Latest / Doug Has Questions / Episode 43: Jim Stanford; A Life Built On Hard Work

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Episode 43: Jim Stanford; A Life Built On Hard Work · Doug Has Questions

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to this episode of Doug Has Questions.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Today my guest is Longtime Haynes resident, Jim Stanford, and I don't know, dog musher, coach, construction, dad, husband, grandfather, volunteer, great grandfather.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Great grandfather now?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Emmett up in Fairbanks.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Great grandfather.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Are there any titles I missed on that, Jim?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: I yeah, Soldier of Fortune.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Soldier of Fortune.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, well, welcome to the show.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Before we get started, I got a I got a gift for you.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then if you turn it over to the other side, you know, I have the questions, but and this this is the name of the podcast.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's the name of the podcast.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Doug has questions.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Good, good.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Well, great.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: How'd you get into this?
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's I just wanted to do something different, and this is what popped up in my head.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I I thought it was going to be a lot simpler than this, but then I got Marty Fowler involved, and then Sam McFeeders and Chris Leburton.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: They're all like, hey, if we try this, if we try this.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so now we've got the setup that you see in front of you.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I've got a cousin back in Louisville, good, good brother of mine, actually, Bob Jones.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: And he uh he's got a podcast set up in his basement.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: And uh he's I I don't know if he's ever gonna go quite formal like you are, but he's he has a lot of fun with it.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, we've been having a blast.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, good.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Just uh the stories that I've been able to hear and then share with everybody else that have people that I've known for decades that I had no clue.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of mystery people out there in the world.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of mystery people, and and and it's fun too being able to share those with people too, just to get a better in-depth understanding of who people are and to share that with others.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: And you better believe it.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: And some some some of the guests make me cry, some of them.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: I understand completely.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Been some lot of emotion on here.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you better believe it.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: But it's been fun.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been great having Sam and Marty on the other side of the side.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, my God, huh?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: This would this would not be happening without those guys.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: I love his uh drone footage he does.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: Drones over Hanes.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: Drones over Hanes.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: So let's let's let's get started with Jim Stanford's story.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Where where'd you grow up, Jim?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I grew up in uh eastern Ohio, about 50 to 60 miles from Cleveland in the farm country.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: And went to uh you know, went to elementary school, junior high, and high school there.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh spent my summers as a young guy mowing huge lawns with with basically back then a push mower and four or five acre lawns for you know for five bucks a piece and stuff, and thought I was making real gravy.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Four four to five acres with a push mower.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: With a push mower for five dollars.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: I was I was you were in the money.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: I was in shape too, boy.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: Let me tell you.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: And then I got into caddying.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: I caddied uh for at Berkshire Hills Golf Course, which uh wound up hosting the I forget what year this is, the U.S.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: Open.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I actually got to caddy for the U.S.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: Open because one of the professional caddies never showed up, and some guy walks into the caddy shack and he goes, Anybody want a caddy?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, I do.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: So you were caddying during the U.S.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: Open.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: I caddy during the US Open for a guy, Doug uh I forget his name, Doug Sweeney or something like that.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: But uh yeah, it was quite quite the experience for me.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: Did he make the cut?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: He did not.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: He did not.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: He was an amateur trying to go pro, you know, the US Open is open to anybody.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: But uh But here's here's something that's interesting financially.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: So back in the day, a kid like me, if I worked in a grocery store, which I did f for for a little while, uh when I was like a freshman or sophomore in high school, you made a dollar twenty-five an hour.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: That was it.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: Gas was eighteen cents a gallon.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, okay, so caddian.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: Get this.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: So I would get three dollars for carrying one bag, nine holes, but I carried two bags, one on each shoulder.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: So that meant I was getting six for nine holes.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: I was getting twelve dollars for eighteen holes.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'd get out in the morning for eighteen holes, and if I wanted to, I'd get out in the afternoon for eighteen holes.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: So that was 36 bucks a day I was making, and I was caddying five to six days a week.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I was taking home about$200 a week as a kid when everybody else was making probably$75 working in a grocery store.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it was and then I got tips on the city.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say you probably had tips on that.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: Oh heck yeah, I carried this guy's bag that had uh he had a one arm, a cut off at the elbow, so he would click in his golf club into that, his prosthetic.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: And his golf bag had steel tubes in it because he had to protect the attachment, the metal attachment for his prosthetic golf club.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: That guy would tip me 20, 30 bucks because the bag was so heavy.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: I never hurt my back, but I came close.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, yeah, so and then uh yeah, so that So what what what did your parents do then?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: My dad was an advertising executive.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: He drove into Cleveland 50, 60 miles every day, and he uh he worked for some big industrial, he was a he was what they call a copywriter.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: So if you if you looked in industrial publications, you might see an ad for Martin Marietta, which was uh the the rocket company back in the day.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: They they worked with NASA on rockets.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh my dad would write copy uh for advertisements for Martin Marietta Corporation.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's what he did.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: He had a master's in economics from Akron University, where LeBron James would have gotten in.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: But my dad graduated from North High School in Akron, which LeBron James played for North High School.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's kind of interesting.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh my mother was was was a uh housewife, you know, and uh yeah, a tremendous woman.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: And uh yeah.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: Any siblings?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: I did.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: I have two sisters.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: My older I have a I'm a twin, so I have a twin sister still living east of Cleveland.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: My older sister, Gloria, passed away about uh two months ago.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm sorry.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: Back in Louisville, and I back in uh Nashville is where she lived.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she was it was her she had a really good life.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: A single mom that raised a boy all by herself.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: I had ultimate respect for this woman, what she did.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: She was on a full scholarship to Denison University in Ohio, and her sophomore year met this man much older and got married, and then that didn't work, so she raised the the boy by by herself, doing whatever she had to do, pumping gas, tending bar, whatever my sister did, you know.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh she she was probably an example for me of the of the way to how to live.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh huh.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: Got up every morning, went to work.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: How much older than you was she?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Six years.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Six years, okay.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: But and then my twin sister's still going strong back there.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: She's got uh a couple kids, live right with her in the country there.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh where we grew up was farm country.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: Now, 50 to 60 miles east of Cleveland.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's all five-acre parcels, multi-million dollar homes.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: The same thing that seems to be happening in other places of the country is happening there.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: And then uh high school was uh I went to West Chioga High School, which is uh was a school of about, I'm trying to think, a thousand kids my graduating class at 220.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: And were you were you involved in athletics in high school then?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: I played football, basketball, track, and baseball.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you did it at all.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: But because I had to work, uh baseball was I r uh out of all of them, I enjoyed I think, you know, after all these years have gone by, Doug, I look back and of course my involvement here with the track team with the Haynes.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: I think track was my favorite favorite sport.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: I was I was real good at football.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: Got a full ride for football and track to Division I Kent State.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: And uh uh What what years at Kent State?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: This was 66, yeah, 66 through 70.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: And was I there?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: Was Don James a football coach then?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: I he came in my last year.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: Your last year?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: Before that, it was Leo, yeah.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: And then he went to UW.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: Did he have Don James as a coach?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I for one year.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh, this is awesome.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: And and and and and what happened was uh Kent is always has always been and still is, other than a couple years ago, they had a tremendous team, but they've always been a stepping stone for coaches.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: I played with Nick Saban.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I was gonna that was going to be my next question.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: You had to have played with Nick.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: Nick Saban was a couple years behind me, and the only reason I remember him, I think I was a junior, he was a freshman, was he was a defensive back.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and the coaches had us put masking tape on our helmets with our names.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I remember Saban being on one of the helmets.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know him well.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but he was a defensive back, and I was a I was a what was called then a uh uh wide out.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: Now it's called a wide receiver, you know, split sp split out to the end.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: But uh probably went against him in drills.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, probably maybe some drills, but uh back in those years, freshmen couldn't play varsity.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, he was and then uh track and field I did at Kent and I I did what I coached here, the discus and uh the open 400.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: Oh wow, ran the open 400.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, what was Don James like as a coach?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: What were your memories of him?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: I don't remember much because the coach before that was Leo Strang.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and he was the guy that I knew, and quite frankly, I didn't like him very much.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: He was very impersonal, didn't get uh didn't get very close to the players.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: I think they'd hired him out of Maslin High School, which is this national powerhouse football team.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: Their stadium holds 25,000 people, and uh Don James um came in, and the only thing I noticed about him is he uh was really warm with the players, really up close and personal, made you feel as if he cared about you.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: You know, what can we do to make you a better player as a pr and a better person?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, if you'll notice all your good coaches, they're like that.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: They really connect with the players on a positive level, you know.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, it was quite the experience for me, you know.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so anyway, yeah, so we're already you you said there's some crazy things, and we're already you put you're a teammate of Nick Saban and coached by Don James, which just blows my mind right there.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's cool as hell.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: For for a for a husky and everything.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: That that's well that's pretty awesome.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: They had the biggest offensive line in uh in uh in in in Division I football all across the United States.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: So based on your years, I'm trying to remember, were you there with the Kent State?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: I was there during you were there when that all went down.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well what was that like?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: There's some other interesting interesting stories there.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um well I tell you, because I was uh involved in athletic What year were you when they had the Kent State?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: That was 1970.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: 1970 and James Michener wrote the book Kent State.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: And he collaps he uh that was n after 1970, but he collaborated with a professor at the time, and this was we're we're fast forwarding now to 72 when that that's a whole nother long story.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: So uh the Kent State incident happened in May 1970.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: I saw all the incidents leading up to the actual shooting.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: The day of the shooting, I was driving, I had I was driving to California and across the Indiana border when on the radio four dead in Ohio.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like the Crosby Stills and Ash song.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: But I saw him burn down the ROTC building, I saw all the demonstrations on campus, massive demonstrations on campus.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: I had a good friend that knew Allison, I forget her last name, one of the kids that was shot.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: But you know what's interesting about this is so fast forwarding to 72, when I met Deb, okay, I okay, so from college I went to San Diego, went to master divers school, okay, became a professional diver.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: Somewhere in there, don't ask me how it happened, because I didn't even have any clue how it happened in the first place.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: I got housed with uh two members of SEAL Team 1 uh Echo Platoon on Coronado Island uh during the Vietnam War.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, wait, okay, we're gonna need some more explanation on this, Jim.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: You're you graduate from Kent State.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Kent State, yeah.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we when you were leaving, had you already graduated?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: Were you going to California for two?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: I was in uh what's called general studies at Kent State.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: I had four different majors and minors.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I didn't get a specific degree in any one of them.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: So uh at that point I left and went to uh I was going to California with a friend of mine and uh gonna just change my life, right?
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: Because I had another friend who had best friend growing up, neighbor who was living in San Diego.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: He said, Jim, come on out.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so I did.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so you were on the that that was the trip when you're heading to California when you when the shooting happened at Kit.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: Right there, crossing the Indiana border.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: How did that make you feel that you're on the way out?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Was there has there ever been any reflection that, man, if I hadn't been going to California, I might have been in the middle of that?
