The Best Year of Our Lives are in Five Oaks.

A special weekly Dinner with Dan has special guests Ann and Jim Rougier, our neighbors from Squirrel Avenue joins Dan, Kate, Paul, Eddie, Sam and Diya. 

The Gang discusses their weekly events, travel woes, prom dresses, and of course the movie--1946 Best Picture: The Best Year of our Lives. An added bonus was Ann Rougier's amazing chicken and noodles.  While you can't taste the delicious homemade food, you can join us for the conversation.  

#DinnerwithDan

Transcript

SPEAKER_07 0:25

We're on. You sure? Yeah. That's true.

SPEAKER_05 0:31

Okay. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 0:33

Okay, I'd like to welcome everybody to this, the 27th episode of Dinner with Dan. It's unbelievable that we've done this for 27 times, and here we are. We are taping on Sunday, March 22nd, 2026, for my dinner table on Row Avenue in Dayton's beautiful historic Five Oaks neighborhood. We are now officially in spring, and we have sprung right into summer with a high, I guess, of 88 according to Sam Braun today.

SPEAKER_08 1:07

Dewey Hopper is hot.

SPEAKER_03 1:09

But uh late tonight, uh winter's gonna return with a low in the low 30s tonight.

unknown 1:15

Oh no.

SPEAKER_03 1:15

Oh yes.

SPEAKER_06 1:16

Maybe no school tomorrow. What climate you can hope. Any rain.

SPEAKER_03 1:21

Uh it started. The weekly weather has had the areas, uh, has killed the area's beautiful magnolia trees, which bloomed early this year because it got so warm last week. And then Tuesday, when it went down to uh like 13, killed all the magnolia trees, which really bums me out because they were really pretty this year. Joining the table tonight are regular Sam, Dea, and Dea is the tech support tonight. She's got the headphones on because Nan, who usually had the headphones on, has been given an excuse absence because uh business has taken her to the nation's capital, Washington, D.C. She just texted me, good luck on the podcast tonight. Uh so Dea is in charge of making sure we all speak loud tonight. We've got uh Paul Duncan Robinson, aka the Appalachian Trail Kid. Uh my son Eddie, who's down there diligently studying for an exam coming up on Tuesday. Kate Evans, and tonight we have special guests. Uh these uh these special guests are true five ochers, and uh I like to refer to them as the Lord and Lady of Squirrel Road.

unknown 2:42

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 2:44

That is the uh that would be Jim and Anne Rouget. Jim uh knew my late wife, Virginia Maud Platt, longer than me because he went to elementary school with her at Corpus Christi. He is a retired uh public school teacher, I think Jim taught history at Fairborn. And he just recently, and he's a master uh home remodeler. He just recently finished uh a super remodel of my bedroom bathroom. He uh ripped out the existing one that had been there since 1996, put a new uh tile in, he and George Eaton and built me a bench that's I can sit down and take a shower. Then they painted my back room blue and they repainted the downstairs bathroom. And then we put a washer and dryer in for me. And today I celebrated by doing a load of laundry. That has made Eddie very happy because now he no longer has to do laundry for his old man and bring it up from the basement. So I'm glad that uh I'm glad I knew uh I got to know Jim Rouget. Now, I'm equally glad I got to know Anne Rouget, who started life as a registered nurse, and then she decided to become a biology teacher in the Dayton Public School system. And uh interesting, and even though she's retired, she's still teaching, and very interesting tonight. Oh no, Anne Rouget has Dea in class in biology at Stivers.

unknown 4:28

Right.

SPEAKER_05 4:28

Dea, is your homework done?

SPEAKER_06 4:31

Judge? Yes, yes. She has she's getting exempt. Work fighting.

SPEAKER_03 4:38

Oh yeah. I will I'll give you a email.

SPEAKER_08 4:41

We don't talk about school on the pump. She's right.

SPEAKER_05 4:47

That's like working with work school. We can talk about school. I believe I believe a few weeks ago we we had a shower that Dia was trying to avoid because she knew she had not done her homework.

SPEAKER_09 5:01

Why is everyone exposing me? I don't like this anymore.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

She already knows that. But it would be work for Ann, so she's now can't talk about it.

SPEAKER_06 5:11

She already knew that. I knew that day.

SPEAKER_04 5:15

She's not the angel you thought she was.

SPEAKER_03 5:19

Well, we won't talk about school, but April 12th, we're gonna talk about prom.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_05 5:26

11th! Oh, 12th.

SPEAKER_03 5:28

Yeah, yeah, because the prom's Saturday the 11th. Right, right. On April 12th, we expect a full report on Dia's first uh event to a prom.

SPEAKER_06 5:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 5:36

But before that, then everybody's gonna talk about their events to prom.

SPEAKER_06 5:40

But before that, we need to talk about Dia's birthday. Thursday.

SPEAKER_03 5:44

Oh, you got a birthday coming up?

SPEAKER_08 5:46

It's okay. She does. She's she's not a big celebrator of her birthday.

SPEAKER_03 5:51

Oh, girl.

SPEAKER_06 5:52

She's not a child anymore, she told me.

SPEAKER_03 5:56

This is gonna be this is gonna be 17. You're gonna be 17?

SPEAKER_06 5:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:59

Oh boy. Oh man, are we gonna have a party? When is it?

SPEAKER_06 6:02

Thursday.

SPEAKER_03 6:03

Oh, it's this coming Thursday? Yeah. Well, I think next uh next Sunday we're gonna celebrate your birthday, even though it'll be late.

SPEAKER_06 6:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 6:16

Okay, there you go. That's the rules.

SPEAKER_06 6:18

Hey, look, we've got balloons already.

SPEAKER_03 6:21

Yeah, we'll keep the balloons. So, anyhow, uh this is how we usually do it, Jim and Ann. Uh, we start on the right hand side and we go down and we say what we've done this past week. And then we get into the movie. So, Dia, you're up.

SPEAKER_09 6:37

Um, I had school. I won't talk about it, no. But I had fun on Friday because we had Soup Dressed Up, which was this ceramics um fundraiser, and I got to like throw bows and vases for three hours, which was a lot of fun. Um, and yesterday I saw SpongeBob, which is a musical that the school did, and they did a really good job on that as well. So I had fun doing that. Um what else? I think I watched the movie today. Oh, I w I watched the sunrise today by the river. Oh nice. Which was cool, and it was the first sunrise I've ever seen.

SPEAKER_07 7:21

Really?

SPEAKER_09 7:22

Yeah, I've never really woken up having like intentionally seen the sunrise.

SPEAKER_08 7:28

So do you think you'll want to do it again?

SPEAKER_09 7:30

Probably, yeah. That's good.

SPEAKER_06 7:31

Now, did you go by yourself?

SPEAKER_09 7:33

No.

SPEAKER_06 7:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 7:35

706. Um, yeah, I had a good week. Sound like I got a prom dress.

SPEAKER_03 7:43

Oh, you got a prom dress? Yeah. Alright.

SPEAKER_06 7:45

Did Sam help you pick it out? No.

SPEAKER_05 7:48

I would be of no help.

SPEAKER_06 7:50

That's not true. It would look like a t-shirt, though. If you needed a t-shirt prom dress, it would be beautiful.

SPEAKER_05 7:57

I'd get you a good t-shirt. Start with a tuxedo t-shirt.

SPEAKER_09 8:05

Oh, maybe not.

SPEAKER_05 8:06

Especially non-black. Yeah. Okay, Sam, what have you done? Well, one thing I did do was listen to this podcast that I wasn't on. Oh. So if I'd had time, I was gonna print up a t-shirt that said freeloading know-it-all. Wow. Uh both comments someone on this podcast made about me. I don't know, I forget it. It's definitely a dude. I don't know.

SPEAKER_08 8:38

Some guy.

SPEAKER_05 8:40

Some guy who thinks he's in charge of the podcast. As Miss Piggy would say.

SPEAKER_03 8:48

Uh no, we had a truth of defense. That's all I can say. I learned that in law school. Truth of defense.

SPEAKER_05 8:53

Oh, there you go. Wow. There you go. Uh so we had a great week. We went to, we had trouble with the airlines. So we went to Phoenix.

SPEAKER_03 9:04

Can you hear him deal with she need to move the microphone? He's doing good. Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 9:08

We went, so we went to Phoenix, and we had immediately we woke up Wednesday morning, flight was canceled. Rebooked it through Cincinnati. Then uh we go to Cincinnati. You know who's there? It's fucking Donald Trump. Five bucks. So worth it. Worth it. Oh no, no, you can't get near him. They closed the interstate. And it ended up, it took us two fucking hours to uh to get out. No, write it down. Write it down. It's up to ten dollars. Well, what is it? What is it for the year? Because I need to I need to settle up. I need to pay it. Send me an invoice. You can run it out.

SPEAKER_08 9:55

It's like the pine club. Send me an invoice back.

SPEAKER_05 9:57

Uh so it took us two hours to get from downtown Cincinnati to the Cincinnati airport. But we made it. Uh Phoenix was was great. I went to three spring training games, saw the Reds out there, the weather was great, the pool was great. We did some hikes in the foothills outside of Phoenix.

SPEAKER_03 10:18

So we feel it. I think that's what, if somebody would have said you were a freeloader, I think that's what they were getting at. That man was out there on business and you were just out there on pleasure. I think that's where the freeloading comes in.

SPEAKER_05 10:30

Well, yeah, I mean that's absolutely true. Okay. But I bought I I bought my own plane. I paid for everything except the hotel room. Oh, Sam. Okay.

SPEAKER_06 10:42

That's not freeloading.

SPEAKER_03 10:44

Now what's unloading? Yeah. Spouse loading. What uh what team did you say play?

SPEAKER_05 10:52

Yeah, yeah, wait, wait, did you what team did Percy play? You never went to a conference with your wife or took her to one?

SPEAKER_08 10:59

Or your kids, you know, places like that. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_05 11:02

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_08 11:03

Never did that? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 11:05

Yeah, I see, I see.

SPEAKER_03 11:10

I don't remember we changed the name. So what else did you do, Sam?

