This Podcast Is... Uncalled For - Tale of the 24 Year Old Midget

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

What do Webelos Scouts, nuclear power plants, and bald eagles all have in common?  This 30+ year old tale that Mike will be sharing with us in today's episode of the podcast.

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Can't you see there's so much more? Laughs and tales you can't ignore a journey that will leave you floor. In the night or in the day, just press play we're on our way, voice a sharp opinion. Hi, very welcome to the podcast. A couple of things about this episode one. I'm going to call this a semi-snowed-in episode because it started snowing today.

Fortunately, not deep enough to impede my travels, but still, it snowed. We're in Kansas City. It snows here in the winter. And if you've been a regular listener to the podcast, Then, you know, we've done episodes where actually have been snowed in. So there's that part. And then another part is today's episode comes as a result of a special request. Oddly enough, from a gentleman I've known my whole life by name of Ben Chernivsky Jr.

A lot of people listen to this will probably know him as Ben or Mr. C. I know him as Dad. Anyway, the story I'm about to tell you is a scouting story, which I'm going to title the episode, The Tale of the 24-year-old Midgets, and you'll find that as I tell the story. why I chose that title this would have been December 20 no not 20 so here's how long ago was 992 1993 around there maybe 1991 because I would have been 13 at the time of this story there a video does exist of this

But, yeah, my dad's initial idea was for me to rip the audio from that video and share it with y'all. But there's a couple of complications, one of which is most of the kids in that video, well, were kids at the time, 10 years old. And I was 13, as I said. We're talking about we were all minors at the time. And I can't find a tape right now either. All right. So for context, this was a Boy Scout field trip. Specifically, it was a Weeblos field trip.

I feel I need to explain. For those who have never been in the Boy Scouts program, Cub Scouts, those are the elementary school kids, or elementary through about fifth grade. And fifth grade and above, that's your Boy Scouts, that's your Eel Scouts and all that. So Cup Scouts is like, is the Boy Scouts before elementary school. kids. Weebelows is the only two-year program in the Cub Scout organization

for our fourth and fifth graders. This is the step just before become a full-blown boy scouts and as webelos, not wee-belo, we were taught it was an acronym for will be loyal scouts.

So weebelos, not we-belo. It's like ninja ninjas all right so so this would been my

brother Joe's uh uh weblows den um they're called dens and packs

in Cups Scouts patrols and troops and boyscats um so this was my brother's den

I was the den chief A den chief is a full-blown boy scouts who takes time to help out a Cubs scout den. And it just happened to the den leader leaders going back to when Joe was

a Cubs scout were one of my two parents by Weebelers who had been my dad running the den so they're all 10 years old so first year

weeblows and we go on a little day long field trip first stop some park in

south-eastern Nebraska along the Missouri River to see a showboat a steamboat just sitting there

doing nothing and the park we happened to be at did not have a flushing toilet so we stopped there

and then we stopped there later for lunch after the next part of this trip and that would have been my dad arranged

for the den to tour the training facility of a nuclear power plant I kid you not my dad when he was working did a lot of work with turbine generators

in nuclear power plants including the one we went to which was Cooper nuclear power plant in southeast Nebraska Now, proviso, the training center is not actually part of the plant is right next to the power plant. They would not, they're not going to let a bunch of 10-year-olds actually walk in and tour a nuclear power plant now, are they?

and we are certainly not the Simpsons where yeah the very second episode of the Simpsons that's exactly what they did was to our nuclear power plants but they weren't going to the kids anywhere near the functioning power plants so training center it was and my dad was telling this about one of the scouts so I know this particular scout wound up becoming an eagle scout and is follows me on Facebook and has done a

has done pretty good job working with pipes and plumbing and plumbing sales and stuff like that so congratulations to him but for this particular trip he chimed in with news of this particular restriction I'm a 24-year-old midget so hence the title of this episode yeah we go into the training facility

and they actually have a full-blown mock-up of what's the control room inside the functioning power plant would look like and and this was the early 90s so

all the cool shit that we have now went around then so we're talking about old school keyboards and levers and switches and lights and all that

all that stuff so some still some really old school technology but it was really cool it was cool a whole room looking like that

and they put their a bit of a simulation to what would it look like if something bad words happened at the power plant

so that's pretty cool and I felt like I got involved I think the kids all got involved as well that

so yeah so when we when we left we went back to that park for a sack lodge and then drove back down the Missouri River to the site that

I always was under assumption it was between Kansas City and St. Joseph but no it's between St. Joseph and the Missouri Iowa state line so the place is called Squaw Creek I didn't come up with the name so but a nature reserve where they have a annual at least it was annual at the time events called bald eagle days which evolved among other things a speech involving real-life bald eagle and man those birds are huge and then once we're

done uh yeah we spent the rest of that uh the next uh hour to drive around the place looking for bald eagles uh but a couple things uh of notes one there was a giant it's a pretty hilly place and there was a giant hill and uh and uh we all decided yeah it'd be cool to roll down the hill 10-year-olds and one 13-year-old rolling down the hill and making themselves quite dizzy as you do and then we proceed to drive through the reserve and went to a spotting tower and I managed to get myself in a little bit of trouble at said tower so so yeah to the

to the degree that whoever got me into trouble said I was only hanged from said tower and mind you this was not a big tower at all may have been big for me at the time but it couldn't be more than a couple stories so

certainly not taller than the tower they used to stand at mission park so uh yeah that's uh pretty much the extent of that particular trip and uh it was a fun trip uh i'm certainly not going to recommend uh everyone going to a nuclear power plant and uh grand tour because that ain't happening all right just a reminder my dad worked with that power plane and but certainly check to see and they may have changed the name already too because I know that that particular word has a negative

connotation to it so they may have changed the name but yeah check out check to see that nature preserve I'll look it up after I'm done now probably if the if the name has changed I will let you know in my outro but uh yeah thanks so much for listening everybody and uh we will talk again very soon all right so shortly after doing the recording alerting that squaw creek has been renamed it is now Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge as L-O-E-S-S

Bluffs and it is indeed just off of I-29 north of St. Joseph and the

small town closest to Cooper nuclear power plant is Brownsville some of those ones in Nebraska in the in the southeast corner of Nebraska

along the Missouri River. This podcast is Uncalled for is also produced and edited by myself Mike Jarenovsky. Our opening music is this podcast is uncalled for theme created at suno.com that's S-U-N-O-com.

Our outro music for this episode is The Traveling Man by Nats. M. Wills, license under public domain, sound recording common law protection license. You can find this music at freemusicarchive.org. Please support the podcast and purchase our exclusive uncalled for merchandise, t-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, stickers, and so much more. Go to www.com.com. press.com slash uncalled for pod. Thank you so much for listening. We will see you next time.

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