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know what?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we I was in the middle of a lot of demonstrations and a lot of angry feelings going all over sea.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it really is true that uh there was always an anti-war sentiment on Kent State's campus.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: It was going on in Berkeley, Columbia, uh, across the United States.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of colleges were yeah.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but what what you had to understand about Kent State is a lot of outside agitators did come in.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh students from the Democratic Society who were pretty radical into creating scenes, you know, and they created one hell of a scene at Kent State.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the uh the Chancellor of Kent State at the time was Glenn Owles.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: He's the guy that called in the National Guard.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: I was living in an off-campus apartment, and I came in through the arches on the, you know, walk into class one day, and there's a tank sitting on the front of campus, and I look up and there's these two young kids staring down.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: I said, What the heck are you guys doing here?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: He said, We don't know, we're just told to do this, you know.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: So, and then that's when the National Guard started to come on to come into campus.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: And then that night, two or three nights before the shooting, they burned down the ROTC building.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody did, and they never found out who did it.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: But so uh so then I went to California, went to were you were you relieved that you were out of that situation?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: Especially when you hear that news report coming over the radio.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, oh man, I'm glad I'm heading out.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, here's here's what happened to Kent State is it when I was there, there was 28,000 kids.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: Even it was a big school.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: In one semester, it dropped to 14,000.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: Parents pulled their kids right out.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't want them there, you know.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, but then I went to so you go to California, and was the did you go there with the intent to go to this master diver school?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I wanted to do something, wasn't quite sure what it was, but I got an opportunity to do that, and I did, and uh got certified as a uh professional commercial diver.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: And somewhere in there, I was that like the hard hat diving?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it was more mixed more mixed gas.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: So it was the triangular mask, it's got a hose coming, a hose going to the surface.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: You can breathe either uh air or you can breathe mixed gas, helium oxygen.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: So you're trained into doing all that deep diving and stuff like that.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so in the process, in one of the classes, they had SEALs, SEAL team guys in these classes, and I got to know a couple of these guys real good.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: And somehow I got assigned to SEAL Team 1 Echo Platoon as a civilian, what they said, advisor.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: So I had to go through a lot of the training with these guys.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: I never there was never a danger of me going to Vietnam at the time with them, and both uh Paul Geis and uh Kirk Scarborough.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um the two of these guys, they wound up doing two tours of Vietnam.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: But then they were supposed to go back to a third.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: I could have possibly gone with for demolition purposes.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: Because one of the big training grounds was Subic Bay in the Philippines, where they went and blew up coral because they had to practice what they might do actually in Vietnam to let landing craft get in and all that kind of stuff.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, right about then, uh uh President Johnson canceled the war.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody was pulling back, the deployment got canceled.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: So did you go to Subic to work on that?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: No, did not.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's what those guys were doing, but they never sent you over the city.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: I did not.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I probably would have gone, but they they canceled the whole deployment.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody was coming back from Vietnam.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: So what was that like training with those guys?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: I was an athlete.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: So you were at the time.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: I was, man, it was right after college, track football, everything.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I was in way better shape than a lot of them when they started.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we had to run an optical course that was unbelievable and stuff like that.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: I I really didn't have what what I had what I would have had trouble with is I didn't have to go through Hell Week.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: So what they have to do is they no sleep for almost a week.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: They're they got you crawling on on your belly, they're firing live rounds over your heads.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, then they'll throw an M80 next to your head, and it's I mean, what these guys go through, people don't realize, is pretty horrifying.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: And 150 of them will start, they're lucky to graduate 30 to 40.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: They wash out that many guys.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: And gals now, gals are involved too, like that, you know.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: But uh it was it was really enlightening.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: So, so okay, so I did that.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then this is a wild story.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't just happen to train with some seals.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Did that.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: Let's move on to the next thing.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so then, so then I uh okay, so I'm looking around, I see an adversement for Australia Needs People.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: So men.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: So Australia had a program in the mid-1970s or early 1970s where if you were a US male and you had any skills at all, you could they they would pay your way to Australia, you had to stay for two years, they got you a job, right?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and uh at the end of two years you could make a decision.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: If you wanted to stay, you had to go the in the the Australian military.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't have an issue with that.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: I would have done that.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, and then if you didn't want to stay, they had taken enough wages out of your pay to fly you home.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I was going.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: I signed up.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: I signed all the documents.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: They had me a job diving in Perth, Australia.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: I was going.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I uh I went to the San Diego consulate, signed all the papers, but they said, okay, we need you to go back to the main Australian consulate in New York, finish signing some papers, and you're gone.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: So you're in San Diego and they tell you you got to fly to New York.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I drove.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: I drove a Volkswagen paper.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: You drove to New York to sign some papers?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: They couldn't put those in the mail for you or something?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: No, I I I don't know what the deal was, but that was the the uh you know the departure point with the departure point, yeah.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, I drive across the country and I stop east of Cleveland to see my dad because I was gonna be gone a minimum of two years.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm sitting there in my dad's apartment, and uh out of the blue, I completely changed my mind.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: I decide I'm gonna go back to Kent State for a semester or two.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: I did.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I enrolled in the Australians come looking for it, and they're like, wait a second.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: You made us a promise.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: You need to show up to this day.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: I've never heard from Australia.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but what's interesting now, and then Christian Lindy, you know, he lives he lives over there.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: But um so anyway, uh drive back east.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sitting with my dad one night in in his apartment, and uh out of the blue, I decide to go back.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: To Kent State for a semester.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: What were you going to study that?
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, and I enrolled in an upper division graduate level psychological statistics.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: It was a statistics course for psychology.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: I had a major in psychology.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I'm in this class, a hundred kids, you know, and I and I can remember this like it was yesterday.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: This gal walks in in front of the blackboard.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: Those were the days they actually had blackboards, Sam.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: She walks by, she's in a red sweater, nice long, straight blonde hair.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: She walks by the thing.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: I noticed her, you know, didn't dwell on it, but I did notice her.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: So this is a class with a hundred kids.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: She goes over, sits down by the windows over way away from me.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't think anything of it.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: The next day, she's sitting right behind me.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: And that class, we walk out together.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: Three weeks later, for spring break, we're hauling butt to Lake Avasu City, where her dad was an Air Force colonel who retired, bought a lot in Lake Avisoo, and we get married.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: What the by a justice of the peace.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: Here 54 years later.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: Are you serious?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: I'm serious.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Three weeks of you sits behind you.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: You guys are like peace and you can't make this up.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: I remember I uh we went on a date.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: The first date we had was I can remember her sitting beside me in the Volkswagen.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: Same Volkswagen I drove cross-country.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: And uh it just felt as if we we just knew each other.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't have to say much, we just knew each other.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe you guys have experienced this, I don't know.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: But uh anyway, so so three weeks later we're married, you know, and then we go back to Kent, stay there, finish, finish that semester in the next one, and then we actually moved back to Lake Cavasu City and lived for on and off for like six to eight years.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: On and off.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good thing they didn't have they didn't want to mail those pay those papers to San Diego, but you had to drive.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: Just thinking how that would have turned out.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: But uh but but it's pretty pretty pretty interesting stuff.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that crazy how small things like that though?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: The change the total trajectory of your life.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: So that if they would have been like, yep, it's all here.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: You're flying out of San Diego on your way to Australia.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: I remember when they interviewed uh uh during World War II, they interviewed Dwight Eisenhower.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: And he and they said, Okay, General, how did you guys do this?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: How did how did you guys uh all of a sudden get it together to defeat one of the most powerful armies ever in the world?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: How did this happen?
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: He says, Well, you know, we like to think it was us, but he says, he said, What happened was some little cleaning lady in the White House made a comment to him or somebody in the White House about, well, maybe you guys should do this.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: And it triggered an idea.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: And that idea became the invasion of Normandy.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's just things like what you're talking about.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: These little things happen in your life, and you don't know how important they are, but they are really important.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, so anyway, but that's how I how that's how Deb and I met.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's pretty cool.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: 54 years of marriage.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: 54 years of marriage.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: I know.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: So then um So you're in Lake Havasous.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: We're in Lake Havasu, and Deb's dad was from Alabama, cell outside of Selma, a little was was was dad alright with Jim marrying his daughter after three weeks, or was that a little bit of a hard time?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: He was he was okay with it.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: Her dad at first, you know, wasn't too sure about me.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know, this guy, you know, but uh as years went by, he and I became pretty close.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: He he was a very staunch, he flew uh uh all all the big planes, the big B-52 bombers.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: He flew the radar planes in Vietnam, high altitude, and then he retired to Lake Haves, so he became a commercial pilot for uh Esco Electrical.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: He flew their corporate jet all over the place and stuff, but uh very solid guy.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: Very solid.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: Get up, go to work, no nonsense, guy, you know.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, but yeah, so so Deb and I then, after a few years and knowing her dad from Alabama and her grandmother and aunt who lived in Orville, we said, hey, maybe we'd come like to come back there, and we did, and we went to outside of Selma, Alabama, where we were for two or three years.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: And in the meantime, we had cash, our oldest son.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: He was born in Alabama, yeah.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: But we were there right after uh shortly after, a few years after the Martin Luther King march across the Edmund Pettit's Bridge.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: So our property we had, we had a little built a little cabin there, we still have the property.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um we uh on the one side we had a wonderful black family, and uh that he was the uh Don Garrett was his name.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: He he was a carpenter and they had a little farm, they raised pigs and stuff.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: On the other side, exact opposite, we had a family by the name of Barnes.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: They were in the sheriff's posse that rode across the bridge and beat up all the everybody on on uh the Edmund Pest.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: So these are your two neighbors.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Our two neighbors you're kind of like the fence between between them.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: We were the fence between them.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I can remember one morning, and you know, Cash was, you know, he was eight months a year.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he he enjoyed, we had a nice garden, he enjoyed going out and uh, you know, eating carrots and stuff out of the garden, right?
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, one morning.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: And these guys had they were shooting a lot all the time, but this time it got pretty personal.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: Bullets were hitting the side of our cabin.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: They're they're shooting across your property.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: They're shooting across our property.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I don't I I'm hoping they weren't trying to shoot at anybody in in particular, but they they were shooting, you know, and bullets were starting to hit the side of our cabin.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: So what I did, I'd had enough.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: I'd listen to this, you know.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'd had enough.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: I and Deb can tell you I came flying out of bed, ripped off my t-shirt, I ran down through the woods, down a ravine, up to the fence line, and there they were, three of them, Mr.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: Barnes and his two sons.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I just said, okay, I'll take all three on right now.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: You know, right now.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sick of this, you know, this is nuts.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: And uh they backed off.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: We never had an issue with them before.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: But what I found out, and I have another story about the middle of Selma, is if you called the local police, they were involved with the Ku Klux Klan.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: If you call the state troopers, they most of them were involved with the Ku Klux Klan.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: If you got stopped by a black state trooper, you went, oh my god, thank God.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: And then uh uh and then if you call the FBI, if you start climbing the ladder, it's like, okay, we're having this issue.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: Who can we call?
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: Who can we call that's actually gonna solve the problem the reality that's gonna be?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: There wasn't anybody.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: There wasn't anybody.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: So at that point, Bobby Kevin.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: So at that point, Deb and I made the decision of we really didn't want to have our kids educated there.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that uh the way they got around segregation then was they started white private schools.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: So you had the choice of either sending your kid to public school where they got no no the teachers made like seven, eight thousand a year, they got no support, or the private school where they were actually treat uh preaching some bigotry, you know.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: So there wasn't a choice there.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: So at that point, Deb and I went back to Arizona.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: You know, yeah.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: I got a job teaching.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: So you said there was another incident in the world.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: Oh God.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: We one one hot, and one another reason we left there was for six months that last summer, it was 105, 95 percent humidity.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_02: So if you've ever been in those conditions, and I was working, I was doing manual construction and everything.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's pretty, it's pretty tough.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: I was in Biloxi, Mississippi in June one year, and that just about killed me, and I wasn't really doing any work.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was just out, I just stepped outside of the truck and it was just it felt like it was in a shower, just drenched with sweat like that.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: And you actually you feel like you're gonna faint, and you better get in some shade real quick and let yourself recover.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I had to do a little bit of manual stuff.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, but it was like 15-20 minutes, and I was I was like, holy cow, how do people do this every single day?
