MFM Minisode 344

This week’s hometowns include sleepwalking in a hotel and setting a world record in the ‘80s.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Laugh. Hello. Hello, I went way too early on that one.
It's good. This is my favorite murder. Welcome to Welcome
to my favorite murder. The many many.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Nope, the many many.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
So how how are you getting more said out? Well? Yeah,
it's going downhill. Jesus shit, I'll go first that time
you want me to. Yeah, okay, this one's crazy. I'm
not going to read this subject line. Hello friends. I
wanted to start by thanking you guys for making me laugh.
The older I get, the harder it is to find

(00:51):
little moments enjoyable. Although I've only been listening for about
a year, I can't help feeling like I belong. I
was first introduced to your podcast by my best friend's
gay uncle. I might be nineteen, but I already know too.
And this is in all caps. Always listen to someone's
gay uncle. Wait did this.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Person just say they're tired of life and they're nineteen? Yeah,
behind me, it's time to get with therapy, honey.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Look, there's a lot to be tired about these days.
Ninety or nineteen. Also, yay gay uncles. All I mean,
the fucking deep wisdom of this nineteen year old who's
like always listened to the gay uncles like that will
literally get you everywhere in this life, truly, Okay. I
was listening to Minnesota three thirty six when I heard

(01:37):
the wonderful story about kid and a dryer. Boy, do
I have a lot of appliance related stories. You see,
my father's family has been doing appliance repair for decades.
I'm part of the third generation learning this trade, and
with my Latin mother's idea of a work ethic, I've
been opening washers, dryers, dishwashers, and other household appliances since

(01:57):
I was five Woo. My summers consisted of sitting in
our back lot tearing apart old appliances to sort and
sell the metal to recycling plants. It wasn't the best
place for a ten year old, but the family needed
help and that's all I could offer. It wasn't all bad.
In the middle of the day, my father would give
me and my siblings an hour break to play and

(02:18):
just be kids with appliances sprawling on our football field
sized lot. Refrigerators look like mountains and dryers looked like caves.
We would spend our hours running and jumping from appliance
to appliants, imagining the wildest stories, turning the handles of
ovens into swords and sheets of metal into shields. By far,
our favorite game was light Bulb Wars, and then it

(02:42):
says it is exactly one. Fucking that's so dangerous.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
It's like fucking hooking light bulbsores.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Oh, it's like you scream. Somebody takes off running and
you just try to peg them with a light bulb.
There's not a better game for children I've ever. With
the Hunger Games franchise being at its peak in twenty fourteen,
every kid loved a fight to the death battle royale,
no mercy kind of game. We would gather light bulbs
from the appliances and throw them at each other. If

(03:14):
you got hit, you're out. There were only two rules,
no headshots and stay on our property. As dangerous as
this game sounds, nobody got seriously hurt. Oh that's nice. Yeah,
that's actually a miracle. In one particular game, my brother
decided to hide from the rest of the competition. I
remember my dad teaching us not to hide in old
refrigerators because doors would latch from the outside, and before

(03:37):
the era of magnetically sealed refrigerators, kids could climb in
and suffocate in the airtight chamber.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
Oh yeah, that was a big fear back as children.
That was a very special episode of Punky Browster.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
Yes it is.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
And also I think I think there were in the
late seventies they would run like PSAs during cartoons. Yeah,
where it's like don't this is not fun or something
like that. It was a real issue.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
And then it's like illegal to put a refrigerator out
without taking the door off now, which is why you
see refrigerators on the side of the road with outdoors.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
God, it's almost like we should regulate guns anyways.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
So I guess political gun should have as much reform
as refrigerators.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
As fucking refrigerators. He did tell us that other appliances
wouldn't kill you because they always have some sort of
vent and didn't latch from the outside like these sixties
death traps. I'm glad my brother remembered that lesson. The
unit he decided to seek shelter in was a clothes dryer.
I managed to be in the final two, taking out

(04:46):
my two sisters and my younger brother. This is like, oh,
you could just feel the importance of this game. I
was on the hunt for my older brother. I searched
everywhere and there was no sign of him. Eventually, our
hour of play was running out. Up and started yelling
that I was forfeiting the game and that he won,
but he still wouldn't come out. Eventually we had to
call the adults to help us. After ten minutes of searching,

(05:09):
my dad and I heard yelling from a dryer that
had fallen over on its front with the door facing
the ground. Oh my god. We flipped it back upright
and opened the door. There was my brother, red hot
and sweating. He had been in a dryer for thirty
minutes in ninety plus degree dry desert heat of Salt
Lake City. Everyone was okay, and our parents still let