SPEAKER_05 11:15

Well, tell us about how you got back. Oh, so getting back, yeah. So there's no weather. I mean, there's a big, big wind here and snow coming in, but there's no weather from Phoenix to Chicago that's a problem. But of course, somehow they don't have flight attendants for a flight. So they delay the floor. So they delay the flight out of Phoenix an hour. By the time they get flight attendants, we miss our connection to Dayton. And our connection to Dayton is late all the time, but somehow this day it's on time. Like we've landed and it's taxing on the runway. So then they tell us we can't get you back for another 24 hours. Like, what the hell? We're in Chicago. There's got to be like a bunch of flights a day. Daily.

SPEAKER_08 12:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 12:06

Daylight. Yeah. So, like, no, we can't. You know. So uh that wasn't gonna work out because I had a bunch of meetings Tuesday, I had first four tickets Tuesday evening. So we rented a car and drove back. It was not the best drive. So we got into I uh section of 65 uh around Lafayette was coated in ice, and there's uh multiple wrecks, including a jackknife truck that was across northbound and southbound lanes. So we lost time there, and uh we ended up getting in uh about uh 3 a.m. just before 3 a.m. Oh my Monday night. Yeah. It wasn't really until last night uh I caught up on my sleep. I slept 10 hours, so and I had a great week this week with the first four. Uh love it. Dayton does it so well. We had great games, we had a packed arena, we had a great atmosphere for Miami getting the win. Oh my god. Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, we had a great time. Friday night we went to uh souped up at Stivers, where I bought some dressed up. Soup dressed up. That's right. Thank you. We bought uh so there's all these ceramics, and Dia's very good at that, so I bought a bowl that Dia made. That was nice. And then Saturday night we went to the SpongeBob musical at Sky's. Oh really? That was pretty not bad for high school production. That's what my wife says.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

You don't get invited, Jim? No. No.

SPEAKER_05 13:56

No. You don't want to see them take away. Oh boy.

SPEAKER_06 13:59

Yeah, who wants who wants to see their who wants to see their husband sleeping? Oh at your theater playouts.

SPEAKER_08 14:08

Yeah, yeah, I got it. There you go.

SPEAKER_06 14:10

Even some styres celebrates I mean he's had a little nippy nap.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

Well, since I'm the truth teller here, uh Sam, uh, I heard about uh your trip from your wife.

SPEAKER_05 14:25

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 14:26

And uh the way she said it is not we rented a car, it was you rented a car because you had to get back for the first four games.

SPEAKER_05 14:38

Well, she likes to reinvent history. Okay. This was well, I'll let you work that.

SPEAKER_03 14:43

This was a dual decision. Okay. But everything else was the same, I heard about '65 and the ice and everything else. Okay, well, we'll move on. Uh Appalachian Trail Kid.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Uh wow, my my mine is way shorter. Mia was home uh from Ohio State on spring break, so I cut down my curling club activities a little bit in terms of doing the um learn a curl, but I still was at the curling club. Never fear, there's still uh learn to curls are still sold out. And then um Thursday, me and I went and had breakfast breakfast with Jason Hillard at the Ugly Duckling in St. Ann's Hill.

SPEAKER_08 15:20

Oh, I love that place.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

It's pretty good. And then uh, this is for Nan's benefit. I actually uh took her book recommendation and read in 1829. Um so she's not here. I want to read that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 15:33

I just got it from the library. I was on a waiting list.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Yeah. So uh that's it. That's it. Good week. A little bit more relaxing because I wasn't at the curling club as much, so not as much uh miles on the car. But uh anyway, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 15:48

Where is curling club?

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Uh Westchester, this is the same curling club, but thanks for mentioning that because I have helped out the Curl Troy Curling Club, which is uh curling at the uh Springfield uh Chiller rink. Uh we've done a couple learning curls there, so dual nationality in a way, and two curling clubs.

SPEAKER_06 16:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Yeah, I just need to find a Canadian curling club now and you know, make my way up there and stay.

SPEAKER_05 16:18

Okay. Things okay. Um it's an old name.

SPEAKER_03 16:30

Okay. Took care of your old man.

SPEAKER_05 16:35

There you go. I did some serious yard work too. It looked like a war zone in our backyard after the win. Yeah, it took me an hour just to pick up the sticks.

SPEAKER_03 16:48

And Sam Braun does like to pick up sticks in the yard.

SPEAKER_08 16:51

He's determined. Very determined.

SPEAKER_03 16:56

Okay. Catherine Ann?

SPEAKER_08 16:59

Well, um, I feel like I can't even remember the week, um, really, but I went to work. I went to some things after work that were work-related. Now that's what I'm I definitely can't talk about any of it in detail, which is fine.

SPEAKER_03 17:22

You never made that of the rule that you ever did work.

SPEAKER_05 17:25

You totally did.

SPEAKER_08 17:26

You absolutely did. Review the archives, please. Did you go to Bucky's? I did not go to Bucky's. Um, I don't plan to go to Bucky's.

SPEAKER_03 17:36

Um Eddie's gonna be at Bucky's because they have 120 pumps.

SPEAKER_08 17:40

Trust me, I know. I know all about it. Um the good news is Eddie isn't gonna have to like schlep all the gas around himself when he goes to Bucky's. Because they have people, they have crews out there doing it. So we have to witness those tests. We don't have to schlep the gas. So if you didn't hear that detail, let me, you know, it actually won't be as bad as we thought.

SPEAKER_04 18:09

I don't want to have to deal with that.

SPEAKER_08 18:11

No, you're not. That would be silly. But uh, yeah, then this weekend, let's see. Um I drove my convertible because the weather was nice. That was really fun. Um washed my dog, cleaned off my pork. Yeah, outside. That's uh nothing exciting.

SPEAKER_04 18:44

I don't think I worked Monday. Well, what are you working on? George. George and I, we have this rule. I think it's called rain and 32 rule. If it's raining, we don't work, and if it's 32 degrees, we don't work. Nice. I like it though.

SPEAKER_08 19:06

I wish I had that rule.

SPEAKER_06 19:08

A couple days it was 65. Well, you work Thursdays.

SPEAKER_04 19:12

Okay. Right? Tuesday, Wednesday. Alright. So anyway, so we did get to work, and we were working on this young lady's um porch, and we put the handrails up, and we did the we we redecked her deck with the composite. Oh, this is the famous deck. Yeah, this is the famous deck, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 19:35

Months in the making.

SPEAKER_04 19:37

And uh she knew that we was gonna do she knew that we were going to do it in two phases. We got the deck done first, and then we had to run over to Roe Avenue. Finish the job. Started job. Started job, and we got that job, Peter, so now we're back at Helen. Putting up our handrails. So maybe with any kind of luck we'll get it done this week. And then I don't think we worked Wednesday. I bought a new stove. Oh good. New stove for the house. I didn't buy it for the document. I bought it for myself. Gas stove? Yeah, gas stove. But um Do you cook a lot? Please?

SPEAKER_09 20:21

Do you cook a lot?

SPEAKER_04 20:22

Sometimes.

SPEAKER_09 20:23

Never.

SPEAKER_06 20:25

She does all the grilling. She does all the grilling. Sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. He's very good at that.

SPEAKER_04 20:32

Well, anyway, I was a little disappointed. I don't know if I'm supposed to say this or not. I was a little disappointed with Lowe's and Home Depot.

SPEAKER_05 20:40

They're not a sponsor. Yeah, we don't know. Go for it. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 20:44

We're not gonna assume really and Tosco are really disappointed with the number of appliances that they had on the floor. Period.

SPEAKER_08 20:55

They hardly put any out anymore, do they?

SPEAKER_04 20:58

Let alone a gas stove.

SPEAKER_05 21:00

I know. No, we had to basically order online anymore, or you're just not well. There's just no selection.

SPEAKER_04 21:07

Yeah, yeah. Well, we went to Costco, and that's my that's just at my absolute second worst thing to do in the world. Is go to a kiosk and look at a stove. That was not a happy cancer.

SPEAKER_08 21:22

Cancer? Cancer.

SPEAKER_04 21:25

Well, but I think to cure that I had to go buy a 36-pack of Miller Light. So it'll work. It's working.

SPEAKER_08 21:33

I was gonna say they do have those there.

SPEAKER_03 21:36

Well, I will say this, Jim Rouge. Uh the washer and dryer you got for me, because I had you and George do it. Yeah. Um, it is very simple. It washes and it dries. I did a load today, it washed and it dried. And you know, it doesn't have all this fancy computer stuff. It is what a seventy three year old Luddite needs.

SPEAKER_07 21:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:00

So I don't know if that was a floor model or not, but if you guys did be good on that one.

SPEAKER_04 22:05

So I think they have a lot of washers and dryers, but they just don't seem to have stoves. Especially gas stoves. It was both of them, clothes and Home Depot. So I went to Logan Appliance and bought one there. So they wanted a little too much money to um install it for me. So I said, that's okay. I'll put it on the back of my truck. I got a friend that can help me.

SPEAKER_06 22:31

Well, you can do gas, you're not afraid of hooking up gas.

SPEAKER_04 22:35

And then then we had to get ready. We had to get ready for the infamous Shaman Julianne Fishby.

SPEAKER_06 22:42

No fighting eagles.

SPEAKER_04 22:45

Which two of the participants here worked at. Lady Ann. Lady Anne of School of Who handled the back door? There is no back door. It's a Catholic school.

SPEAKER_08 23:03

There's no back door. I don't believe in the back.

SPEAKER_04 23:07

So there's no real back door. There's only one way in and multiple ways getting out, but just a one way in the pen. So all the friars were a little disappointed in that crowd that was there. They only had like, I don't know, 500 people there, which is very, very, very sparse for that fish fry. Yeah. But anyway, we made it. So that's, you know. And then what did I do? Oh, we had to go back down there today and to finish cleaning up. But that was only an hour or two. That's about it.

SPEAKER_02 23:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 23:44

Now, I just realized that uh we skipped over something. My fault. Uh we did not say what we were eating. And so since we're coming to Anne Rouget, who is the cook, I'm going to say, is it not doing it?

SPEAKER_09 24:03

Yeah. You can let go. I'm just saying you can let go.