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, Jamie, my daughter, her daughter Talon, got a full ride back to Florida Southern University and for volleyball, and she just transferred to San Diego State, got another ride to San Diego State.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_02: She just couldn't take the humidity.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: She couldn't take the she she just grown up here, you know, she couldn't take it in Oregon.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, where were we?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um so the hot summer Selma.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: We went back to Arizona.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: No, but before that, you said you had another story about mid-1900.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, Deb and I, yeah.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_02: We were uh we hot summer day, we decided we're gonna go downtown with cash, and he was, like I said, he was this this tall.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_02: We're downtown, we're gonna get an ice cream cone, and we walk around the corner in there in front of us in full battle dress is the clan, about 30 or 40 members on one side of the street, and on the other side of the street, the black folk.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: And you could have cut the atmosphere with the knife, the tension in the air.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: And uh yeah, you you could feel the vibes coming off the Klansman, and I I don't know how to describe it.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: Evil?
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I mean, I mean, I don't know how to just even describe that, but it was not good.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: You could feel it.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: They weren't gonna be buying them ice cream.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, and so I told Deb, I says, We need to just back out of here, and we did.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: We just backed off and went down the corner and went home.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: But uh even at that time, which was well, that would have been what six years after the Martin Luther King March 65 that happened, uh, it was still that that serious back there.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of great friends there, don't get me wrong, a lot of wonderful people there.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: We still have friends, you know, there, we still have our property.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, but uh as far as at that time with the politics the way they were, we just didn't really want to raise our kids.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: So every time we moved, we I think we had the kids in mind, which I think most people do, don't you think of that?
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um you should.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of what once you start having them, that's kind of your full-time job, right?
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: To do the best by them and give them the best experience.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: So then we went back to to Phoenix, moved back to Phoenix, and I was I had always done construction masonry, had my own little business, carpet masonry, but I also taught high school.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I taught at Phoenix Union High School for four years, which was the biggest high school west of the Mississippi.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_02: 5,000 kids.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_02: Now, now they broke that high school up, and now the vocational side has become Metro Tech, which takes juniors and seniors from all high schools in Phoenix, and it's it's just a wonderful, wonderful program uh that I totally support.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: And um where any trade, any profession, from nursing to any kind of construction, any kind of mechanics, police science, cosmetology, the kids from all over Phoenix in the high schools, junior, seniors, could come to them.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: They could come to the center in the afternoon for two-hour block classes.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: They could take their college prep courses in the morning and then do the vocational, which a lot of them did.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so while while I was doing that, I taught uh construct construction tech, uh, some math skills because uh when we we'd got kids that were juniors and seniors in high school, a lot of them gang members, a lot of them from they were all from the inner city, just and uh they'd been passed through the grades.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: The schools there were a factory, and they admitted that we have to get these kids passed through these grades.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: So I'd get juniors and seniors that didn't know how to do fractions.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I'd wind up teaching maybe a third of the year, teaching stuff that so the kids can make up, and then you can actually start teaching them.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_02: Teaching what you're supposed to teach them.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: And and then at the same time, so I did that for three and a half years before we decided to move to Haynes.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I coached football and track.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_02: At the I mean, we'd get 300 kids come out for high school track.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: It was a whole different, whole, whole different ball game there.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_02: And the basketball coach was a guy by the name of Archie Grimes, famous all over the West.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: Another interesting side bit, Deb's uncle, Hugh Morrison, was this famous football and track coach for Alhambra High School in Phoenix.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_02: He was also, anytime there was NCAA or an AAU track meet, Hugh uh Morrison ran them.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_02: So he right up until the time he died, and he died about four years ago, he was still running these huge track beats.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, just a great guy.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: He was the guy.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: He was the guy.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: Hugh Morrison was his name.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_02: Here's another story.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my God, I got so many of them.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_02: You're not gonna believe this one.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_02: So flash forward to I'm coaching here.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, luckily, we have this guy come into town.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: His name is Greg Brittenham.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_02: Greg Brittenham came to the camp of champs all those years.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_02: Greg, they hired him to, I mean, coach Physette.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, my God, how could you have one of the top trainers in the world come to Haynes who trained for 25 years with the New York Knicks?
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: How how how did we get this guy in Haynes?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: But we did.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so um he's helping me coach the track deal, you know, and he's teaching me more than I could I could ever teach him.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he's the guy, you know, just the way the kids moved, you know, how they're working with their stride, you know.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so anyway, Greg and I are talking one day about our histories.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: And Deb mentions my uncle Hugh Morrison used to do this, and he went to the University of Nebraska or Colorado, I forget whichever ones.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: Greg goes, are you kidding me?
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_02: Hugh Morrison?
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: He said, My dad coached track at at Nebraska, and he whips out a picture, and there's uh Greg Brittenham's dad coaching with Hugh Morrison.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: Seriously.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you can't make this stuff up.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_02: No, so we've got this connection with Greg, you know, through Deb's family.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's just, it's just, it was just amazing.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, and then I'm, you know, so this went on for three and a half years, uh, Phoenix Union High School.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: I get, so I'm I come home from school one day, about I got home about 3:30.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_02: I walked down to the elementary school where Cash was in the second grade at the time to pick him up and walk him home.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I got there early, so there were two police cars, two police officers standing there.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_02: So I start talking to these guys.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_02: I says, Okay, what are you guys doing here?
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: A guy, one police officer points over and he says, You see that Mustang?
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: I says, Yeah.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: He says, They're kidnappers.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_02: We know they're doing it.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: We haven't been able to catch them, so we're keeping a presence at all the elementary schools in Phoenix.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_02: He, I then said, Are you kidding me?
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_02: He then told me a statistic that blew my mind.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: You never heard it on local news, you never heard it on state or national news, it was kept quiet.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: Why?
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: Because people would have gone bonkers.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: Over a thousand kids go missing every year from the Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso area.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: Just that a thousand?
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_02: A thousand a year gone across the border, kids kidnapped.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_02: I went home to Deb and you and we had been looking at Alaska for a while.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'd set resumes up and you know, I got the standard letter back.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: You know, thank you for applying, we'll put it on uh in the file.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I went home and told Deb, you know, I think it's time we we got out of here.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: We did not want to raise our kids there.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: No, you know, still have family there, have family in Tucson, Deb does.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: But uh so what was the what was the appeal of Alaska?
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: I grew I grew up right on Lake Erie, you know, we were just looking at uh that kind of a climate, and even better, we'd research Southeast and and uh So you were thinking Southeast is where you were.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we wound up looking at the rainfall and all that and the severe temperatures and all that kind of stuff, and we kind of but the kicker was I was teaching with a guy by the name of Don Tate, who's was a special ed teacher.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_02: He was married to Carol Flagle's sister.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, Jim, why don't you call up Dick Flagel?
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_02: He runs the bank up there and tell him what you can do and see what he says.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so I called Dick up, and I was uh I was uh Dick, you know, this is what I can do.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_02: You say, What do you think?
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_02: You think we can make it in Haynes?
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_02: He says, Yeah, sure you can.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: Come on up.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, before that, and this will get personal for you, Doug.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: So the reason we kind of picked Haynes too is in 1982 or 83 there was a National Geographic article.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was called the Great Chill Cat Controversy.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm am I correct here?
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_02: They're interviewing your dad in the state.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_02: He had opened up this sports shop and he'd he'd made money selling these little pixies, and nobody knew what pixies were.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_02: And uh he was talking about the the conflict between you know the logging and the uh fisheries, and then that you brought the environmentalist into it, and there was just something that just stuck in my mind, you know, and so that's kind of how we we got to Haynes.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: So what year was it you moved to Haynes?
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: 84.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: 84.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was my freshman year in high school.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: And you just I I subbed at uh for uh uh the industrial arts a few times.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: I think I did one of a stickler kids.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: Did you move to your property at Mosquito Lake?
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: Is that where you first started, or where did you we go get this?
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_02: We lived in a North Face dome tent at the fort campground.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: What was her name?
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_02: Wilma uh Henderson.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: Not Henderson, Wilma.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Arnie Olsen's mom.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she ran it.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, it's still there, yeah.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's still there.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: We lived there in a domed tent with a tarp over the tent all summer.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_02: Wasn't any place to live in Haynes.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: Nowhere.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: When we pulled through the border, I met John Lawson.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, he looked at us and we're pulling a Jeep that I totally rebuilt with a trailer, and he goes, he says, Well, what are you gonna do?
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: You know, what are you gonna do here?
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_02: There's no work.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_02: And okay, so this became a kind of a theme.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: Everywhere that I went, then everybody was saying, Well, where are you gonna work?
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's no work here.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let me tell you, within three days I had two jobs.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_02: I was working graveyard shift at the mill that Mike Chittak owned, you know, and then I was finishing concrete all day for Tom Hall, who had the concrete company.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so within three days I had two full-time jobs, and of course I had to come back at it late at night, early morning to the tent.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, and and yeah, and Deb did this.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: You had three.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_02: Coleman was eight months old.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so three kids in a tent, you're working two jobs, Deb's taking care of the family in the tent.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: Holy cow.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_02: Superwoman.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: Deb, people don't realize Deb.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_02: We have two of them up the highway, and you've got plenty in town like your mom.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: Deb and Marcia Scott.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of people don't know what Marcia Scott did.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: Marsha Scott, like Deb, lived, Glenn was working on the fair.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: So he was gone all the time.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_02: Marcia had a handicapped daughter in Heather and another daughter, Liz.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_02: They lived up in a little cabin across from Ron Kerry Wisson, right at 40 mile.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: No power, no anything.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: And uh these gals, I I would not have been able to do what I have done without my wife.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm sure your dad is the same way with Charlotte.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely there's no way.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_02: How did we get this lucky, you know?
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_02: God.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: And we know it, you know.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_02: But uh so yeah, so then I uh and I'll I'll be quite frank, uh I I got these two jobs, but I was always doing construction on the side, and it was kind of hard in Haynes because Haynes was if you didn't drink in such and such a bar or go to such and such a church, you didn't have an infrastructure where you got work.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't either, we were independent.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: Slowly, the rep my reputation started to spread, and I started to get more and more work.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_02: And then Deb got hired on seasonally at fishing games, she ran the office, and later on she ran the public health office.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_02: But uh if you if you ask either one of us if we regret anything we've done, and heck no.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: You know, when and the way you tell, and you and your dad knew it and your mom knows it.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: If you look at your kids, you know, you guys, you know this.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_02: If you look at your kids and what they've become, look at what you and your sister and all your grandkids have become.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have any grandkids.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you make me sound really old, Jim.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: My mom's and dad's grandkids, but that's that's what I meant.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_02: I gotta call you on that one.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: So I guess that's how you job, that's how you judge if you've been successful as parents and if you did the right thing.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I look at a Cash, my oldest boy, and Coleman and my daughter Jamie, they're just super, super people, you know.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: So at least we didn't do anything to screw that up.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_02: We could have, you know.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we we we could have screwed it up, but uh yeah, so here we are to this day.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: So how how long do you it was just the summer in the tent?
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: Once fall hit, or how late into the fall were you in that tent?
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: It was getting cold, and you know, we were really worried we might have to leave.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_02: And we I had taken out my teacher retirement from Arizona that we had enough money to get back if we had to.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_02: But uh that we at the last minute we found that house that Mike Denker lives in now, next to the Assembly of God Church.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_02: We got that and for the winter, and then that spring, and that would have been 85 now, we went into the bank, and there on the wall was this cabin at Mosquito Lake, and we knew nothing about Mosquito Lake, you know.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and uh went in and talked to Dick Flagle and said, What's the story on this thing?
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_02: We wound up buying it, and we had to completely jack it up.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_02: It was built like crap, you know, and and uh we had to jack it up.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, are you saying that there's places built in Haynes that don't need building code?