(05:32):
us play the game. Oh my god, but none of
us ever tried climbing into a dryer again. Stay sexy,
don't hide an old refrigerators, and always listen to gay uncles.
Levi hee him I God, I love that story so much, Levi.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
We need more of your stories, please, like please, We'll
just do an extra episode of just Levi's playing stories.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Because also, I really love coming from an Irish family who,
like my dad, had a paper route when he was
like seven years old. Like the idea where it's like, hey, sorry,
you have to work here. Yeah, it's very common and
very like regular, and so then it makes those periods
of time where then you get to just be a kid, right,
like so heightened and then totally in that moment they

(06:18):
play they find a game like light bulb Wares. It's
like so high level, like, oh, I just love it.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
We had an hour to get like a lunch break,
to get like all the fun of childhood in Yeah,
there was like, you know, one rule, don't go on
a fridge, and it was just like fucking all out.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
And no headshots, real head shots like bulbles to the
eyes or face. I think that was one of the
great Oh yeah, that that was pretty epic. I love that.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Wow. Uh this one's called clock Tower Murder Weapon, Treasure Trove.
Oh friends, Oh, I'm in the middle of listening to
Minnesota three eight and you just asked for things found
in clocks stories. Listen. I have about a million things
to do as we speak, but I had to hit

(07:11):
pause on the MINIESOD and the shit I have to
do to tell you this story.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
Buckle up, nice.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
My dad was a clockmaker, which means he didn't make clocks.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
He fixed them interesting.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Also known as a horologist, he was always the youngest
guy in the business, as unfortunately, horology is a dying
art and there are lesson less schools and clockmakers left
to pass on the tradition.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
Huh.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
This means that his contemporaries were all old dudes with
old stories. Sounds boring, right, Not this time. One of
the older gentlemen he worked closely with had the contract
to fix and upkeep the clock in the clock tower
in our city. It was a big job, as the
city had neglected the old clock for many years. I
think this is how Back to the Future starts.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
They just start describing the movie.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah, it was upstairs in the original courthouse that had
an entranceway through a small hatch in a supply closet
in the men's bathroom. That's how old it was.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
It was like, yeah, women don't need to go. What
are they going to do fix the clock? I don't
think so.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
The first time he entered the hatch, he had to
climb a steep, dusty wooden staircase up to the landing
where the clock was. At the top of the landing
was a section of plaster wall with many names and
dates scrawled into it from the nineteen hundreds through the
nineteen forties. Years later, I got to go up in
the tower with my dad and I saw this myself.
It was beautiful and eerie at the same time. And

(08:39):
then it says, I have a grainy picture of it
on an old BlackBerry somewhere. While this time capsule wall
was a treasure in itself, that wasn't the best part.
The story goes as he started moving dusty crates and
boxes to clear some space to work on the clock,
he noticed what was actually in the boxes. He saw
a rusty old axe, an old knife, and then he

(09:01):
read the label on the box he had in his hands.
It said evidence. What my dad's friend had inadvertently found
himself in the middle of was the storage room for
the old courthouse. They used the clock tower to store
evidence from the trials. He found boxes upon boxes of murder,

(09:22):
weapons and physical evidence for trials as early as eighteen
fifty when the courthouse was built.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
Okay, sorry, what's wrong with the basement the clock tower
that you can only access through the men's bathroom trap door? Yeah, yeah,
that's a great place, so hey, let's hide it.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Is essentially what.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
They Yeah, maybe they just like I wonder if there's
I wonder if there's logic to that that's like you
just don't want whoever going in there.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Maybe it was cases that had already been like tried
and you know, convicted, and they thought they wouldn't need
them anymore.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
It's fascinating.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, no, one's so to think this was a bad
idea at the time, And when the new courthouse was
built just the block away, they must have chosen or
forgotten to do anything with the old evidence they had
stashed up in the sketchy stairs. Needless to say, my
dad's friend left that day and made some calls to
the local authorities, and one of the local museums came
to collect the weapons cash he had found.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
M M.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
My dad told me this story when I was a teenager,
and I'll never forget it what my little murder in
her heart would have done to go back and see
that room the way it was when it was found. Sadly,
my dad passed away a few years ago, so I'm
not able to ask him if he's found anything good
in any of the clocks that he fixed over the years. Anyway,
I love you ladies and all that you do. Thanks
for helping me get through the loss of my dad.