SPEAKER_08 24:07

It'll be fine. Gosh, you're very demanding. Sorry. As a director. I'm not talking about. You don't have to apologize.

SPEAKER_03 24:15

No, she's learned from Nan Whaley.

SPEAKER_08 24:17

I know. I'd appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 24:19

Whose childhood nickname was Miss Bossy Boots. According to her mother.

SPEAKER_08 24:26

Yeah, don't apologize.

SPEAKER_03 24:27

Okay. So, anyhow, uh, usually before I send it around the table, we do what's for dinner. So I'm going to have you say what's for dinner because you prepare it.

SPEAKER_06 24:37

Okay. Do I announce that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 24:40

You're going to say announcement.

SPEAKER_06 24:42

Um, so we had uh homemade chicken and noodles that I've been making for I don't know, 30 some years maybe. Um, and I have claimed the recipe to be mine, but you know, I'm a known liar in some regards. You are a known liar, really my sister Marsha's liar.

SPEAKER_02 25:01

Both your children. Both your children.

SPEAKER_06 25:04

Yeah. Well, anyhow.

SPEAKER_02 25:06

You're a known liar.

SPEAKER_06 25:08

Um, really my sister Marsha started that, but she died very early, and so it's always been a tradition at Christmas, and it kind of started on um New Year's for other reasons too. Uh, after taco party for other reasons too. And usually that was because of indulgence of maybe some like um.

SPEAKER_05 25:32

I think we know what other reasons are.

SPEAKER_06 25:33

Yeah, I think we got um but and then we also have salad. Fruit salad. Um, but we I also made for the first time chickenless noodles for Dia. Dea is a vegetarian. That's right. They're delicious, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 25:48

That ought to be at least uh another plus on her grade.

SPEAKER_06 25:52

Oh she got exempted for her homework tomorrow. But it probably has close to a stick of butter. Um, then we have mashed potatoes and a beautiful uh I want to call it a spring salad.

SPEAKER_08 26:07

It was a spring salad. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:08

Catherine, did you make the salad?

SPEAKER_08 26:10

I made the salad and the mashed potatoes.

SPEAKER_03 26:12

Tell us what was in the salad because it was very good and it's gone.

SPEAKER_08 26:15

It is gone. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_03 26:17

Sand Braun scarfed it down.

SPEAKER_08 26:19

I think Paul scarfed it down too. No, it was all of us. Uh arugula and butter lettuce, peas, asparagus, uh, some radishes, uh feta, and the dressing had it was like lemon and white wine vinegar, and then olive oil, a little Dijon mustard, tarragon. Um just it I was just in the mood. I make this salad sometimes at Easter or a variation on it, and like just sounded good. Because it was so warm today, it actually felt like spring.

SPEAKER_03 26:57

And the peas worked really well. Yeah. The uh chicken and noodles. Yeah, you like that?

SPEAKER_08 27:02

I I just yeah, I thought with the weather I'd do a salad instead of a cooked veg.

SPEAKER_03 27:09

Okay, so Ann, tell us about your week. Um my week and uh-uh, since I make the rules, I can change the rules. Oh, no, no, I'll find out. So allegedly we don't we're not allowed to talk about work, but I think we are. But so I'm giving you a dispensation since Jim talked about work that you can talk about work.

SPEAKER_06 27:29

Okay. So I had um, as usual, a really nice week. Um my daytime job is from about 10 to 2, so that's easy. I only have four classes, and um we have been closing up on the central nervous system in my anatomy class. We ended Friday with a sheep eye dissection.

SPEAKER_09 27:54

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_06 27:55

Very fun.

SPEAKER_09 27:56

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 27:57

You gotta, you gotta stop it. Yeah. And then I allowed the.

SPEAKER_03 28:10

Yes. Yeah. I'm out. And I told her that I just can't believe that.

SPEAKER_08 28:15

Step by step.

SPEAKER_06 28:16

No, but my star student who's sitting across from me chose to work by herself. Because her partner, her partner did not show up.

SPEAKER_08 28:24

Oh no.

SPEAKER_06 28:26

No, she was sick. Um, however, yes, Bia will tell you we had to get my we had to get out the steak knives and they had to make a fast blunt entrance. Yeah, to be able to get it, to be able to use their scissors.

SPEAKER_09 28:40

But the fun part the goo dropped out of it. Yeah, the goo.

SPEAKER_06 28:45

But my fun, my fun is once they clean up the lens, I have them bounce it off the table. It's like a super ball. It is, it's fun, it's a lot of fun. You would hang out with that part, you would like that part. As many toys as you collect in the five.

SPEAKER_03 29:03

If you're listening to these podcasts, you would find out in my sophomore year high school biology, when it was time to dissect the frog, I passed out and fell on the floor.

SPEAKER_06 29:14

Uh-oh.

SPEAKER_03 29:16

I can't do from out of height.

unknown 29:18

Oh.

SPEAKER_06 29:18

Oh, this is we have this new stuff now. It's called care safe.

SPEAKER_03 29:22

And that's why I went to law school, not medical school.

SPEAKER_06 29:25

Oh, that's okay. You're allowed to do that. That's fine.

SPEAKER_03 29:27

So you can continue.

SPEAKER_06 29:28

Okay. Then I taught Monday Wednesday at Sinclair. That's another anatomy class. And um Oh, I forgot that you're doing two.

SPEAKER_03 29:38

Yeah. You're doing Stivers plus Synco. When do you think your husband may allow you to quit working?

SPEAKER_06 29:43

Uh, any minute?

SPEAKER_03 29:45

Since the Lord of Squirrel is so demanding.

SPEAKER_05 29:47

He he's got to be supported in the manner he's become accustomed to. That means a lot of Miller lights.

SPEAKER_06 29:55

Well, it is really nice when anytime we go anywhere, he can pull out hundreds of dollars from his wallet.

SPEAKER_04 30:03

Be careful. I am R and S. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 30:10

So no, it was fun. And then uh, you know, got four spin classes in the downtown Y, uh, worked the CJ Fish Fry.

SPEAKER_03 30:21

Do you spin in the water?

SPEAKER_06 30:23

No. I would like to try that though.

SPEAKER_03 30:25

Do they have spinning at the water at the Y?

SPEAKER_06 30:27

Not downtown that I know of. Okay. I know Princeton, I think, still does. Oh, okay. Is that right? Somebody does. Maybe it's Laurae, but anyway, one of the parks.

SPEAKER_03 30:38

And then you're a well-known uh Corpus Christi Friars uh uh support staff.

SPEAKER_06 30:45

Yeah, they sometimes, you know how men are, Dan.

SPEAKER_03 30:49

No, tell me, how are men?

SPEAKER_06 30:51

I'm not really sure. But but but they call us friarettes.

SPEAKER_08 30:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 30:56

So to me that's somewhat degrading on a female part, but it's okay. It's it's cutesy, right?

SPEAKER_03 31:05

Okay, well, let me just say this. They did call them suffragettes.

SPEAKER_06 31:08

I know.

SPEAKER_08 31:11

But that was also not suffragist is the non-derogatory term. But you know, so tech supporter says keep your voice up. Fryergist. A fry gist instead of a fryerette. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 31:26

Well, you know, back in the day at UD, uh the dance team was called the Flyerettes.

SPEAKER_08 31:32

I know.

SPEAKER_03 31:33

And I got my late wife, I was at uh Goodwill, and uh U D had just given a bunch of uh t-shirts to Goodwill, and I got her a flyerette t-shirt, and I gave it to her, she threw it back at me. There you go.

SPEAKER_07 31:46

There you go. That's my snapper.

SPEAKER_03 31:49

She did wear it when she worked in the garden. Well, yeah, it was a it became a work t-shirt. Okay, well, uh what I did this week was uh Monday uh I went out to the retired judges luncheon where us retired judges get together once a month at MCL Cafeteria on um on Far Hills uh at that table. I am the youngest. And tonight I'm not the oldest, Tim Rouget is because he's a year older than me. But uh usually uh I am I'm the youngest there. Uh and it was good to see uh Judge Brogan back. Uh he had had some uh medical problems, uh, but he's was back with us, so I'm glad to see him. He's a Corpus Christi boy, and uh Mike Murrers as well, he was there. Okay, so I had a good time, and I was pleasantly surprised because uh it was the day before uh St. Patrick's Day, and they did have corned beef and cabbage.

SPEAKER_06 32:52

Nice.

SPEAKER_03 32:53

So I got corned beef and cabbage because I didn't think I was going to get it on Tuesday, but then Carla, uh my Chilean uh uh daughter-in-law, decided to try her hand with corned beef and cabbage. Might I say I might get hit with a bowl of lightning.

SPEAKER_08 33:14

Pretty good.

SPEAKER_03 33:15

But uh, I really loved Virginia's corned beef and cabbage. Back away.

SPEAKER_08 33:24

Back away.

SPEAKER_03 33:26

She always made it with the uh a bottle of Guinness. Oh boy. Carla didn't use the Guinness, but man, that corned beef and cabbage melted in your mouth. Oh boy. Carla came through. Yep, it was great corned beef and cabbage, so we had that on St. Patrick's Day. And my good friend Bill Evans, uh, who had the Evans Bakery forever. Uh, I had lamented with him that uh I was so missing uh the Evans Bakery soda bread.

SPEAKER_07 33:53

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:54

He showed up about four o'clock on Tuesday afternoon and came in and he brought me a loaf of uh Evans bakery that he made it in his kitchen. Wow and it was still warm. Wow. So we got the uh Carrie Gold uh butter uh that we get at Costco, Jim Rouget's favorite place to shop. Second. And uh so we we had the the uh soda bread, so it was really good. Then I spent the rest of the week uh watching the Flyers on TV, go Flyers, they're still playing. They're the only A10 team and the only Ohio men's team still playing basketball. And we just found out that they're gonna be have a home game this coming week.

SPEAKER_08 34:37

Very exciting.

SPEAKER_03 34:38

We're all excited about that. And then I did my uh two uh two days out at Legacy, uh Friday and Saturday. And so that's pretty much it.

SPEAKER_06 34:51

Now, who do you mean at Legacy?