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: Still are so some things haven't changed, Jim.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: I know that was your introduction to Mosquito Lake.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: That was our introduction to Mosquito Lake.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: Then you built it up and got a little bit.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_02: I got another unbelievable story.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_02: All right, and this is Twilight Zone stuff.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: So when I was a professional diver, when I dove and lived with another guy, his name was Tom Parker.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_02: So he and I lived up in North Park, which is a suburb up above San Diego, and then we we went out diving on two, three-week trips together.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so Tom and I live together.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: When I was going to Australia, Tom moves to Alaska.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_02: He not only moves to Alaska, he moves to Mosquito Lake Road.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_02: Are you serious?
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_02: So when you move up here, Tom's living up in Mosquito Lake?
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_02: I move I didn't know it.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know it.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_02: I hadn't seen him for 15 years.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_02: Fifteen years I hadn't seen this guy.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_02: I go into Hain, one, I go into Haynes home building at the counter and I'm sitting there getting some materials.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_02: This guy walks up beside me.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_02: I turn and look at him.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_02: He turns and look at me.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_02: A few seconds go by.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_02: I go, you're Tom Parker.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_02: He looks at me, you're Jim Stanford.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_02: What are you doing here?
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_02: Here, when I left the drive across country, he not only moved to Mosquito Lake, he lived three cabins down from where we live now.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_02: I told you Twilight Zone.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so Tom uh Tom was a he became a sane fisherman out of Sitka.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_02: And unfortunately, about oh, 12, 14 years ago, he passed away from cancer.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_02: But he and I renewed our friendship, and and and now what's interesting is his ex-wife or widow, Linda, lives uh down right by Jamie, my daughter, and is really involved with Jamie and her family.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_02: Her family?
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_02: So it's kind of interesting, huh?
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of those, you know, that they they say a lot of times that life is stranger than fiction.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: That if you wrote a story like this, nobody believes it.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody would believe it.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, a lot of people don't believe me.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_02: And even Coleman at times says, he says, Oh, pull, Dad, pull.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: You're just waiting on this stuff up.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: I told you before we started this, I told Coleman I was having you on here.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, I'm gonna fact check this and see if this matches the story he's been telling me my whole will because I'm telling you.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: I've told it the same way every time to all the kids, you know.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_02: But it is kind of uh unbelievable what that particular incident is unbelievable.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_01: So af yeah, so after now you got a neighbor that you know right down the street, you're raising your kids in Hanes, your your construction business and your and your reputation as somebody that does quality work is growing in Haynes.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: Was that kind of for the next 15, 20, 30 years?
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: That was kind of the deal.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_02: I think so.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_02: Back in those days, we became known as, and I said that at uh at uh Scott Brewington's funeral, because Scott worked for for for me for oh 10 to 15 years since he was a young kid.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we were we were known back then as the crew that would do anything.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_02: And we did.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_02: We we were the guys crawling around under houses, jacking them up, uh climbing down cliffs out in mud bay with buckets of concrete, pouring them into form.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we were kind of known as I had several guys that would never work for me again after doing one job.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_02: Do one job.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, Coleman has a Is that why Coleman started his own business?
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, Dad's a little too crazy for me.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_02: He didn't want to do what dad does.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, so uh he uh but he had a friend who worked with me on that climbing down cliffs with buckets of concrete.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_02: That kid, he really didn't want to work for me anymore.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: Coleman, your dad's crazy.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, yeah, you're nuts.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, so yeah, that went on for probably 15 to 20 years.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I always had a part-time maintenance job either with Mosquito Lake or Klukwan.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_02: They hired me.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_02: See, the guy that uh prime construction out of Seattle is who built Klukwan School.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_02: Well, 90 some percent of the job they ducked out of the project and left.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_02: So I got hired to finish this giant checklist for Klukwan School, including hanging all the doors, getting all the they had sensors, you know, so I'm on the phone working with engineers in Seattle, walking them through me, trying to get all these fancy systems going, you know, that probably should have never been put in a village in Alaska, you know.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_02: Mosquito Lake School wasn't quite as technical, but still a little bit.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_02: Kluckwan School was kind of nuts that way.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh finally, through through over time and just canceling out of some of the systems, Kluckwan School I think operates fairly well now, you know.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_02: But it was a design that should have never been in Haynes, Alaska.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_02: It should have been in Arizona.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_02: And interestingly, Bob Andrews, who was a principal teacher back then, one of the best, him and Margaret were two of the best teachers that I've ever seen.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_02: They were like Ron Weisson at Mosquito Lake School.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_02: Bob and Margaret would give up their Christmas vacation to take the kids at Klukwan to the museums in Seattle.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_02: They they did so much for that school.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_02: While Bob demanded that this checklist be done, and he he got in a real fight with the then superintendent, who was Daryl Moore.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_02: Daryl was kind of protecting the architects, which was Mitch Ritter Vokers in June.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_02: Oh now Paul Vokers is still there.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_02: But they were kind of stonewalling the whole thing, you know, didn't really want to fix everything that needed to be fixed.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_02: So Bob got in a war with him.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_02: Bob wound up getting replaced by Virgie Fryer, who came in.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, so I always had kind of a part-time gig that really helped in the winter time when construction started to lag.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, yeah.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, then you're doing the maintenance on the schools and keeping that stuff going.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: So what what abroad about the dog mushing?
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: What what what yeah?
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I I remember like it was yesterday, it was like Cash was like in the seventh or eighth grade.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_02: He wanted us to get him some sled dogs.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so we did.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_02: Dana Chris Turner gave us four Siberians that we you know we took and raised and started to run them.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_02: Cash started to run them.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, then this gal calls us from calls us from Juno and goes, uh, I've got this sled dog I brought from Rick Swenson.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_02: Would you the dog is crazy?
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_02: Would you would you be into having her?
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_02: So we said, yeah, send her on up.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_02: So here comes Tyne, unbelievable sled dog.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, top of the line, I did her odd type dog.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_01: But she was gonna say, coming off of Rick Swenson's camera.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_02: She's wired.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_02: And she, these people got this dog and put her in an apartment, and the dog was just doing this in the in the apartment, too high energy.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_02: So we get Tyne, add her to the team, and then she, of course, gets pregnant, and so all of a sudden we got five or six more dogs.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_02: All of a sudden we're up to 10, 12 dogs, and uh, and then uh the other thing that happened is about this time guy Cash got into high school, and you know what happens, he got into girls, and all of a sudden he wound up with the dogs.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_02: Dogs were kind of standing back there, and so I said, Okay, I'm gonna start running them.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I did.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I ran with it, and I never looked back.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_02: And Doug was uh next to having kids and getting married, Deb, and everything.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's probably the best thing I've ever done.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_02: I was so fortunate.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_01: What what was the what was the joy?
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just being the type of thing.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_02: If you love if you if you love animals and you love the outdoors, uh especially the winter, you gotta love winter.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_02: If you don't like winter, you shouldn't be doing this.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it's magical.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_02: You're back there, whether you're training or on races, you're on these gorgeous trails all over the Yukon and Alaska, and uh I have visions of trails, thousands and thousands of miles of trails in my head that uh I wouldn't trade for anything.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we've all got visions of that here in Hays.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if you're an outdoors type person.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I did that for oh my god, it's gotta be 25 years minimum, you know, and then I realized a couple things.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_02: I always raised and trained my own dogs.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_02: I realized that okay, if I have more puppies now, it's gonna be another 10, 12 years, and I'm getting too old.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_02: So about five years ago, uh I let the last dogs m matriculate, kind of you know.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_02: A couple of them died of cancer, and I gave a couple of them to a gal up up the highway in hopes that she would continue to run them.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but uh yeah, probably next to the family, it's probably the best thing I've ever done.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: So what are what are some did you do a lot of races?
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_02: I would do two to three race, mid-distance races a year, trade two, fund races.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like uh I knew I okay, so I had a I had a family, I had three kids.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I knew financially I I couldn't do this.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_02: I had to keep it to a very minimum.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I built all my own gear, my own sleds, everything to save money.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_02: I got fish, whatever I had to do to save money on food.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_02: But you have to remember back then you could get a good quality bag of dog food for$15,$18.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_02: Now that same bag is$60.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_02: So the only reason these kids are doing it today with these bigger dog teams that run the Editarod and stuff is because people like Dana Chris Turner, or or there's a couple other ones up north around Denali that are hiring these people in their teams in the summertime.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_01: To do tours.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_02: Dana Chris have like six to seven hundred dogs up on the glaciers, so that's probably going to be about fifty to sixty, even more, 70, 80 dog teams with the mushers on the glaciers.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_02: Not only are their dogs really, really well cared for, they have vets that they that live on site, they uh buy all the high quality anything, anything those dogs need, Dana Chris.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh a high buck dollar in taking care of these dogs.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_02: So um my point is if it weren't for them doing this for these kids with these dog teams these days, they wouldn't be able to make it.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_02: They wouldn't have an editorod, I'll tell you that.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_02: You would they wouldn't have almost all the mid-distance races in the Yukon have gone by the wayside because of costs and volunteer burnout.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_02: So we used to have back in the 90s and uh between 2000, 2010, 15, we had the Silver Sled dog race in the in the um junction that goes from the junction to Silver City and back 100 and some miles.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_02: Then you've got you had the Brayburn race that was a 200-mile race that left Whitehorse to Brayburn Lodge, which is on the way to Dawson, turn around 100 miles, come back 100 miles.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_02: We had that race.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_02: We had the Mayo race, which was up the Mayo Hall Road, that was another 200-mile race, and any race that was 200 miles qualified as an Ididerod qualifier.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_02: You have to have qualifiers to run the Ididerod and also the Yukon Quest.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_02: And now the Yukon Quest is defunct, which is very sad.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_02: But um, and then we had uh the trailer 98 that that went from Skagway to White Horse, that ran for three years and then went by the wayside because of volunteer burnout, and then the Southern Lakes Classic left Car Cross went down Atlan Lake to Atlanta and back.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_02: That was a really great race.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_02: They had all these shorter mid-distance races that were fun for everybody.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_02: And you'd have 30-40 teams there, you know, occasionally teams that come from Alaska, but now they're down to I believe they have Silver Sled isn't anymore, the Brayburn race isn't anymore, Southern Lakes Classic isn't anymore, um Trail of 98, that's not anymore.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's only one or two races left in the Yukon.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_02: They still do the fur rondi during the fur rendezvous up there, they'll they'll have a race, a 30-mile loop for the fur rondi for the tourists and stuff.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: But so as somebody that has volunteered as much as you have over the years for sports and I mean, even maintenance on the fields and stuff in Mosquito Lake, you're constantly volunteering.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: How do because that is that's a big thing in Haynes with volunteer burnout.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: How do we recruit more people to do the volunteer work?
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_01: Or how is it is that something that just the mindset has changed with different generations?
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's so many things in Haynes, we could go down a long list of things that aren't here anymore because of volunteer burnout.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh boy, it's a deep subject, Doug.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I didn't know.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody is saying the same thing, including Cash, who has just opened up a tremendous business, flip platinum mechanical up in Fairbanks.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's going, you know, the first nine months they did over a million dollars in business.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_02: There's so much work up there.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_02: I tell all these young kids.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, I just told one at the Little League game last night, man, go to Fairbanks.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_02: You can make$30 to$40 an hour working six, tens, seven, tens if you want to.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the if you have any ambition at all, the sky's the limit.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_02: They can't find anybody, even in Fairbanks.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, dad Cash goes, Daddy says, All these guys on these jobs are your age.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's it's nice for the us old farts.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_02: We're still kind of needed, but in reality, oh my god, what's going on here, you know?
