drive on a snowstorm and a snowstorm was coming. She took the first turn driving since she'd had to entertain the boys on the way up and hope they'd be sound asleep by the time her husband took over. That's very smart. She was also a little pissed. She couldn't stay later. This was the early 80s. Instead of car seats, the couch in the back of their conversion van was folded flat and dad and the boys stretched out on it unrestrained. I went to my first concert in a conversion van with my friend Jennifer Mason, her mom and dad driving. It was like we got to be taken in a living room to San Jose to go see the band Chicago. In a box, that was a traveling living room with carpet on the walls and the floor. The carpet was the only protection you had in case of

a car accident. That's right. That would be rug burn. Shag carpet rug burn was the airbag of the 80s. It wasn't good. She drove for about two hours total, only stopping for gas around the state line. The snow was getting pretty bad and she was getting tired. So she hissed, Gary, I need you to drive. Being careful not to wake the boys. No answer. She whispered again, Gary, this isn't funny. Figuring he was giving her the silent treatment after their disagreement before. Finally, she pulled over and stormed to the back of the van. Her two boys were asleep on the couch, but her husband was not in the van. She figured he must have gotten out of the gas station 45 minutes earlier. No. Not sure what to do. She decided to drive to the next pay phone and call the state troopers.

She got to the pay phone, started dialing and who walks in behind her, but Gary. He did get out at the gas station. He returned from the restroom just in time to see her pull away. A couple who had gassed up saw the whole thing happen and said hop in, buddy, we'll catch her. All right. They lost my sister, the speed demon in the storm. And after almost an hour, said they reckoned it was time for Gary to call the state troopers and take it from there. They happened to stop at the same rest area. Yes. My poor sister and Gary live in a tiny community in Wisconsin. And it was literally years before people would let her leave any gathering without saying, Hey, don't forget Gary now. Oh, how fucking annoying. The third time

someone did that, she won it. And then she's moving into year 17 of like, huh, very, very funny, Judy. Okay. Say sexy. And if you don't want to get left behind, always tell the driver when you exit the road trip vehicle, Julie. Yeah. That was a good one. And also you always have to tell your husband to watch your purse, even though there's no way he wouldn't watch your purse. That reminds me, like anytime I get up to go to the, you know, I used to go to restaurants, be like, watch my purse. And then I'd be like, why would he watch my, if someone walked up and snatched my purse, he wouldn't say, well, you didn't tell me to watch your purse. Yeah. It's very similar to when people get up and say, I'm going to go to the bathroom when you're at a

restaurant with like friends. And I'd always be like, as people are standing up, I'd always go, where are you going? Because it's like, there's, there's true, like, unless you're going to drink at the bar alone and then come back to the dinner, there's really only one place anyone ever goes. But we always go like, excuse me, I'm going to go to the bathroom. Right. But where are we now? We know. I know. Do you just say that to them when they tell you that? I know. You're like, you're going to go smoke weed by the dumpster. And we all know that. Just like the kids in Boulder. Those were great guys. Fun times. Send anything. Send anything. Send, send, send what's the scraps at the bottom of your purse

in my favorite murder at Gmail. We want to, we want to know. We want to know everything about you. Yeah, it's good. It's great for the relationship. Also stay sexy and don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?