SPEAKER_03 34:53

I have a Friday group and a Saturday group. The uh Friday group is uh my law school roommate Jeff Patcher, uh Mike Brigner, who was DR judge, uh Mark Owens, who was our clerk of courts, uh myself, and then Steve Schulkers, who was uh bailiff to uh uh Judge Brigner. And then on Saturday, it's my old Oregon District uh coffee shop group. Alani Prieto, who was one of our guests when we did Greek food, uh Loretta Punzer, who painted the picture of Rio.

SPEAKER_04 35:26

Oh, that's right.

SPEAKER_03 35:27

Uh John Harrison, my good friend from Paris, Texas, FM, uh, who's a good friend of mine. FM is the guy who restored uh Virginia's swin twin that rides up and down the block party. FM uh Frank got that in Akron and FM uh restored it. And uh and Schulkers comes to that. Uh and then sometimes Jan Um Jan Underwood shows up. So, yep, so that's what I did. Okay, so it's now time we're going to go on to, I believe this is gonna be our 19th movie that we've interviewed, that we've reviewed in our quest to watch all the best picture movies. Um this is going to be the 1946 Best Picture. So I'm gonna read you a couple of things before I kick it over to general discussion. Now, uh, you know, I always buy them on DVD, so I like it because they have extra bonus stuff, you know, interviews with people that were in the movie or whatever. And this one happened to have the trailer that actually played in theaters uh before the movie came out. And this is one of the most interesting trailers that I've I've read, that I've heard. And it comes on with letters and very great music. It says, through the years, great motion pictures have been made. But now Samuel Goodwin presents the best thing that ever happened. His masterful production of the love story of today that will live with you through all your tomorrows, the best years of our lives. And I thought, wow, that's before it got all this acclaim and everything else. But they were that sure that this movie was gonna hit. Okay, the movie is based on what they call a blank verse essay, which I've never heard of. It's I thought it was a novel, but they said it's a blank a blank verse essay by McKinley Cantor, and that was titled Glory for Me before it got changed to the best years of our lives.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

Interesting.

SPEAKER_03 37:46

It won eight Oscars uh for Best Picture, and a lot of people like to know what it was up against. It was up Henry V, up against Henry V. It's a Wonderful Life, uh, The Razor's Edge and The Yearling. That were the that was the other movies that were competing against it. Got Best Picture, then it got Best Actor for Frederick March. He played Sergeant Al, and that was his second best actor, Oscar. Best Supporting Actor was uh Harold Russell, who played uh The Sailor Homer. And uh for the only time in Oscar history, he not only got Best Supporting Actor, but he also got an actor, or got an Oscar, uh, that read as uh following it was a special award, but it was an Oscar, to Harold Russell for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance in the best years of our lives. So he actually got two Oscars for basically playing the same uh person. Uh then it got uh best director for Billy Wilder.

SPEAKER_08 38:57

Uh and it was William Wilder, I call it.

SPEAKER_03 39:00

William, yeah, William.

SPEAKER_08 39:01

William Wyler, yeah. Yeah, not Billy Wilder.

SPEAKER_03 39:03

Right, yeah, I'm sorry. William Wyler.

SPEAKER_08 39:06

Just making sure they're two different people.

SPEAKER_03 39:07

Yeah, two different people. And they both got two best directors.

SPEAKER_08 39:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:11

Uh and this was his second because he got his first one for Mrs. Miniver, which I believe was the 1941 or 41 or 42, yeah. Uh and interestingly enough, uh, one of the reasons why the commentators think that it hit so well was because he had just come back from the war as well. You know, he was he wasn't able to be at the Academy Awards uh for Miss Miniver because he was already overseas uh doing uh movies and stuff for the war effort. Uh and it got uh Oscar for screenplay, it got Oscar for film editing, and it got Oscar for Musical Score. Okay, I'm just going to go down one more thing and then we're gonna knock it around. Uh the movie starred uh Marina Lloyd, who played Millie Stevenson, uh Frederick March, who played uh Al Stevenson, they were husband and wife, Dana Andrews, who played Captain Fred Derry, and then uh uh Virginia Mayhoo Mayo, who played uh Maria Derry, who was married to the captain. Uh then it was Teresa Wright, who was uh the daughter of uh uh Sergeant Al played Peggy Stevenson, then Kathy O'Donnell played uh Wilma Cameron, who, as we know, ends up marrying Homer. Uh Harold Russell uh played uh Homer, Parrish, the Sailor. Uh and then, interestingly enough, and I thought it was really great, Hoagie Carmichael, the great Hoagie Carmichael was in it, and he played uh Butch Engel, who uh ran the uh bar that uh Butch's place. Yeah, he was the uncle of Homer. So I'm gonna read one more thing and then we're gonna kick it in. Okay. This is on the back of the DVD. It uh says heartwarming and priceless a masterpiece. It is uh it's the hope that sustains the spirit of every GI, the dream of the day when he will finally return home. For three World War II veterans, the day has arrived, but for each man the dream is about to become a nightmare. Captain Fred Gary, Dana Andrews, is returning to a loveless marriage. Sergeant Al Stevenson, Frederick March, is a stranger to a family that's grown up without him. And young sailor Homer Parrish, played by Harold Russell, is tormented by the loss of his hands. Can these three men find the courage to rebuild their world? Or are the best years of their lives a thing of the past? Featuring a brilliant cast that includes uh Mira Loy and Virginia Mayo, the post-war classic garnered eight Oscars, including Best Picture. Uh heart-wrenching, touching, and filled with emotional dynamite. That was from the Hollywood Reporter. It remains one of the best films about war veterans ever made, and that was a quote from the American movie Classics Magazine. So with that, I have had my say, and I'm going to turn it over because we always go around this way to Dia. Your turn.

SPEAKER_09 42:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 42:30

Now you gotta turn that so you you pick yourself.

SPEAKER_09 42:32

Right, right.

SPEAKER_03 42:35

Um tech support always needs to.

SPEAKER_09 42:39

Well, I enjoyed this movie. I felt like it was a bit long, but um definitely not as good as How Green Was My Valley. That's still the best. But a very, very comforting movie again, brought closure and the war ended, and everybody was coming back. It was interesting to see how you would expect it to be easier for people who were coming back from war back to their like normal everyday lives to enjoy it and for everybody to be happy. But it really wasn't that way, and they were struggling at first, at least, and um they had their own coping mechanisms and trying to just adjust back to their lives, and their family was not used to having them around anymore, so it was kind of difficult for them too. So that was really interesting to see. Um I think that was my favorite part about it, and also the daughter that was in this movie was was in some other movie that we watched. I don't know which one.

SPEAKER_08 43:42

Oh, okay. She was the daughter in law. I see. I see. Yeah, that's her.

SPEAKER_09 43:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 43:49

Good eyes. I missed that.

SPEAKER_05 43:51

Oh right, yeah. Yeah, she saw it right away. Yeah. Great.

SPEAKER_09 43:55

Yeah. I and I enjoyed the scene, but um

SPEAKER_05 44:00

the the rich guy was like dancing and he was drunk and he was dancing with the the waiter and that was that was fun yeah yeah so I liked it it was it was a good movie okay well since Dee is getting some points for picking that up yeah I believe the bank guy who ratted out Al for giving a loan was the bank examiner from It's a Wonderful Life trying to get home to Elmira I think you're right yeah I I had the same thought I was like oh god it's the bank examiner that's him examiner yeah and the other guy who is the good bank owner right okay if you watch me TV which everybody over 65 watches okay wait a minute and uh everybody I've seen it every now and then okay I'm a I'm uh inspiration back slaps everybody in gunsmoke gunsmoke yeah but if you watch me TV like I do uh the guy who played the lovable bank owner who you know let the loan go through and everything and had faith in bringing uh Sergeant Al back he plays Lieutenant Trag on the Perry Mason the old Perry Mason uh yeah TV show he is Lieutenant Trag who always comes in you know and then uh figures that out and then Perry always beats him in court he's not the prosecutor he's the police lieutenant okay Sam your turn uh sure so what I thought was interesting is the three guys are all really from three different classes yeah right right you have you have the the banker who's wealthy you have the um the navy man who's who's lost his hands who it looks like who is middle class yeah based on yeah based on his his house and everything and then you have the most accomplished guy the the uh pilot or the flyer who is is clearly poor yeah or at least does have his parents support so I thought that was interesting how their reintegration is all different I think based on the class that they come in but their achievement in the military is really the opposite of their class. I pick that up right so I and I think they did that on purpose but it you know it really shows what a difference that makes where you know one guy can't get a job one guy well he's getting he's getting the disability checks because he's lost his hands but he's supported really well and then and then the other guy even though he comes back I don't know if he was an alcoholic before but he's clearly an alcoholic now and he still gets a a promotion and a high paying job at the bank and he can even get away with uh a drunken speech in front of his boss and it you know seems to be okay yeah uh so I I I I thought that was interesting um uh another point I was gonna make I I don't know if you're if you're gonna talk about this later but Boone City yeah so so Boone City's fictional yeah and I I looked it up and it turned out not only was it based on a Midwest city which I kind of figured it was based on Cincinnati at least is what the what the internet said so that was interesting. I didn't really get that from anything that I I saw in there but because the film it's um filmed in Illinois in California.

SPEAKER_01 47:49

Well it's weird because they were trying to like which is you know Illinois surely in some cases they're trying to portray this as a small town but then you show up at like Al's apartment building like well this isn't a small town too big yeah yeah so it's too big so I thought it was like Dayton size they told me of that and then when I looked it up I was like oh Cincinnati so I wasn't like too far off but yeah.

SPEAKER_05 48:08

Yeah I would have gone with any mid-size Dayton Peoria Scranton kind of kind of kind of vibe like that. But not and not not that small but but not the not on the coast.

SPEAKER_01 48:19

Because there's a lion there I think um uh to Fred's like oh you probably want to get out of here I mean that implies it's a small town but it's yeah that there's some place there to go like Cincinnati size would have been pretty big.