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_02: I've been lucky.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_02: I've I've had kids who really wanted to work over the years, you know.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um I don't know what the answer to this is, but I will tell you my feelings on one subject.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_02: This borough administration could do a lot more to thank volunteers to appreciate nonprofits.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_02: We never I'd like to see a monthly thing the mayor do, and I've talked to Tom about this, I talked to Jan Hill about it, is once a month you guys should publicly recognize a volunteer in Haynes.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, make them feel like they're appreciated.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_02: You you never hardly ever get thanked.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_02: And this includes the firemen and EMT.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_02: Deb and I were EMTs up the highway for a long time, 10, 15 years.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_02: The only time that we got thanked, and this you talk about emotional, this brought really tears to our eyes, is we responded to a call.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh a kid had wrecked his motorcycle, 25 mile.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_02: Didn't have a helmet on.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_02: We get a call, Deb and I responded down there, and um the kid had flipped, smacked the back of his head, and when I went to examine him, I felt the back of his head and it was just pulp.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so at that time all the bells and whistles went off.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_02: We called the ambulance, which I I thought about not calling the ambulance because this kid is this kid could die here, you know.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_02: I thought about directly calling the Coast Guard and see if we couldn't land it at Mosquito Lake Ballfield, which is still an option for the Upper Valley when you have someone who is severely injured, strong possibility in depth.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_02: And this is nothing against the Haynes Ambulance crew who does a fantastic job.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_02: But when you're talking of response time of the city.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, just the extra response time of driving them back to the yeah, getting them up and getting them back.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_02: Two hours to the clinic, right?
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody knows it.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that that is pretty much unacceptable, and it's been that way for 30 to 40 years while we've lived out there.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_02: So we did explore the option of directly calling the Coast Guard and landing them at uh at uh Mosquito Lake.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I was hoping that because I was here when we created the medical service area, we really messed up because we didn't even think about it.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_02: I can remember talking to Al Badgley.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, okay, so we wanted everybody to pay for some monies into the ambulance and all that.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_02: I said, you know, Al, we really screwed up after all these years because now there's this police question that's been hanging over our government for all these years now.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_02: Do the Haynes police really should they respond outside the town site?
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_02: Because, you know, when you look at the budget, uh, you know, folks in town pay for pay for the police service in town.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_02: It should be spread borough wide as far as I'm concerned.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I know there are some monies that are used for dispatch and all that kind of thing.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_02: So there is some peripheral monies that are going towards uh helping the police department.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_02: So and I remember when um the former police chief, uh he scott, he scott, he said, even though he was ordered by uh by um uh Kreitzer not to respond, he said, I'm sorry, I'm gonna disobey that order.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_02: If somebody calls the police, I'm going.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_02: I'm trained that way, I'm going.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's an emergency.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_02: So when you stop and think about it, if you get an ambulance call out the road or in town, and there's any possibility of uh abuse.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, somebody's been hit, hit, call 911.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_02: The ambulance screw that comes out to a situation like that, it demands police backup.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_02: They need to be able to come out and respond to something like that.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_02: Now I know and I have some.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_02: Seen them out there recently.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_02: They are still responding.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like if there's a threat.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think if there's if there's a threat of danger, they're still responding.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, but here was our mistake.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_02: And if we could somehow get this on the ballot to get it changed, I'd be one of the main sponsors.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_02: Change the medical service area to emergency services service area.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_02: It would all be covered.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_02: All of it would be covered.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_02: With probably not very much increase in taxes.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_02: You probably wouldn't have to increase the taxes at all, but it would let us help the police department.
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_02: Search and rescue isn't covered.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know, anything on emergency services, but when the ambulance responds to anything that's even remotely got violence involved.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we gotta have the police.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_02: You gotta have police backup, right?
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_01: So you were talking about this young man that was the motorcycle crash that emotional.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I got off sidetrack there.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh okay, so we got him going.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_02: They got him.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_02: I took him to t with him to town.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_02: We got on the uh LAB airplane.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_02: Len Fellman was the doctor on board with me.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Len keeps trying to get a stick, wants to get an IV going, and minutes are going by, and 10 minutes goes by, and I looked at Len and I said, Len, you gotta go.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_02: You gotta go right now.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_02: And he looked at me and said, Yeah, I think you're right.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_02: So they left and got the guy down there, right?
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_02: End of s not end of story, not end of story.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_02: So six or eight months later, middle of winter, Deb and I are sitting in the house.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_02: This this pickup truck pulls into the into the into the yard.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_02: And this kid gets out with an older native man.
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_02: There, they were from Cake.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_02: And he comes up to the door, he says, Are you Jim and Deb Stanford?
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Yeah.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_02: He says, We just wanted to thank you.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_02: You saved our kids' life.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_02: And Deb and I just, we both we both broke down.
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's really the only time that we ever were really thanked by anybody for what we do.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I I know it probably hasn't changed.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think a lot of people, like when they respond to a fire or something, you know, uh, I know a lot of people they think about this, yeah, I need to thank these people, but they don't actually do it.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_02: So so Deb and I always had the policy that no matter who was working with us or for us, like every teacher every year in pain schools or Kluckwon, we went up every year and thanked them all.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_02: I can remember thanking Terry Seanboy, uh Frank Holmes, uh Carol Flagle.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_02: I remember Deb and I thanking them all every year for what they do.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_02: I I think if this community just started to do a little more than that, and especially the government, the administrator, like and I I I don't really mean to bring anything up.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm on the Board of Equalization, so we just went through this lawsuit the borough filed and had what came down, there was a attempt to blame the Board of Equalization for what just went down with the St.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_02: Mary's Church, Episcopalian Church, where they were trying to say they they weren't practicing religion and stuff.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm sorry to get into this, Doug, but I feel this is an example of volunteering.
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this is your story.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_02: I really thought that uh uh the administrator that did this filed this lawsuit and then tried to blame the BOE.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_02: Instead of doing that, she could have very easily said, listen, thanks so much for what you guys are doing, because this is a hard job to do property tax evaluation.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_02: This is a thankless job.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_02: So thanks so much for what you're doing.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe here's what we could change a little bit to make this a little bit better procedure.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_02: But to just file a lawsuit and then blame the BOE.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_02: Fortunately, the assembly dropped the whole thing the other night.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_02: But uh it's it, I I think if there's some way the community as a whole could get to where they are thanking volunteers more, it would make a hell of a difference.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_02: Because you know, you you know, you've been in the assembly, you've been mayor.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_02: You take a lot of crap from people, you know.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_01: We actually it was Deborah Schnabel's idea.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_01: We had to pass this, I can't remember what this like Citizen of the Year award that we're gonna do on an annual basis.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it usually didn't it, I think it's just kind of gone by the wayside.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_01: I I think the the manager had a thing like, hey, are we doing this for this year?
• 1:10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's I think it should be monthly, Doug.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_01: I when you look at all of it could very easily be monthly, all of volunteers, but it it it it's one of those that um not I hope this doesn't sound apologetic for the people that aren't thanking people, but being in the office over there for the three years, there is so much going on.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I know, I know, I know, I know.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it's yeah, I feel that at the store too.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's times that it's it's like, man, I should do this or I should do this, and then it's like, well, then a week goes by, it's like, well, did I miss the time frame on that?
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_02: When it's uh I'm I'm I'm I'm appreciative of that.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_02: I know what the borough does.
• 1:11:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you a story that one of the cool things for me when one of my first interviews, like it was interview number nine, Joe Hamilton from Vortex, yeah, and uh sitting there back and talking to him, and their whole thing is create a rare experience.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_01: And and he was tell he was telling the story of or just the analogy, he says, he said, listen, if if if if you as a business owner have say 300 Christmas cards, and you have them pre-printed and everything, and you just send them out, you're like, that's kind of a nice gesture, just get a card, and it's like yeah, he goes, What if you only pick the 30 and you hand wrote something on them and hand sign them?
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_01: What's that gonna mean to the person that receives it?
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Probably a little more.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna it's gonna mean a little bit more.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_03: It is, it is.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so since then, I've been trying to do that about being a little bit more intentional with the people that I see.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_01: That you you know, when you've heard that they've done something, hey, congratulations on like James when he won six, congratulations on winning state.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and then the telling the coaches, hey, great job with the team this year, great time with because they're usually not the ones that that hear that, or even the kids that are on the bench is like, yeah, hey, it's fun seeing you outplay.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, how can we make those little connections that's right like you're talking about?
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it it doesn't have to come from the government, just no, each of us on a daily basis, how do we do a little bit more to acknowledge the good works of the people around us?
• 1:12:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, then if Because we all know we want to get we want to get thanked for those things, too.
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_02: Why aren't we doing that to the other people, to the people?
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_02: I know it.
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_02: I I agree with you a hundred percent.
• 1:13:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh one of the things that uh when it w when I look at uh everything everybody does in this community volunteering.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's a ton of it.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's if they didn't do it, just think if they didn't do it.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_02: If the nonprofits didn't exist, what they do, from the community foundation to the Mosquito Lake Community Center up there for all that, what would happen to Haynes?
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_02: It would totally collapse.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't mean in two or three years, it would be done within a month if everybody stopped.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_02: So to me, that group of people does more for the to give me to to uh prop up this community than any any other government uh does, you know.
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_02: So uh yeah, I'm really passionate about this.
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I I really am.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and you you put your you put your time where your it's not something that you're just telling people should volunteer.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_01: You're out there vol you're you're leaving the charge with the number of things you volunteer on.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I I try to set people in my life have set examples for me.
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I I try to think maybe that's our responsibility, huh?
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_02: See if we can't set a positive example.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, your dad.
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_02: Look at your dad people's.
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_02: Look at your whole family, Doug.
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_02: You guys, you know, uh it's just amazing what you did and what you went through with your dad's malady and at his accident at the way you you you guys just stood up and became these these.
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_01: See, here's here's the thing I've learned over the years.
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_01: And there there's times that it was I I think about stuff like that, and it's like you can you can really get into the woe is me part of that.
• 1:14:46
  SPEAKER_01: And there were times with dad that he was like, he was in that mindset, yeah.
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_01: But also it's okay, you went through something, you survived, you know what it was like, you know what you can survive.
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_01: We know as a family we're still here, yeah.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_01: We still have dad.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_01: Let's make them best of every moment.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're stronger now, we're more resilient now.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_01: You better believe it.
• 1:15:12
  SPEAKER_01: All of us have all of us go through crap.
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_01: All of us through hard things, all of us have these bad experiences.
• 1:15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Are we gonna let them tear us down?
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Are we gonna use those as building blocks to make us stronger?
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:15:25
  SPEAKER_01: You you we all have a choice.
• 1:15:27
  SPEAKER_01: You better believe it.
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the thing for for me, the first one that taught me that was my grandpa hub.
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, did he lost his arm when he was in his 30s?
• 1:15:36
  SPEAKER_01: And he's out there with a chainsaw, he's he's driving a stick shift, he's only got his left hand.
• 1:15:41
  SPEAKER_01: The different things that I didn't I wasn't aware of it as a kid because it's just it's my grandpa doing these things.
• 1:15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I anybody with one arm does these things.
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but as you get older and you're and you're exposed to a broader, it's like that is rare.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_01: You better that is amazingly rare.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_01: And just thinking about, but that that my sister and I we just grew up around that.
• 1:16:05
  SPEAKER_01: The word you see is just you have bad things happen, you just get up and you keep going.
• 1:16:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
• 1:16:10
  SPEAKER_01: You just make the best of it.
• 1:16:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 1:16:11
  SPEAKER_01: Is it what you want?
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Probably not.
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and another one but but you can make it into what you want.
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_02: Another thing that I've learned, and this is really important uh to me, is uh you have to live by your rules.
• 1:16:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I I I I always when I explain this to people, I always liken to the movie Forrest Gump.
• 1:16:32
  SPEAKER_02: You remember Forrest Gump?
• 1:16:33
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
• 1:16:33
  SPEAKER_02: So Forrest Gump is sitting on the bench next to that old lady.
• 1:16:36
  SPEAKER_02: He goes, Stupid is the stupid does.
• 1:16:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I turn the I'm a real I I'm a real spiritual person.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_02: I do believe in in something.
• 1:16:46
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not quite sure what it is, but I I do, I was raised in the Methodist faith, so you know I have a tr I have a real tendency towards Christianity.
• 1:16:56
  SPEAKER_02: But I'll I know so many people in Hayes that profess to be you know Christians or go into church every and I'll just look at them.
• 1:17:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, just like Forrest Gump has said, stupid is as stupid does, Christian is as Christian does.
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Some of them take it okay, some of them don't make them not so well.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and so and and that along along that route, it's it is.
• 1:17:23
  SPEAKER_01: You're if you're gonna be professing something, you need to live it.
• 1:17:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I do want to do Sam's heard this on several of the of the interviews I've had, is that that's kind of been my struggle is recognizing that church is a place that's full of sinners.
• 1:17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because we're we're all sinners and trying to, you know, you you see the people, sometimes the ones that are the most vocal lead the least Christian lifestyle.
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_01: And Becky Nash was the one, she's she told me she's she says, Doug, you're not trying to find religion, you're trying to find a personal relationship with God.
• 1:18:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 1:18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that totally You're right.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_01: That is what I'm looking for.
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's very hard for someone else to tell you that they should believe in their personal relationship with God.
• 1:18:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it's impossible.
• 1:18:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's impossible.
• 1:18:16
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 1:18:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's like to trying to identify with a person that's seriously mentally ill.
• 1:18:22
  SPEAKER_01: You can't do it because they're on another, they're on another whole level, and you can't and I think the best thing, and and that's kind of why I want that's one of my motivations for doing this, is getting to know people on a more on a deeper level.
• 1:18:39
  SPEAKER_01: I've known you for 40 years.
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you're telling me stuff today that I never knew.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And and so to be able to have that better understanding of where somebody comes from, the experiences they've gone through, the hardships they've had, it helps you understand where they are today better.
• 1:18:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 1:18:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I've stood up at borough assembly meetings, and I've done this for years, but especially I was chairman of the planning commission during consolidation for six years, and then during the helicopter issue for six years.
• 1:19:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I've stood up at borough assembly meetings and I've said, you know, you people don't even know what problems are.
• 1:19:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 1:19:15
  SPEAKER_02: You you know, I I was at Kent State, I was at, you know, between the Klan and the and the you know Afro-Americans down there, I said, you want to see problems?
• 1:19:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you don't have any problems, but yet our opposing sides in this town get so uh, you know, okay, so just because you're for against a mine, and I'm just using a mine as a as a thing, or just because you're for against a helicopter, it doesn't mean you're a bad person.
• 1:19:48
  SPEAKER_02: You you know, if you're against the mine, you're not evil.
• 1:19:51
  SPEAKER_02: You're just against the mine.
• 1:19:53
  SPEAKER_02: You have a different perspective.
• 1:19:54
  SPEAKER_02: You have a different perspective.
• 1:19:55
  SPEAKER_02: So if we could just come down to a common, a common uh uh attitude that that everybody has a reason for doing things, unless you're a mass murderer, that's a whole different story.
• 1:20:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'll agree with you on that.
• 1:20:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_02: But if if if if we all try to think about the person that's for a mine, and once again, I'm just using a mine as an example, they're thinking about their family.
• 1:20:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, they probably would want a really good job and maybe a place where their kids might be able to stay here a little more.
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_02: If you're the hardcore environmentalist and against the mine, you're thinking that you want to protect the river and the environment against a possible mine disaster for your kids and the other people who live here.
• 1:20:36
  SPEAKER_02: So you're both, both arguments are coming from the same place.
• 1:20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 1:20:41
  SPEAKER_02: Let's try to take care of people.
• 1:20:43
  SPEAKER_02: But we get in this boom, boom, boom, it drives me crazy.
• 1:20:48
  SPEAKER_02: So the article that you're going all the way back, the article that your dad was talking about in '83, the great chill cat controversy, is still going on.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_01: Still going on.
• 1:20:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:21:00
  SPEAKER_02: Now maybe it's the 53 degrees of magnetic variation of the mountain back there.
• 1:21:04
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 1:21:04
  SPEAKER_02: Could could be.
• 1:21:05
  SPEAKER_02: Could be.
• 1:21:06
  SPEAKER_01: But no, it is hard because for me growing up here and everything, you I see so many opportunities that we've had in this community that we've missed on, that could have provided a more stable economic environment for some of the things that you were talking about earlier that the borough can't do because of finances that would have broadened that shoulder.
• 1:21:32
  SPEAKER_01: I understand, yeah.
• 1:21:33
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, but we always seem to get in the way and put our foot in it.
• 1:21:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:21:39
  SPEAKER_01: Some way or another.
• 1:21:40
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 1:21:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and and yeah, that the the mine is uh the mine's gonna be a touch point for a long time.
• 1:21:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're still talking about helicopters after 30, 40 years, so I you know I don't I don't see the I don't see any uh coming together on the mine in the in the short few in the short term either.
• 1:22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And and and I think a lot of it is just uh people people view risk differently.
• 1:22:07
  SPEAKER_01: And they so for some people, like for let's go to the heliskiing thing, there the the idea of the noise in a certain area for a certain time, for the people that are close to it, I think that's a very valid reason that there's there are areas that are greatly affected by helicopters lifting off and and and landing.
• 1:22:30
  SPEAKER_01: In a perfect world, it should all take off from the airport.
• 1:22:33
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what we suggested to the assembly.
• 1:22:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 1:22:37
  SPEAKER_02: And they blew, and then several of the helicopter company people flooded the meeting and the assembly shot that down.
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_02: So Chip Lindy was on the assembly.
• 1:22:46
  SPEAKER_02: Chip at the end of the meeting uh said, okay, we want to assign uh we want to charge the planning commission with coming up with three areas where the helicopters could could operate.
• 1:22:58
  SPEAKER_02: Number one recommendation was the Haynes Airport.
• 1:23:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 1:23:02
  SPEAKER_02: Number two was uh Devil's Elbow, because Devil's Elbow was way out, wouldn't have impacted anybody.
• 1:23:09
  SPEAKER_02: Still is like that.
• 1:23:10
  SPEAKER_02: Plenty of room to land a helicopter.
• 1:23:12
  SPEAKER_02: The third was Porcupine, because it's a federal mining district.
• 1:23:16
  SPEAKER_02: We can't stop them there even if we wanted to.
• 1:23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 1:23:18
  SPEAKER_02: So we came up with those three places.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_02: Assembly shot it all down.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_02: Because of pressure from the helicopter industry.
• 1:23:27
  SPEAKER_02: They really wanted to be able to house the helicopters where they're living, whether it was up the highway.
• 1:23:34
  SPEAKER_02: And the funny thing is, town didn't want the helicopters either.
• 1:23:38
  SPEAKER_02: They I think it came down to politically, town folks didn't want the airport because they were worried the helicopters were going to fly over town.
• 1:23:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I think there was some backlash that, okay, if we get we're gonna have the helicopter industry, let's throw it out the road, and that's what happened.
• 1:23:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I think the I remember that because with the devil's elbow and the porcupine, and I think the main issue with both of those was the infrastructure to set it up.
• 1:24:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Is that to get road access to plow that and everything to be able to have people going out there through the wintertime?
• 1:24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Porcupine, nobody was plowing that at the time.
• 1:24:14
  SPEAKER_02: Well then the airport would have been ideal because Valdez fly some even farther from their airport.
• 1:24:21
  SPEAKER_02: They'll go 75 miles until the hill ski areas out of Valdez.
• 1:24:25
  SPEAKER_02: So for some reason, distance wasn't a problem in Valdez, but it wasn't Haynes.
• 1:24:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they said they couldn't afford the fuel.
• 1:24:32
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, Doug, it was Yeah.
• 1:24:34
  SPEAKER_01: The other argument, the other, and this isn't to defend that they were right.
• 1:24:38
  SPEAKER_01: The other argument was the safety aspect that when weather's coming in, to it's a quicker flight in and out, but it's it's also it's it's a financial thing.
• 1:24:46
  SPEAKER_02: They just insisted right off the bat out the road to put them right next to houses.
• 1:24:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:24:50
  SPEAKER_02: And it pissed everybody off.
• 1:24:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, everybody.
• 1:24:53
  SPEAKER_02: They wanted to land them at the funny farm, you know, and then it was the antics of the the customers themselves, which were these, you know, wild and young and party people that just were just partying their asses off.
• 1:25:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't blame them.
• 1:25:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I was young at one time.
• 1:25:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, I thought they were all nuts for skiing down cliffs, but uh, you know, they they stuck it right in the residential areas up the road.
• 1:25:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the things, one of the reasons, in my view, that it's hard to get compromise is for just about for most sides of any issue in Haynes, once something's been settled, one side or the other takes advantage of the agreement and they're they're put they're constantly pushing it.
• 1:25:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, this was it.
• 1:25:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, but we can do this, or we can it and it keeps and it keeps and so nobody has any trust that we're gonna make this agreement, we're gonna make it work.
• 1:25:48
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna make it work, we're gonna make this work, this is where we're gonna sit with somebody, and I'll admit, I've been on the assembly and as mayor, and things change, and like, well, what about this?
• 1:25:58
  SPEAKER_01: And we go through the public process, and depending on who you have on there, something comes up and changes.
• 1:26:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it you can't there's nothing the government can do that's not susceptible because that was one of the things with LUTAC DOC.
• 1:26:13
  SPEAKER_01: People that are against LUTAC DOC rehabilitation, they're like, if you can guarantee us that or that's not gonna be used for an OR terminal, we'll stop protesting it.
• 1:26:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I can tell you that all the engineers say that you can't, it's not big enough to put an OR terminal on, and but that doesn't mean AML can't take containers of they can't load a 40-foot van with a super sacks and take it out and put it on there.
• 1:26:39
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I there's no way I can promise that.
• 1:26:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because when I'm no longer mayor and you've got six new assembly members, they can change and do whatever they want.
• 1:26:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's a deep subject.
• 1:26:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's the crazy thing about being a democracy is nothing is nothing is written in stone.
• 1:26:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:26:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it it in a lot of ways it's frustrating.
• 1:26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know.
• 1:26:59
  SPEAKER_01: But it's yeah.
• 1:27:02
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, because you've been you've been planning commission, you were on the public safety commission.
• 1:27:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm on the BOE.
• 1:27:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now you're on the Board of Equalization.
• 1:27:11
  SPEAKER_01: You just can't get enough of that.
• 1:27:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think it's important.
• 1:27:14
  SPEAKER_02: I I think community service is important, it is, and I agree.
• 1:27:17
  SPEAKER_02: It would be a lot easier if more people would share in that responsibility.
• 1:27:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like we we have a hard time getting anybody to run for any of them.
• 1:27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:27:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, okay, so when we started, they appointed the Board of Equalization, they decided to do that.
• 1:27:30
  SPEAKER_02: The reason was is because it was always the assembly.
• 1:27:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, if you look at the assembly docket, it's way too busy.
• 1:27:37
  SPEAKER_02: So here comes, oh, okay, we here comes the appeals before the assembly.
• 1:27:41
  SPEAKER_02: You guys didn't have time really to to put the time.
• 1:27:45
  SPEAKER_02: Now they have a Board of Equalization that uh boy, I am so impressed with everybody that's on there.
• 1:27:51
  SPEAKER_02: But it started with nine people, and there's five of us left.
• 1:27:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:27:56
  SPEAKER_02: Four of them never even showed up to the first meeting.
• 1:27:59
  SPEAKER_01: So uh Because it's going to be a rotating thing that they're going to have a certain number of people, so not everybody had to go to each one and well no, when it comes to the actual appeals, you do do that.