SPEAKER_05 48:30

Yeah yeah and I just you know there's obviously a lot of parallels to today with that they hit pretty well with people coming back from the war from Iraq from Afghanistan with PTSD having nightmares being unable to cope with civilian life drinking to self-medicate because of what they saw and I'll turn it over to others.

SPEAKER_01 48:54

Well I was trying to keep track of maybe some themes that occur that we would we would see in pretty much any of these war movies particularly the ones in the 80s and 90s that talk about Vietnam and such but like for example um uh like D was saying like the family is having a hard time adjusting there um specific to world war two like Fred's wife took a job which we we know that's to be true for a lot of the uh the the wives um getting the jobs is difficult we see that particularly through Fred um talking talking in your sleep fred does that a little bit I mean it's not it's not like a main part of the movie but we we know that that happens with the PTSD um and then uh when when Fred goes for an interview uh at the back at the drugstore we see that uh uh he's like well I don't have any relevant skills and and the the manager wears like well you've done this this and this in the army right he's like well I mean kind of maybe maybe not and so is that that attempt to get transferable skills from your service into civilian life um yeah why why do you think like he doesn't try to lie a little or embellish because he certainly could have right yeah right it would have helped him I don't think he wanted that job yeah I think you're right about you're right he didn't want that convenience he just didn't want to be in there in any fashion yeah that could be that was his last like resort yeah yeah and then Homer seemed to embody like keeping to yourself like that's a theme that we see in other you know movies with veterans returning and then the the whole idea about running running out of money um because that's always a potential obviously for if you don't have a job and whatnot um the other thing I was uh that I found interesting was when Al's talking to like his son and then daughter when he comes back and it's kind of like they they're starting talking like the modern war world right I mean it's I mean we know this is immediate post-war but he talks about or the kids actually bring it up it's like atomic energy and then uh the daughter says domestic science and scientific efficiency we also see that the drugs the druggist has sold his chain uh his store store to a chain so that's a a premonition of modernity yes yeah and then Al makes a point about it's all about making money now which I mean arguably it was never not about that but I think it's that sense of like this the the world has changed. And then the last point I had was really interesting because they're touching on all these issues of you know about vets returning but not once did we see anything about any of them talking about going back to school because the GI Bill would have been in effect and and about 20% of veterans went back to to college. Not say right away I mean they could have done it a couple years later but none of them were actually talking about that as an option even as a city as big as Boone City so anyway.

SPEAKER_03 51:33

Okay I want to throw something in uh the movie starts uh with a it lets you know you're gonna be in for a bumpy ride you're gonna hear a lot of things that are gonna really challenge you and the movie starts with uh him trying to get a flight back and there's a fat cat civilian yeah who gets on the plane with his golf clubs right with his golf clubs but the vet can't get on okay so I thought man that was a clear punch yeah okay so they go over to where all the guys are waiting for a military flight going one way or the other and that's how the three meet up. And you know it's Palmer's first flight uh on a plane uh they they start and it's taking them forever to get back because it's stopping at each little airport or each little military base on the way and uh the uh one of the things I thought was real interesting when they're flying over uh where they're all three of them are from uh they look out and I think it's Homer or one of them says people are playing golf like nothing happened. Yeah and I thought that was you know that was pretty good. Plus the other thing if you've watched a lot of war movies like I think a number of us have the three on the match superstition yes you know one to see the light two to aim your shot and three to kill for the sniper so I thought that was interesting.

SPEAKER_01 53:08

I mean that was something you see in a lot of of the war movies you never lit three on a I think you actually even seen that on Spielberg's band of brothers you never lit uh three cigarettes off the off the same match anyhow Eddie I don't watch Iranian okami propaganda oh my there you go Dan the the the point that you made about the opening scene um I thought about that too because I think it's the first time in these movies probably not the first time in any movie but at least the ones we've watched where there's an actually scheduled commercial flight like we've seen airplanes in other movies but this is a scheduled commercial flight again kind of indicating that the world is turning into this you know modern era right yeah and isn't the fat cat from early on isn't that the banker the bank the bank presidents it's not no it's not no okay it's not no they look I mean they look similar okay okay Kate um I I mean turn it toward you Kate this movie is uh one I've seen before like a lot of these I've seen before um and I think everything everybody has said is like very spot on um except for except for Eddie who yet again has disappointed me by not watching the movie I gotta get him to do it eventually I know geez he's busy um we're all busy and he could watch the movie but uh no I think that um you know when I see this movie I often think of my grandfathers who both fought in World War II and you know had uh had to come home at the end both of them were very fortunate in that they both Louie whoopsie jog interlude um who is it I don't know if someone was at the door or not package delivery maybe maybe but anyway my grandfathers both fought and one was in the Pacific and was one was in Europe they both were injured several times at various points but they were they came home intact and like able to come home and and start rebuilding their lives and I know that like I never got to meet my dad's dad but he um he never talked about it.

SPEAKER_08 55:57

He had it and he was in the Pacific he never talked about it um and my my mom's dad who was in Europe um never talked about it until like very close to the end of his life those last couple of years he would have dreams and he would talk about it a little bit he'd have these nightmares that I think he probably had uh all his life after the war but he would never talk about it until like later in life when he was uh his health was declining and it upset him a lot still um you know my grandpa who was very I always thought of him as a very hardened person uh you know actually I saw him cry um talking about something it was he didn't talk a lot about it but you know so it's I think like seeing this depiction of these these three guys coming home and trying to readjust after everything they had just gone through it's very poignant. I think it's always um I think Sam made this point like it's kind of evergreen like you can see you know I think like uh modern warriors coming home probably could see this movie and see like you know um even though the eras are different see similarities in their own um homecomings and I I just I think it's I think you know it's important to remember these things. It's and I the tone of the movie is very you know there's some hope at the end uh but it's just it's a very I think realistic depiction of of these three very different guys trying to like make it and these three guys who would not have been friends beforehand were not friends. You know they they have this shared bond forever right and like you know you see them and even though we don't know what they were kind of doing other than the superficial stuff before the war you see them in this film and you you know even though you don't see that that past that they're approaching things differently than they probably did before they left. Like Al at the bank like taking a chance on the the CB that comes in and talks about his tomatoes like would the old Al have done that probably not necessarily like you know but he's got this experience with these guys that are from all walks of life now that like you know in this in this bond that you know one of his lines that uh I wrote down and this goes along with what you said that Al said when he was talking about you know and I wrote it down uh this is a a quote from Al last year it was kill japs now this year it's make money and I thought you know that's yeah yeah there you are. There you are. But the other thing I will say is um there is a really good book called Five Came Back and it's about William Weiler and Frank Capra John Ford um John Houston I'm trying to think someone else and a fifth director and it's about these they are five movie directors that went to war in various ways and made movies during the war it's a really good book they turned it into a miniseries like a like a three-part documentary miniseries on Netflix it's narrated by Meryl Street that's very good um but it gives you a sense of these filmmakers that we're now like learning a lot more about with the watching all these movies gives you a sense of kind of what they were before the war and what what the war did to change their views and on how they approach their their work. It was it's really good. So I highly recommend it.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:05

Keep your voice up okay yeah I was just looking at just several things here I think that uh of the three people that came back Homer had the most visible disability whereas the other ones were just plain mental and they can kind of you can hide yeah that's right you can hide behind your mental disability in there. And um but his was obvious and he had to deal with his on the up and up um every day of his life and I kind of think that in the movie Homer had the problem had more of a problem than his mom and dad and Wilma because they were ready. I'm glad you're home glad you made it and then it you know I think acceptance acceptance yeah and I think the key point in the in the movie especially with Homer was when he took the late he took Wilma his you know girlfriend upstairs took off his shirt and he showed him okay now this is what you do this is what you do and then he kind of turns around and says um well that's what you have to do that's what you are gonna have to do to me every day. No no uh I can take it off but I can't put it on it yeah that's what yeah and he can't shut the door yeah and that yeah that's the door. All right Thunder Yeah and the next thing was the next thing was and he said you can't shut the door because I can't get out well I kind of looked at that as um now I lost it here. Now you know he has to decide do you go through that door and maybe there's an opportunity there or you have them shut the door where there is no opportunity and you're going to be the same way all the time. And also there's um you know the best uh the best years of their lives what they needed to do was they needed to transfer the best years of their lives ahead of them instead of the worst years of their lives going through the war.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:13

So that's and I was you know one of the things that you did bring up Jim is uh all three of them I've written down quotes from all three of them they all three said to their loved ones or their potential loved ones I have to do this myself.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:30

Yes I have to do this myself I'll work it out I have to do this myself yeah all three of them said that yeah and another thing is that the mental issues the struggles these are the same struggles that we go through today and it's been going on forever forever and a day we can take these young boys we can teach them how to kill 1500 different ways put them in there and put them right back on the street like they did you know the boys came back from World War II and see you later. Yeah expect them to go right back to normal right back to normal and and that's like you know the the episode of flying over the golf course playing golf nothing ever happened.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:13