• 1:28:08
  SPEAKER_02: Certain people take certain appeals, other people.
• 1:28:10
  SPEAKER_02: But as far as the actual uh general board of organization meeting, everybody's supposed to come, but they never they did they got appointed.
• 1:28:18
  SPEAKER_02: They wanted to be appointed because remember three years ago that some of the taxes went through the roof.
• 1:28:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 1:28:24
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody was all mad, so I'm gonna I'm gonna put in for the BOE and change all this.
• 1:28:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then they don't show up, you know.
• 1:28:33
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, so it goes back to our question: how do we get some more, especially the younger people, to do this, you know?
• 1:28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, a lot of the a lot of the younger ones that I that I talk to about doing that, they're like I I see I see what happens, I see how people that do that are treated.
• 1:28:52
  SPEAKER_01: Why do I want to step into that?
• 1:28:54
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think one thing that could change, Doug, and it's a very simple mechanical thing, is get the assembly meetings out of the public safety building.
• 1:29:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's oh that that's the word that room is horrible for meetings.
• 1:29:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's horrible because people are right here.
• 1:29:09
  SPEAKER_01: You're jammed in there, it's hot, you got this, it's the worst fluorescent lighting.
• 1:29:13
  SPEAKER_01: It feels like you're in a mental institution.
• 1:29:15
  SPEAKER_02: Here we have this wonder facility that we're funding that I know some people don't want to, but I'm all full support of the Chilcat Center.
• 1:29:23
  SPEAKER_02: You have the lobby that's got that multi-stage, it would be a way bigger, better venue for assembly meetings.
• 1:29:31
  SPEAKER_02: People would not be right in your face, you know.
• 1:29:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I they need to get these meetings out of there.
• 1:29:37
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I don't even like it for the Planning Commission meeting or something like that.
• 1:29:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because people will flood the meeting that are mad, and you know what it's like.
• 1:29:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's not pleasant.
• 1:29:46
  SPEAKER_02: They're in your face.
• 1:29:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it gets it.
• 1:29:49
  SPEAKER_02: They don't want to be open-minded, they want you to do what they want you to do.
• 1:29:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now that that that room is not conducive to it's not.
• 1:29:59
  SPEAKER_01: So why are we still meeting there?
• 1:30:01
  SPEAKER_01: The the reason the the the one reason now, I'll tell you, is because the during COVID when they got all the stuff to do everything on Zoom, all that infrastructure is set up in there, and because we had talked about this when I was mayor.
• 1:30:15
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't we go to the Chilcat?
• 1:30:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's meetings, like it's gonna be way too crowded here.
• 1:30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't we do it at Chilcat Center?
• 1:30:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, because we do everything with Zoom and we don't have the infrastructure at the Chilcat Center to do a meeting by Zoom.
• 1:30:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's nothing big though.
• 1:30:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's nothing big.
• 1:30:29
  SPEAKER_02: That's just an internet connection or a Wi-Fi connection.
• 1:30:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the yeah.
• 1:30:33
  SPEAKER_01: The the broadband on that.
• 1:30:35
  SPEAKER_02: Right, Sam.
• 1:30:36
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that that wouldn't be that difficult.
• 1:30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Sam could do it by you could you could set it up, but it'd be when we were talking about it, it was like a one-off meeting and stuff, and so to set everything up, the cost of that.
• 1:30:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you could take the stuff that's out of the the public safety the assembly chambers now and set it up permanently somehow in the Chilcat Center to have it there and make it work.
• 1:30:58
  SPEAKER_01: That wouldn't be an issue.
• 1:31:00
  SPEAKER_02: I moderated all those meetings, Wendy Craigie.
• 1:31:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm uh I remember a thousand people in the gym, you know, split right down the middle mad, and I moderated that meeting.
• 1:31:09
  SPEAKER_02: I uh I put a state trooper on this side and a Haynes cop on the other, and I said the first person that gets out of control, you're out of here, and and I met it.
• 1:31:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 1:31:20
  SPEAKER_02: So it it really does take someone who uh like even if if the mayor and everything that really controls a meeting and doesn't put up with a lot of crap out of people.
• 1:31:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I think you guys have been doing a good job with that lately.
• 1:31:34
  SPEAKER_02: Because I've seen you you've seen meetings that are just they're they're just out of control.
• 1:31:39
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, just nuts, you know, people mad, drunk, you know.
• 1:31:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but uh yeah, so anyway.
• 1:31:47
  SPEAKER_01: What what stories have we missed on the Jim Stanford stories?
• 1:31:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a Lego Bay Dog Marsh.
• 1:31:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, when I went through the ice on Birch Creek and and uh they did a story all across Alaska on Alaska News Nightly.
• 1:32:01
  SPEAKER_02: So uh I went up one December and ran the Two Rivers 200, which is starts out up the Stees Highway and then goes to Angel Creek, which is one of the checks on the on the uh on the quest.
• 1:32:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know, when the quest was running.
• 1:32:17
  SPEAKER_02: 100 miles to Angel Creek and then 100 miles back, and uh so 40 below.
• 1:32:23
  SPEAKER_02: Cash and Coleman were there with me uh helping me handle the dogs, and and uh I felt bad because it was so doggone cold and they're standing outside, you know.
• 1:32:33
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, so take off on the race, and about 30 miles in, I go under the the the trail up Birch Creek went under a bridge, and because I'm a tall guy, I had to duck.
• 1:32:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what I didn't know was on the other side, the mutt the mushers that were ahead of me, there was a hole in the ice, and every musher that went through made it bigger and bigger.
• 1:32:54
  SPEAKER_02: So when I came out from underneath the bridge, there was a hole 15 feet wide, and we went in, and I was up to the I was up to my chest in water, and fortunately there was enough slack in the dog line when we went in that uh two of my leaders jumped and got on the ice, and then because of their momentum, it popped the next two dogs up.
• 1:33:21
  SPEAKER_02: I think it was a 12-dog race next to, and then I popped up, but here all the dogs and myself were uh uh were uh just frozen, literally stiff.
• 1:33:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I was I was watching my sled load up with what's called overflow and slush in the sled, and I'm watching it at 40 below before my eyes turned to ice.
• 1:33:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I had it turned to ice, I would have been done, you know.
• 1:33:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so I uh grab my axe and I just start chopping like a madman.
• 1:33:54
  SPEAKER_02: Meanwhile, there's a guy up on the bridge watching me laughing his ass off.
• 1:33:58
  SPEAKER_02: He thought it was really funny.
• 1:34:02
  SPEAKER_02: So I finally get all the ice off that, and I got the I got the uh the snow hook really planted really well, and the dogs after 30 miles, they're going crazy.
• 1:34:11
  SPEAKER_02: They they want to go they're in a chase mode, but I had to go up to them, rip all their booties off because their booties were solid ice, it would have destroyed their feet.
• 1:34:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm screaming at them to stay, you know.
• 1:34:23
  SPEAKER_02: Just it had to be I wished he'd have taken a video.
• 1:34:27
  SPEAKER_02: Had to be funnier than you're not looking for help, you just want a video so you can watch it later.
• 1:34:32
  SPEAKER_02: Had to be funnier than heck, huh?
• 1:34:34
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, uh, but anyway, the thing that saved my butt is uh this guy that had run the quest, a good friend of mine up in Fairbanks, he'd run the quest like 10 times.
• 1:34:45
  SPEAKER_02: Before the race, I had a pair of felt boots on, which I got up in in Whitehorse.
• 1:34:50
  SPEAKER_02: I'd worn them for years.
• 1:34:51
  SPEAKER_02: They're super warm, even at 40, 50 below.
• 1:34:54
  SPEAKER_02: They don't do well wet.
• 1:34:56
  SPEAKER_02: So, and he didn't know that this was gonna happen, but he looked at me and said, Jim, you get your bunny boots on.
• 1:35:02
  SPEAKER_02: I got my bunny boots on, and that that really saved my ass because bunny boots can totally fill with water, but because of the way they're designed, they still stay warm.
• 1:35:12
  SPEAKER_02: I'd take them off and dump them out, but put them back on my feet warmed up.
• 1:35:16
  SPEAKER_02: But everything I wore, and I tell the kids this, especially because I used to do the dog sled things, and then I'd go to Skagway and do the same thing in the Skagway schools and Juno a couple times.
• 1:35:27
  SPEAKER_02: First thing I told them is how to dress properly for cold weather.
• 1:35:30
  SPEAKER_02: So everything you wear wicks moisture.
• 1:35:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 1:35:33
  SPEAKER_02: Everything, whether it's polypropylene or uh, or um, you know, polar polar tech or whatever that's called, that stuff now.
• 1:35:42
  SPEAKER_02: And uh luckily I had that on.
• 1:35:45
  SPEAKER_02: I had my musher suit over that.
• 1:35:48
  SPEAKER_02: Everything I wore wicked moisture.
• 1:35:51
  SPEAKER_02: So as I went up the road and it was dark, and the trail uh the uh my headlight was running out of battery at 40 below.
• 1:36:01
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you're lucky to get them to last four or five hours.
• 1:36:04
  SPEAKER_02: Every once in a while you'd see a fluorescence blaze on a tree or a trail marker in there.
• 1:36:10
  SPEAKER_02: Two rivers, there's trails all over hell, because that's where all the did rod mushers trained.
• 1:36:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so I didn't know where to go.
• 1:36:17
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I could I could have found my way to Angel Creek if I, you know, if someone would have had a sign, you know.
• 1:36:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but the leaders did.
• 1:36:24
  SPEAKER_02: They could smell the dogs ahead of them.
• 1:36:26
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:36:27
  SPEAKER_02: So finally I pulled into Angel Creek and Cash and Coleman or Stan and by that time, even though I was bone dry, all the water had come out of my suit onto the outside as ice, and I brushed it off.
• 1:36:42
  SPEAKER_02: I was hypothermic as hell.
• 1:36:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
• 1:36:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I scratched from that race and went home.
• 1:36:47
  SPEAKER_02: But then Alaska News Nightly got a hold of this story.
• 1:36:50
  SPEAKER_02: This idiot from Haynes gets goes through the ice on Burke's Creek.
• 1:36:55
  SPEAKER_02: And all my mushing friends, are you okay?
• 1:36:57
  SPEAKER_02: Are you okay?
• 1:36:59
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Yeah, I feel kind of stupid, you know.
• 1:37:02
  SPEAKER_02: But uh Yeah, I've I've had, yeah, like I said, Doug, I have visions of all these trails, and I've met so many wonderful, wonderful people.
• 1:37:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I still talk to them.
• 1:37:15
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, uh, we just had Martin Yarr come down from uh Whitehorse with his daughter.
• 1:37:21
  SPEAKER_02: He mushed with me for years up there, you know, ran a lot of races together.
• 1:37:26
  SPEAKER_02: All these guys are now they're probably maybe my age or 10 or 15 years younger than me, but they're all out of dogs.
• 1:37:34
  SPEAKER_02: It just it was time, you know.
• 1:37:37
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, but yeah, and then the visions of trails just all over, all over, you know.
• 1:37:43
  SPEAKER_02: Very magical place.
• 1:37:44
  SPEAKER_02: You know, so every day I was running my dog team, and I'll I still do this when I'm I'm running riding my bike up towards the border, which I try to do five days a week.
• 1:37:53
  SPEAKER_02: If I every time I go, Lord, what did I ever do to deserve this?
• 1:37:59
  SPEAKER_02: My God.
• 1:38:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know, here I am out here again, you know, in my church.
• 1:38:04
  SPEAKER_02: This is my church here, yeah.