Yeah nothing ever happened yeah um well you know and the other interesting thing too you bring it up uh about how young they were my dad who was born in 1913 he was off uh right field excuse me here in Dayton uh but his brother his younger brother my uncle Vic uh he was probably 22 years old got into officers candidate school became a lieutenant uh because he was smarter than the average bear when it came to math so he became a navigator on a B-24 and uh so here's this 22 year old kid who graduated from run high school uh class of probably 1930 my dad graduated in 32 Vic was probably maybe class of 38 or whatever in there uh high school education uh becomes a lieutenant now he's a navigator and he navigates over the over the Arctic with the sextant off the uh off the North Star and he put in all his uh flights over Europe he was in a squadron called the squadron of deception they flew without uh fighter escort they would go in before a big bombing run and broadcast fake uh uh radar signals to get the luftwaffa to chase them back across the channel so they were always coming in under radar and they were always racing to get back with the luftwaffe on them so the big bombing waves didn't have the luftwaffa going after them you know as many going after them so that's why it was called squadron of deception and the reason why I'm making this point is they were all kids they're all kids I mean it's it's interesting that Frederick March plays the sergeant and he only ends up being a sergeant I'm still trying to figure that one out but uh you know they're all kids onehow when my uncle Vic comes back I always knew my dad and uncle Vic were in the war I saw pictures of them and everything you know uh but I never knew it and what my Uncle Vic did until we took him to the Dayton Air Show. There's only very few uh B-24s that still fly and one of the B-24s is the Diamond Little it's run by the uh it's now called the Commemorative Air Force and so I called my uncle up before he passed away and said I'll come up and get you we'll take you Lily was with me we took him out there he hadn't been on a B-24 since May it's I remember the date since March 25th 1945 and he had his picture you know those guys that were on those planes they always had that picture with them out there Okay. And I took that picture. And you know, you had to pay ten or fifteen dollars to take a tour of the plane. And I showed it to the guy, and they said, That's your uncle? There's no charge for him. And he can go wherever he wants to. And I thought that was really neat. So Vic had not been on that plane. Uh he spent his time. He came back to America, and he said, Okay, I'll go fight in the Pacific. So he is in San Francisco when the A-bombs were dropped, waiting to go over to, you know, be a navigator in the South Pacific. You know, they get him out, they can't wait to get people out, you know, because it's costing them money. Uh so they get my dad out real quick, he gets back to Van Wert, they get uh my uncle out real quick, and then it's only the United States War Department back then, uh, and I have them upstairs somewhere that I'll get them down. They went after my uncle for years, trying to get him to pay back like $6.75 for meals that he ate at the officers club in San Francisco that weren't authorized by the War Department. And I want to tell you what, if I have one onion skin copy of that, because I kind of got the you know, my uncle did not have any children, so I, you know, became the the family historian, so I've got his his flight case upstairs and everything. If I've got one letter from the War Department to him in uh Harrison Township in Van Wert County, wanting their $8 or whatever it was back, I got a million. Well, anyhow, I I I took that uh I hijacked the plane there. I didn't mean to do that. But it's so interesting when you see, you know, you and I were history majors. Uh, when you look at how quick we armed, how quick Roosevelt got Ford, who didn't want to go over and fight the Nazis because he was probably a Nazi himself, uh, how he got them, it's true fact. I mean, Henry Ford was an anti-Semitic equipment.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:08

There were a lot of isolation and a lot of pro-Nazi General Peterson. Yeah, it's okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:17

So I'll give him that after reading the 1929.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:20

Well, and uh well, and the other thing too is you know, there's that scene in the movie where where uh where uh uh Fred knocks and punches the bag.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:30

Yeah, that's one of those isolation ones that are.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:34

Yeah, oh absolutely, yeah. And you know how quick they build it up. They wanted to unbuild it real quick. Yeah, and to me, one of the most impressive scenes I've ever seen in a coming back movie, whether it's the coming home from Vietnam or whatever, uh Hurt Locker from uh Afghanistan, when they go to the boneyard. Yeah, and you know, that's not CGI. Oh no, those are planes that six months ago were getting shot at by the Luftwaffe, or you know, a year ago were getting shot at by the Luftwaffe. And now they're out there tearing them all apart because they're no longer they don't need them, and they've already got new planes. Let's get rid of these things.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:17

That's that's kind of the the uh Fred, you know, he was so valuable, they were so valuable, and now you see him sitting in the in the cockpit there, no, no um engines on him or anything like that. And the guy yells at him, and I think it's a turning point for Fred there. Guy yells at him, hey, what are you doing up there? Oh, I used to fly those six weeks ago. Oh yeah, and you're one of these guys while I was on the ground. That was infantry, yeah. And he goes, No, that's over. I need a job, and I want a job, and that stopped the guy cold. Yeah, yeah. And it stopped and say, Hey, Paul, come over here. And this guy needs a job.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:55

So as we're watching the movie, uh Dia asked me, good question, were they guaranteed a job when they came back?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:04

Sure weren't.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:05

And my answer is no, they're they're not guaranteed a job. However, and I'm not sure what year it passed, but there was the GI Bill that did create a lot of opportunities, educational opportunities, subsidized housing. There were things to help them.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:22

Well, they talk about that at the bank scene. Yeah. Where he first comes in, where uh Al first goes back. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:30

Yeah, so there there were opportunities, but you had to like reach, you know, reach out and take advantage of them.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:36

And you know, some people did, some people didn't. You know, my dad had a kid during the war, 1944. My mom got pregnant again. Yeah, you know, uh, but my uncle, uh uh Bud, who was my mom's uh brother, uh, he was in the Pacific. He wasn't married, he didn't have kids, he did the GI Bill and went to Ohio State and became a high school shop teacher for 35, 40 years in Van Wort. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:05

Yeah, but if you're dealing with PTSD, uh you know, you're not gonna be able to see some of those opportunities.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:13

And sometimes I think they were maybe too proud in that to seek welfare type of mentality, which I don't think it is. I mean they're well deserving of it. Um but anyway.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:29

Well, yeah, you know, I mean uh uh Al does say when they're asking him about what are you doing, he says, I just dropped bombs.

SPEAKER_07 1:11:37

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:38

You know, he never could he could never say that he did anything important. He was, I just drop bombs. Yeah. Okay, Anne. Jim, are you done with your comments?

SPEAKER_04 1:11:49

I was just saying there's a uh documentary about the uh incinerary bombs. Especially they they went over. Not only did they bomb Dresden, and what it what the incinerated bomb does, it creates so much fire, it takes the oxygen out of the air, and the people that thought they were going down in the in the in the bomb shelters in the basement and stuff like that, they suffocated to death because there was no oxygen. And they also, the uh United States did this also to Japan. Of course, there that was just ripe for um uh the incendiary bomb, December.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:27

Yeah, Dresden was about revenge.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:30

Yeah, yeah. And this is uh city in Japan, was it Tokyo, I think, but they had all wooden structures that kind of went boom.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:38

Yeah, I think they firebombed Tokyo, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:40

And there were more deaths in the firebombs than there were in the atomic bombs.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:47

Now, when I was in college, my sophomore year, I spent a month at Manchester College uh January term. You did something for a month. I was in Kastel, West Germany, uh January of 19 uh seventy-three. And Kostel, West Germany was firebombed just like Dresden. Dresden gets all the hype, the all the hype uh because of uh the book.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:13

Slaughterhouse five. Because of Slaughterhouse Five. Great book, if you want to.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:19

I was in Kassel, and if you look at 1945 picture of Kastel, it looks like Hiroshima, where the only thing you see standing is that domed shell that made it through. That's what Kassel looked like. It was level.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:35

And uh our our our uh German teacher, Karl Heinz Reggenbogen, um we say that was his name. He was a great guy. Carl Heinz.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:51

Carl Heinz Reggenbogen.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:53

Carl Heinz Reggenbogen.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:55

Uh he was a young child in in Konsul when it got firebombed. And he talked about it as we were flying over in Lufthansa up in the bubble where they had uh on those 747s the lounge because all the first class people were sleeping. And uh, you know, this the attendants were all German, and Carl Heinz Rugenbogen, of course, was German. So he convinced them to let us college kids go up there. And it was great, man. We were smoking, we were drinking. Uh and you know that was back when flying was fun.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:29

So we had a bar up there, didn't I?

SPEAKER_03 1:14:32

Oh yeah, it was great. I mean, it was like you were in a Vegas nightclub. Uh and we got to go into the cockpit and look out by the window. You don't do that anymore. Uh but so yeah, so that's so true what you just said. Uh those towns, they just they just mowed them down. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, there you go. They needed to get this war over.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:56

Yeah. So I guess I think that's all about the I just want to make that point about mental health issues.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:03

Yeah. The ones in Germany, though, were real were not strategic. There was revenge for fire for firebombing England. Yeah. Covent Coventry, England was one of them. There are a couple others where I I get it.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:18

And you know, it's interesting. There are some uh of those European cities that were spared. Munich was spared.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:26

Yes, it was.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:26

I mean, any place that I mean that's where Hitler did the beer hall push. And I've been in that uh that uh beer hall still there. They actually did them.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:35

They knew where they were gonna occupy, and so they each did one in a region they weren't gonna occupy.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:42

Because like the United States knew they were they weren't gonna occupy uh in Dresden that that was gonna be the Soviets, so they did that one, and then the Soviets did one in the West, and so on.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:53

I think the Soviets did Costle. I could be wrong on that.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:56

Yeah, I don't remember the names of the other towns, but but all intentional.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:02

Yeah. Yeah.

unknown 1:16:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:05

But there you go.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:06

Okay, uh so I have a few things that I've thought of, and of course, I appreciate what everybody else has um donated today. But Kate, I think you first brought up um when our soldiers came back and hush hush, they they weren't gonna share anything. I can remember. Um so my dad could not go in the uh in the war because he had a stick through his eye, so he was blind in one eye. But his brother was. And so my uncle Barry was a prisoner of war in northern Germany, and he was there for 11 months. His here's a fun fact. His pilot, this he was the air corps, right? It was not the air force then, but the air corps, I think it's what it is. Um, his pilot was Jimmy Stewart. Isn't that a fun fact? Yeah. Look at look at Dan. Dan. Fact check right now. Fact check. Do you not believe this? I was always told that.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:08

I don't think Jimmy Stewart was a prisoner of war. He might have flew with him once, but as a pilot.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:14

I don't think he was a prisoner of war, he was a pilot. Pilot. He flew with the war. No, he flew. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Jimmy Stewart's.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:19

He was my Uncle Barry's pilot. And then my Uncle Barry was prisoner of war.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:24

Well, that would have meant the plane got shot down.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:26

Well, then he was probably why ever.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:29

They might have been in the same squadron. I know I've I've heard this from the Rougees forever. Somebody can go on their phone right now and check it. But I don't think Jimmy Stewart was ever a prisoner of war. Okay, maybe Uncle Barry flew with him once or twice. Yeah, crews changed.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:47

Yeah, yeah. No, I know.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:48

Yeah. But I don't think Jimmy Stewart, who did, he flew in combat. I mean, that was for real. He was, and you know, Leslie Howard from uh he was shot down. You know, uh the guy that was in uh Gone with the Wind. Well he was English, but he was shot down uh uh and killed. Uh I don't uh Jimmy Stewart, no doubt about it, because he was always in the Air Force. You know, you go out to the Air Force Museum, you see his brigadier general, you know, because he was in the Air Force Reserve forever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:19

And my Uncle Barry's plane is there too. Yeah. So you're talking about your Uncle Plane there?

SPEAKER_04 1:18:27

Not your Uncle Barry's plane, the plane. That he was he flew, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:32

So yeah, probably I want to say it was like the 29 or something, I don't know. But I here's to make my point, really, was um, so Uncle Barry would never talk about any of that. And he was one that came back and took advantage of things and benefited completely. Um, and I'll as well had a child while he was in uh prisoner of war. But when he um settled in uh San Diego and we would go out there for family vacations or whatever, and we go to this one restaurant and still never never talked about anything, but one of the other another person that he was a prisoner of war with happened to be there, and so they went to this table and talked, and we were all listening. And the only thing that I recall him saying was, What did you think the best meal was? Mine was eating those rats.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:33

Because I mean it was, you know, I was oh yeah, they all lost weight. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It was tough.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:40

And then he was told because he was you know, 11 months is a long time. Oh yeah. When and the treatment, he was told when uh when he got back, you probably should not have any more pits just because of what how he was treated. Yeah. Um, but anyway. Um, so yes, I will I will find that exact detail.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:04

No, I'm sure he was, yeah. Well, he might have filmed with them, but you don't know that.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:08

Well, the thing is, is that now that I'm recalling all this, where I learned to maybe be the known liar, I think it might have been from my Aunt Teresa. I'm not calling.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:19

I'm not calling anybody other than you a known liar.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:22

But my Aunt Teresa fabricated beautifully, and I this is a story that I would hear from her often.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:28

So Jimmy Stewart flew a whole bunch of missions. He was a bomber pilot, he was the pilot, he wasn't the co-pilot, he was for real. Uh he wasn't like Joe McCarthy who just shot up uh bullets and claimed that he was the best ace in the in the Pacific and everything else. Uh Jimmy Stewart was a for real guy. Yeah. Uh now I since you brought that up about not talking, I'd like to mention, I just want to go back briefly to my Uncle Vic. Uh when I had Uncle Vic out there, uh, and uh we're bringing him home, and this is where, you know, my kids want me to sit down with the tape recorder. I suppose I should.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:07

I kick myself in my large rear end all the time when I think about my Uncle Vic, that I did not sit down with him with a uh tape recorder and record it. And he, I'm like, What did you do, Uncle Vic? He goes, Well, I can't talk about it. And I'm like, Okay, you can't talk about it because you don't want to? Well, no, we were told you can't talk about it. And I said, Uncle Vic, you know, I know what you did. Well, I don't know how you know it. And I said, Uncle Vic, I got a copy of the book about your squadron. What? And there's a book. I've got it somewhere in this house, The Squadron of Deception. And he had never seen it. And I opened it up and I showed him his picture in there. And because it was all high tech, you know, and so they were sworn to secrecy. And so from 1944, 45, to I think Lily was back from college or in high school, from 1999 when we took him out there, he had never said anything to anybody what he had done because he was told not to. I just find that fascinating because we can't keep a secret now for anything. You go back to World War II, how they kept a secret the Oak Ridge, the development of the bomb and everything. They built this whole city down there that had schools, that had movie theaters, that had grocery stores, had fire departments, had a police department, they did what they had to, then they shut it down and moved it out to Los Alamos, and nobody ever talked about it. Catherine Raz, who we all know from Corpus Christi, same thing. She was a navy whack. Yeah, she was a navy whack, and she was at Sugar Camp, NCR Sugar Camp, where Jake Deutsch was uh uh trying to figure out the German enigma, not the one that gets all the press that the English figured out that was just a three-wheel enigma. The tough one to crack was the five-wheel enigma. You know, the movie that got to be a famous Hollywood movie is based on the three-wheel enigma. But the one that the Americans cracked, here in Dayton, Ohio, I might add, was the five-wheel enigma. And Catherine Raz worked on that. And uh every day they would march them down from Sugar Camp, where they stayed, you know, up on the hill, uh, down to that building uh on uh Stewart, where they would work on what was called the bomb, V-O-M-B-E, and that was for Polish, uh it was a Polish dessert. That was its codename, nickname that it went by. And I remember sitting there with Catherine, and somebody said, Well, she was a Navy wave, you know, after we had coffee and donuts, you know, after Mass. And she's like, Well, what'd you do? Well, I can't talk about it. I'm like, what do you mean you can't talk about it? Well, I can't talk about it. I said, Were you a Navy wave here in Dayton? I I I I I said, Catherine, you were Navy and you you were from Massachusetts, but you stayed here in Dayton. You must have been I can't talk about it. I said, you know, it was in the paper like three weeks ago because I think James DeGross or whatever wrote that book. Yeah. And she was like, oh. They told us we couldn't talk about it. And I'm like, this is the same thing that I went through with my Uncle Vic. Okay. And so fortunately, it was one of the highlights of uh Virginia and and and and my life. Uh, we were able, Catherine by that time had been on oxygen. Uh, we were able to go up to Tipps City and pick her up and drive her out to Dayton History because before they tore all the things down at Sugar Camp, they brought one of the cabins down that the waves had stayed in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:52

There's still one or two buildings up there.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:55

Well, they're at uh Dayton History now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:57

Oh, they oh and Carolyn Park. Carolyn Park, yeah, Dayton History. Oh, maybe that's what I saw. Yeah, we saw them.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:04

And we were able to take Catherine, we picked her up in Tip City, we brought her down there. We pushed her in a wheelchair with her oxygen tank. And I want to say I gotta give a shout out to Dayton History, to Brady Crest, to everybody that brought that back down here. They treated her like a queen.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:21

And we had her picture, her her uh uh Navy picture, so that's in their permanent archives out there. And that was really neat. But once again, it was another young person, this time a young female, who answered the call and then for 50 years want to say anything. You can't, you couldn't do that now. I'm telling you. I mean, it would be there you go, they would be on some reality TV show.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:48

You can find it on Google Earth.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:50

Yeah, find it on Google Earth, but yeah. So I I've always thought that's interesting about that generation. And the other thing I want to talk about, too, is when we were growing up, when Jim and I and you, because well, you're a little bit younger.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:04

A lot, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:08

Since Jim and I are the old people here, Jim, you remember the Army Navy stores? Oh, yeah. Oh god, they were great.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:14

Okay, I do remember that.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:16

Army Surplus? Yeah, Army Surplus.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:19

Down there where the where the school is now. I think it's a it's a school now. Oh, and you could go in there. You could pick up bayonets, you could pick up helmets, you could pick up sleeping bags, canteens, canteen, and you could pick that ammo belt and backpacks, you pick up everything. Well, you have to understand that was only 20 years in the 60s. And it was 20 years, right? It was very inexpensive. That was Korea, also.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:44

Yeah. Now, my old man, God rest his soul, Wayne Garris, uh, among many other things, he was colorblind. And uh, we had a house at Van Worth that was built uh it's pre-Civil War. And uh he always went to the Army Navy store and bought World War II battleship gray paint. Oh, really? And our house was I would open those cans in 1944.

SPEAKER_08 1:27:13

Oh god.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:14

I have so much lead from those in my soul. Plus, he worked for board and so on. I'm just made up of lead and cholesterol from cheese. But we used to go to the Army Navy store all the time. You could get all kinds of great stuff. He camped, so he bought all our tents from the Army Navy store. And guess what those tents were? Waterproof. They were just canvas. Canvas, yeah. Oh, yeah. And he bought we know, he bought these heavy, down filled sleeping bags.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:47

Oh god. And they would get wet. Heavier. Oh man. Yeah. Misery. God rest my dad's soul, but that's why I never wanted to go camping again. But those were the good old Army Navy stores.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:57

And we used to buy cots there. Yeah. That they would fold up, they're heavy, and then you had to put these slats on the end. Yeah. They would you know they would come up like this, then you went like that, and put one on the front, one on the back, and the old down the old blankets and that.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:16

And you know you think about all those planes that they went through. Yeah. And now there's only like two or three of the uh B-24s that are still around.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:24

Yeah. So you have a lot of notes there. What else do you have to say?

SPEAKER_04 1:28:28

Oh, I just um I actually I was just kind of uh uh you know, I like I just wrote as I as I go, I just write it's the end of one thing and move on to the next thing.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:47

Yeah, I was gonna kind of say something about the title. I I love the title.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:51

Yeah, and if you know, remember during the movie, Who Says It?

SPEAKER_07 1:28:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:57

Who says it? The captain's wife.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:59

Oh, the captain's wife, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:00

Virginia Mayo. Yeah. She goes, I just gave up the best years of my life.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:05

Yeah. Yeah, you're yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:07

Waiting for you to come back. I just gave up the best years of my life. So she says that.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:12

Yeah. Yeah. She she's she's selfish. So I think the women are pr are pretty excellent in it. Three of the four, but not her. Yeah, maybe she's that. That's not even the problem. It's it's just that she's she's selfish. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But the others are are pretty pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_08 1:29:37

And she is badgers him into putting the uniform back on, and when he she says, like, now you look like yourself again, and the way his face falls is just it's a heartbreaking moment, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:51

Now on the uh DVD, there's two interviews with her. And interestingly, she was filming two movies at the same time. She was filming this one and uh Secret Life of Walter Metty. So she was doing one in the morning, one in the afternoon, which I thought was very interesting. And uh originally uh she didn't want to do this role because it was a dramatic role, and she'd been known for comedy. And so uh they were like, no, you can do this, you can do this. And I think she pulled it off.

SPEAKER_08 1:30:29

Oh, she does it really well.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:30

She does you know, in the movie where they were in the bar and um Fred, no, Fred, what no, the Al. Al, you know, he's drinking and he picks up the wrong drink. Yeah. He picks he picks up the wrong drink. Yeah.

unknown 1:30:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:47

Picks up the other one. Yeah, they were gonna cut that out. And Waller said, no, absolutely not. And he just played it off.

SPEAKER_08 1:30:54

Is that when he turns to her and says, Well, aren't you drinking? She picks up her empty glass and downstairs. Oh, that's funny.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:02

And then him dancing with the waiter, we love we love that scene. He forgets he's with his wife.