• 1:38:06
  SPEAKER_02: Man, you know, and I if it the you ask me why I do this stuff, whether it's track or whether it's the ski trail at 25 mile or the baseball field up there, I just really get a kick out of out of uh seeing people outside doing stuff, especially athletics.
• 1:38:24
  SPEAKER_02: Because like the bike race, I think it's so good for you.
• 1:38:28
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, and if you're living in Haynes and you're staying indoors all winter, I'm kind of wondering why are you here?
• 1:38:36
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, but just get outside a little bit.
• 1:38:39
  SPEAKER_01: So speaking of that, if somebody's watching this from somewhere else outside of Haynes, what's your plug to like you need to move to Haynes?
• 1:38:48
  SPEAKER_01: What type of person do you think fits Haynes?
• 1:38:54
  SPEAKER_01: I know we've got a very eclectic population, but what are some of the I think outdoors, if you gotta if you love the outdoors, this is a place for you.
• 1:39:02
  SPEAKER_02: What what else do you think is kind of it's definitely probably not the money.
• 1:39:08
  SPEAKER_02: There are places in in Alaska like Fairbanks or a lot of places you can make more money in.
• 1:39:12
  SPEAKER_02: You can make a crap load of money in Fairbanks.
• 1:39:14
  SPEAKER_01: Just about anywhere else you can make more money.
• 1:39:16
  SPEAKER_01: You can make a lot of money.
• 1:39:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:39:17
  SPEAKER_02: So, yes, outdoors is is one of the things, uh uh, you know, a beauty of the wilderness and all that, and experiencing the wilderness.
• 1:39:25
  SPEAKER_02: Because when you're out there, and I've been in some wilderness, I'll tell you, in the middle of nowhere, you know, 30, 40, even 50 below.
• 1:39:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and when you're out there in that, uh, if you're dressed properly, and that's one thing people don't realize, how can you do this at these at these at these temperatures?
• 1:39:44
  SPEAKER_02: I said, you know, I said, well, they said, aren't you cold?
• 1:39:48
  SPEAKER_02: I said, no, if I'm cold, I'm doing something wrong.
• 1:39:52
  SPEAKER_02: You can dress properly for all these conditions.
• 1:39:55
  SPEAKER_02: You might not want to be in them for very long, like 50 below scary.
• 1:39:58
  SPEAKER_02: When I was training for the 95 UConn quest, I went to Tagus to train with uh Chris Turner and Gail Gilbert.
• 1:40:07
  SPEAKER_02: They uh Dan was going to run the quest that year.
• 1:40:10
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so Chris took his team.
• 1:40:13
  SPEAKER_02: We decided to go to Tagus to train in some better trails up there because Haynes had been raining a lot of that winter, so we go up there.
• 1:40:20
  SPEAKER_02: We got in a couple days of training.
• 1:40:22
  SPEAKER_02: We were do you know Deborah Bicknell?
• 1:40:25
  SPEAKER_02: You know Bicknell construction in Juneau, and then she Deb uh she ran the quest for several years in a row.
• 1:40:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we were staying in her cabin, it went to 52 below and stayed for three weeks.
• 1:40:39
  SPEAKER_02: One of the coldest cold snaps on record.
• 1:40:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you don't, we don't, I don't run dogs at that.
• 1:40:46
  SPEAKER_02: I'm really worried it's gonna uh uh hurt their lungs from breathing.
• 1:40:52
  SPEAKER_02: And they don't care.
• 1:40:52
  SPEAKER_02: Dogs don't respond.
• 1:40:54
  SPEAKER_02: Now, like if you're an endurance runner or a distance runner and you're overdoing it, you will feel a certain amount of pain.
• 1:41:03
  SPEAKER_02: Dogs don't equate the a equate the pain with their activity they're doing.
• 1:41:10
  SPEAKER_02: So, in other words, a sled dog would run themselves to death without realizing what they were doing.
• 1:41:18
  SPEAKER_02: So that's where the musher becomes really important to watch the dogs and make sure everybody's doing good, tails are wagging and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:41:26
  SPEAKER_02: Now, if a dog has an injured uh paw or a pulled tendon in a shoulder, yeah, they'll limp, but they won't stop.
• 1:41:34
  SPEAKER_02: They won't stop.
• 1:41:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:41:36
  SPEAKER_02: And so what happened in Tagish, we decided that we're gonna leave uh because we can't train.
• 1:41:42
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna try to go back to Skagway, get the Lakani, which wound up not being able to birth for a while because that was North Wind was blowing, it was nuts.
• 1:41:52
  SPEAKER_02: But I pulled down into Tagish, minus 62 on the Tagish River.
• 1:41:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm in, I'm in everything.
• 1:42:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, everything I could possibly put on my body.
• 1:42:03
  SPEAKER_02: I look, look, look with the Goodyear called Marshmallow Man.
• 1:42:07
  SPEAKER_02: Marshmallow Man.
• 1:42:08
  SPEAKER_02: And this native guy walks out of the gas station in a t-shirt and he's smoking a cigarette, and I I'm watching him.
• 1:42:16
  SPEAKER_02: He's pumping my gas and I'm watching him.
• 1:42:18
  SPEAKER_02: I go, and uh, you this you gotta be kidding me.
• 1:42:21
  SPEAKER_02: I'm watching this guy.
• 1:42:23
  SPEAKER_02: He's not shivering or anything.
• 1:42:24
  SPEAKER_02: So finally I said, Aren't you cold?
• 1:42:27
  SPEAKER_02: He looks, takes a drag off cigarette, looks up and down the rear.
• 1:42:30
  SPEAKER_02: He says, He says, Heck man, this isn't cold.
• 1:42:32
  SPEAKER_02: I've seen colder than this.
• 1:42:39
  SPEAKER_02: We got down into Skagway, and Chris's dog truck had blown the rear seal, and oil's just belching out of the engine, you know, out of the engine.
• 1:42:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so we're rummaging through all our trucks.
• 1:42:50
  SPEAKER_02: How many quarts of oil do we have to where we can get down into Skagway?
• 1:42:55
  SPEAKER_02: We had like 50 miles to go, and I think we were we were, I think we wound up with like five or six quarts, so we we could we could go 10 to 15 miles at 50 below before we had to add, and so we're stopping every 10 miles adding oil to this truck and uh get down into into Skagway and we're getting ready to get on the ferry, and she blows her transmission.
• 1:43:17
  SPEAKER_02: Oh jeez.
• 1:43:19
  SPEAKER_02: So we and this is a they had a one-ton Ford with a dog truck that held 20 to 24 dogs.
• 1:43:26
  SPEAKER_02: Oh jeez.
• 1:43:27
  SPEAKER_02: They have at least 16 or 20 loaded in this truck.
• 1:43:31
  SPEAKER_02: This is a lot of weight.
• 1:43:33
  SPEAKER_02: We had everybody uh on the ferry, off the ferry, deck guys, everybody's pushing.
• 1:43:40
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody's pushing this truck on the ferry.
• 1:43:43
  SPEAKER_02: Then we had to do the same thing in Haynes when we got to Haynes.
• 1:43:46
  SPEAKER_02: Push it off.
• 1:43:47
  SPEAKER_02: They let you push a car on the ferry?
• 1:43:49
  SPEAKER_02: They did.
• 1:43:50
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't think they'd allow me to say, no, this sucker's got to be running.
• 1:43:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so then uh yeah, that's that's it.
• 1:43:59
  SPEAKER_02: Another time, Jeremy Andrews, Bob's Jeremy now has a fantastic business overseas.
• 1:44:04
  SPEAKER_02: He's based out of Italy, but uh Jeremy.
• 1:44:08
  SPEAKER_02: He went with me as a handler, the trailer 98 race from Skagway to Whitehorse.
• 1:44:13
  SPEAKER_02: So we get on Lilcani, right?
• 1:44:15
  SPEAKER_02: We're going over for the start.
• 1:44:16
  SPEAKER_02: They can't dock because the wind's blowing so hard.
• 1:44:20
  SPEAKER_02: And here I got all these dogs with me in the dog truck and everything.
• 1:44:23
  SPEAKER_02: So uh I said, okay, we're gonna go back to Haynes, which we did.
• 1:44:28
  SPEAKER_02: We drove all the way around to get in the second stage at Car Cross.
• 1:44:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:44:34
  SPEAKER_02: The first stage was from Skagway to Car Cross, Car Cross to, I think it was Annie Lake or back some of the rivers and lakes, and then on to Whitehorse up the railroad track.
• 1:44:44
  SPEAKER_02: It was a just a hoot race.
• 1:44:46
  SPEAKER_02: It was great.
• 1:44:47
  SPEAKER_02: We got into Whitehorse, there's all these, they were having the fur rendezvous.
• 1:44:50
  SPEAKER_02: There's all these can-cang girls dancing on the side of the butt.
• 1:44:56
  SPEAKER_02: Jeremy was my handler.
• 1:44:57
  SPEAKER_02: It was great.
• 1:44:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:44:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I appreciate you sharing the stories with us.
• 1:45:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I appreciate you having me on.
• 1:45:04
  SPEAKER_01: This is this has been a fun evening.
• 1:45:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'll tell Pa Bob, the podcaster, wannabe, that he needs to tune in.
• 1:45:10
  SPEAKER_02: So if somebody tunes in, what do they how do they do that?
• 1:45:13
  SPEAKER_01: Go to just go to YouTube.
• 1:45:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's on YouTube, and or you can watch or listen on Apple Podcast or Spotify.
• 1:45:20
  SPEAKER_01: Those are and if they do, tell them to please like it and subscribe because we're trying to build viewership, so maybe we can make this self-sustaining at some point in time.
• 1:45:31
  SPEAKER_02: Fortunately, uh most of the people that I've talked about are probably dead, so I won't get any repercussions.
• 1:45:40
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, if not they know to find you at Mosquito Lake, they know how to find me now.
• 1:45:45
  SPEAKER_01: They know how to find you.
• 1:45:46
  SPEAKER_01: First place on the left, Mosquito Lake Road.
• 1:45:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I didn't give them that close of information, they would have had to knock at least knock on a few doors, but now you gave it away there, Jim.
• 1:45:56
  SPEAKER_02: I've had some kids still.
• 1:45:57
  SPEAKER_02: This happened about uh oh seven or eight years ago.
• 1:46:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not home.
• 1:46:02
  SPEAKER_02: Jamie's home.
• 1:46:04
  SPEAKER_02: And they get a call at the uh at the house.
• 1:46:09
  SPEAKER_02: Is this is this Jim Stanford that used to teach in Phoenix at Phoenix Union High School?
• 1:46:15
  SPEAKER_02: Jamie says, yeah.
• 1:46:16
  SPEAKER_02: She says, he goes, This is Gus Cabrera, little Mexican kid I had in the class.
• 1:46:22
  SPEAKER_02: I just wanted to let you know that you really helped me and really changed my life.
• 1:46:27
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's gotta be a good thing.
• 1:46:28
  SPEAKER_02: And that really got Jamie.
• 1:46:30
  SPEAKER_02: Jamie went, Wow.
• 1:46:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that's really something.
• 1:46:34
  SPEAKER_02: So it kind of brought a tear to her eyes.
• 1:46:36
  SPEAKER_02: But uh great memories, everything I've had.
• 1:46:40
  SPEAKER_02: I've been so blessed, Doug.
• 1:46:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:46:42
  SPEAKER_02: So blessed.
• 1:46:43
  SPEAKER_02: I still am.
• 1:46:43
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I just I just can't what's gonna happen next?
• 1:46:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I had a great grandson, right?
• 1:46:48
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 1:46:49
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 1:46:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well Okay, well the next great story, we'll have to have you back on and we can extend the extend the episode.
• 1:46:55
  SPEAKER_02: You bet.
• 1:46:56
  SPEAKER_02: Any anytime there's a lot of stories.