SPEAKER_07 1:31:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:11

And what's it is he the one that he stopped drinking and they were drinking punch at the wedding? Yeah. He goes, What did he say? You can't you can't get a headache out of 50 gallons of this.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:28

Or two barrels of it. Yeah. Yeah, it was uh I thought it was a very, very good movie. And uh I think it uh I think it ended well for all three of the characters. I was so glad that uh uh that uh Fred was able to get together at the end, because I thought that was a really nice love story.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:52

Yeah, yeah. And Peggy Peggy was a little older. I got that idea. She wasn't uh Yeah, well she was driving and she had a job.

SPEAKER_08 1:32:00

Yeah, but you know last high school.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:03

But um Al was an older person. They had an older family. So Peggy and Fred were pretty much close together. I that's the way I talk thing about. She wasn't any well, even if she was 21 years old, Fred was probably only 23, 24. Yeah, old friends.

SPEAKER_07 1:32:23

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Things were young men. Yeah, I agree. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:27

Al didn't want Peggy for obvious reasons to go out with a vet.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:33

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:34

With somebody that had to that that Fred had seen the same thing, been through the same thing that Al had been through. I want you to do something else. You know, to marry, to marry somebody else.

SPEAKER_08 1:32:47

That he was married.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:48

Well, that had a lot to do with it. I think that had a lot to do with it. Yeah, no, but you you could be done. I think so too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:32:56

And I'll also her mother is very kind of blasé about when she announces she's gonna break up that marriage. Yeah, Millie was kind of like, well, she says she's gonna do this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:08

Um I'm gonna be a homebreaker.

SPEAKER_08 1:33:10

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:12

So and the critics, they just they just uh about the scenes in the bedroom, you know, the the two twin that I think that they have a uh a one bed instead of two twin beds. And back in Hollywood, those days, back in 40, you just didn't show scenes in the bedroom.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:28

They just don't show. Yeah. They don't they never get in the bed together. Right. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:34

And when Homer got into bed, yeah. And and um Wilma was that they're kind of She didn't get into bed with me.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:42

No.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:42

Well, back if that had been today.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:44

If that had been today, obviously we know how the scene would have ended.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:48

Yeah, yeah. It wouldn't have been it wouldn't have been PG.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:51

Coming home, Bruce Nurr running naked into the oceans. Yeah. Yeah. That was com oh yeah. One other comment I like to make is the wedding scene. I thought that was wonderful. Yeah. And wouldn't that be great at your wedding to have Hoagie Carmichael? I know. Here comes the bride. Yeah, I know. I thought I kept thinking, all right, is he gonna play Stardust? Is he gonna play Stardust?

SPEAKER_08 1:34:15

I really love all the scenes that he's in in the movie, too. And early on there's that scene at at the barches when he calls Homer over to talk to him while he plays, and he gives that little speech that ends with him saying, you know, it's like, you know, you'll learn how to get along with your folks, and they'll learn how to get along with you unless another war comes, and we're all gonna be dead the first day, so it doesn't matter. It's like, whoa, yeah, it's like the reckoning with what the world we live in now versus the one we lived in before the atomic bomb, you know.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:54

15 years we're gonna be in that era where we just think we could just all be obliterated any moment by a nuclear war with the Soviets.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:03

Well, then us old people like Jim Rouget and I, we can talk about when we were in elementary school doing all the A-bomb uh stuff about it. Coming under your desk.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:15

You know what's gonna work out great. My dad said, if you know that they're coming, you get out to Wright Patterson Air Force Base as close as you can. Let them take you. You do not want to survive a nuclear holocaust.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:31

Well, there's a character in here that does say, like, uh, the next war we're all dead anyway.

SPEAKER_07 1:35:36

Yeah, that's it.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:38

And I didn't want to make, I went down one uh historical rabbit hole. Polly, poly, poly. I went down one historical rabbit hole, of course, and it had to do with the demobilization of the vets. Uh, because that's obviously how the scene starts, right? The three characters are coming back um from their theaters of of war. And apparently, like in early 1944, the the the war department, the army specifically, was like looking at how to demobilize the vets based on you know history with World War I and all that. So they knew they were gonna live. Yeah, but the scale was crazy. So in the Army, including the Army Air Corps, um, they had about eight million uh men um in service.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:14

Six six point five million.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:17

Well, that's how many were demobilized. Okay, yeah. So they so about August of 45, they had about eight million men, and about six and a half million were demobilized 14 months later, which was a massive logistical undertaking. So that scene at the beginning of the movie where they're they're going across the airfield for the Army Transport Command is is somewhat realistic in the sense that they're just trying to catch flights and the Army's just trying to get them to where they are because it was a massive undertaking that um there they just the Army have just faced a lot of pressure and they knew they were gonna face pressure from you know everybody back home to have the servicemen and women uh return. And apparently there was a there was a poll done around somewhere in the middle of all that. Um I forget which polling firm did it, and it was basically, you know, are the service uh servicemen coming back, you know, is it quick enough? Is it too too taking too long or is it too quick? And the slight majority of people said no, it's about the right time. So they obviously were getting good um making a good impression on how quickly relatively quickly the the servicemen were coming back.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:18

You know, my dad uh his service was out at right pattern or at Wright Field at the time. There was Patterson Field and Wright Field. I think they merged in 1948, became Wright Patterson. Uh he was they called it air chair command because you know everything that went through the Army Air Corps went through right field. You know, Pentagon was the Pentagon, but everything involving the Army Air Corps went there. Uh so he was, you know, he was like my uncle, he was smarter than the average bear. So he was in the office and doing this and doing that and everything. And when the war got over, uh his uh orders came in to go to England to start processing people back. And my mom had got pregnant again, and you know, he was getting prepared to go to England, and they told me he'd probably be over there for two years or so. And my dad had gone in, I think, in 42 or early 43, and uh when his commanding officer found out that uh my mom was pregnant again with baby number two, he said you're older. I'm gonna have a kid go over and do it that just got in.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:29

That's an interesting story, because he's going the opposite direction, right? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:32

He got out and he got out and was able to get home and get a job at Borden's where he worked for the next 30 years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:41

Yeah, that big big day in the milk. Yeah. Oh yeah. Milk hadn't hit the grocery stores yet. Well, we didn't have grocery stores. We had the corner, yeah, the corner of the corner markets. Corner markets there. My dad was born in 1912, and um he did not make it in because he had three kids and there was a three kid, three-child limit. If you had three child, you were exempt from going into the uh pay to be a good capital boy. Please?

SPEAKER_09 1:39:12

I didn't know that. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:13

Yeah. But he did teach out at right field. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I don't think the war happened.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:26

So anyhow, any uh final comments? Because we've been going on for quite a while. This has been a great conversation tonight. You know what?

SPEAKER_04 1:39:33

I just want to just say one thing. We just we do everything we can to get these kids to fight, but once they get home, they're just nothing but wasted automobiles. We just haven't figured that out. Well, no, the the government hasn't put the money into rehabilitating these people. Oh, I agree. Yeah. Because it's easier to kill people than it is to rehab them.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:56

Yeah, that's true. And we've and we've never done that, and you know we're never gonna do it. And we're never gonna do it. Uh so anyhow, I want to thank everybody for being here. Uh the food was magnificent.

SPEAKER_07 1:40:08

Uh and the food was great.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:13

And now I think we're going to have a Anne Rouge-made pie.

SPEAKER_06 1:40:17

It's mixed berry. Uh crisp.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:21

We're gonna have a mixed berry crisp. What kind of berries?

SPEAKER_06 1:40:25

Um, blue, raspberries, and strawberry.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:30

You know how to cut a cake?

SPEAKER_06 1:40:32

That's a pie. Another pie.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:34

You know how to cut the cake? You cut the cake, you cut the pie the center of the case. Oh.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:39

Oh, Jim. Good recovery, Jim.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:41

Why don't you like that beating that? And we're also gonna have vanilla ice cream. So, uh, Dia, just a minute. We're gonna turn this off real quick. Okay? So, with that, I want to thank everybody for uh tuning in and listening to us today. I think we've had a good conversation. Great to have the Rouge here. Thank you, uh, the Lord and Lady of Squirrel Road. I can't wait to go to Ivan. That's all I gotta say. Oh my gosh. Eddie is that math. We got good food in the Mediterranean. And you know, Eddie, I was going through our firebox and I did find your uh your registration for Social Security. Yeah, Selective Service, yeah. Selective service system.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:22

And all the kids are fat and dumb now, so I'm definitely. There you go. You still have to register. If you want to get uh phones, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:41:29

Oh, that's interesting. All three of my boys are registered.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:31

I got all their registrations out there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:41:35

My time.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:36

You didn't want it, you didn't want it. You didn't want to register. I have my draft card still. We never did talk about it. And I was in the lottery and uh March 6, 1953. March 6, 1953 was number one. That's the story for another podcast. Wow. Okay. So, anyhow, I want to thank everybody for being here uh for the food that was made. It was for the invitation. I'm glad I hope we can have you guys back. Uh thanks, Kate, for the mashed potatoes and the uh What's the next movie? Uh Gentleman's Agreement. I was gonna get to that. Okay. So uh we got this pie was. Is that one I should watch? But um You should watch them all. So uh next week. Uh next week we'll be back as we always are uh with Den or Dan. And the movie we're gonna do is the 1947 movie uh Gentleman's Agreement starring Gregory Peck. Okay. So with that, I want to thank everybody for being here. Mia, you can sign us off as soon as I say God's gonna be.

SPEAKER_08 1:42:36

Yeah, you just call her Mia. Ouch! Ouch!

SPEAKER_06 1:42:41

Okay, her birthday's Thursday, you can make it up.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:44

That's not enough time for him to buy gifts. He needs, you know, catalogs and all that. He's got those.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:50

Yeah, but you know, uh, I know how to pay for two-day delivery. You don't have to ask people handed two-day delivery. I got eight credit cards and I'm not afraid to use it. That's great. So, anyhow. Okay. Uh Godspeed and fair lens until we meet.