(10:42):
I literally could not have done it without you. Oh,
stay sexy and don't forget the murder weapons in the
clock tower.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
Rachelle. Well, Rochelle, I'm sorry you lost your dad, but
great story. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
Also kind of legendary dad career, Oh for sure. Fascinating. Ye.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
It's like kids who know about cars because their dads
are interested in cars. What's that like?

Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, I don't know. That's like I wouldn't know.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
She knows everything about clocks.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
That's so cool. Yeah, okay, this is carnival rock climbing
wall story. Hello. Since you've been asking for carnival stories,
here you go. That's great. We did that too. Years
ago when I was about twenty, I went to the
county Fair with a group of my friends. We did
all the fair things, but saved the rides for last

(11:31):
so it would be cooler and all of the children
would be home in bed. Yeah. Man, that's cooler. At
the very end of the night, we rode the zipper
one last time before heading home. As we walked to
the parking lot, we passed the climbing wall all of
my friends told me that I had to try the
challenge climb because you could win a prize if you
reached the top. Even though I've been rock climbing for years,

(11:53):
maybe nine or ten at the time, I refused to
try it because it was obviously a scam and rig
to be impossible. Plus it was ten dollars for two
minutes of my embarrassing misery. My friend paid before I
could stop him, so I was committed. I had literally
just gotten off the zipper, so I was still a
little woozy, but I kicked off my flip flops, put

(12:13):
on a harness, and clipped in. The wall itself was
made of slick plastic, and the small rocks bolted to
the wall were also slippery. I managed to stick to
the wall with my feet and then a PARENTHESESI says,
literally so gross, I know, and then says and hold
onto the divits where the bolts were holding the rocks
to the wall with the tips of my fingers. Slowly, carefully,

(12:36):
and with a bad attitude, I climbed to the top
and grabbed the janky flag that was zip tied to
the top of the wall. My friends were elated. The
person working didn't believe that I hadn't cheated, so luckily
someone had taken a video. This was years ago before
taking a video of everything was given. The guy watched
the video and without much emotion, said he'd be back.

(12:58):
He turned and disappeared into the dark bar hind the
climbing wall. As we waited for him to return, carnival
workers started wandering over since their rides had closed down
for the night. Word was spreading that someone had done
the challenge climb. Before I knew it, two caronival workers
had hoisted me onto their sweaty shoulders and were marching
me around. It was surreal. After they put me down,

(13:20):
someone told me that I was the first person that
entire summer to do the challenge climb, but it was
quote pretty sad that it was a girl who was
the first one. Oh thanks dude. The first guy eventually
emerged from the darkness with my prize, an Xbox. What. Yeah, Holy,
that's why they had to make that wall so slippery.
They can't just be given those things out. Yeah, and

(13:43):
then it says ellipses, which I sold to my brother's
best friend. Yeah. I love you allso much, including all
of the murderinos, stay sexy, ride the zipper, and give
in to peer pressure. Love a that's rat.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
Triumph of that story is like so great, heartwarming. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
I think people that wor get the fair or carnival,
they've seen a lot of shit. They're not just gonna
throw any old kid up on their shoulders and parade
them around like that's a big deal.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
Definitely, Oh my god, But okay, this one's called sleepwalking.
In my hometown and others Karen Georgia Stephen, longtime listener,
even longer time sleepwalker. Sleepwalking stories have been my go
to for icebreakers and party small talk for years, and
I thought they might be up your alley too. Sleepwalking

(14:36):
for me is typically similar to when you wake up
on Saturday and think you're late for work. I bolt
out of bed and panic, Eventually collect myself and go
back to bed. Some nights I do this as often
as once an hour. Great for anxiety.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
Oh no, imagine once a month or so.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
However, sleep meat really raises the steaks. I have a
million of them, but my favorite is a few years ago.
I was in a hotel alone in Minneapolis. Obviously, my
memory of this is spotty, but my version goes like this.
In the middle of the night, someone knocked on my door.
I went to see who it was and got locked
in the hallway. I knocked on my own door forever

(15:14):
to get back in before waking up and realizing no
one was in there to let me in. I woke
up sitting at the foot of a bed watching an
old martial arts movie. I flinched when I heard from nearby,
are you back? Are you with me? A man sitting
on the corner of the other bed passed me the phone.
I'm not sure how long I had been there, but

(15:35):
this very patient guy waited with me until.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
I was awake.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
Oh my god, and says, I assume I knocked on
his door and then talked gibberish until he parked me
in front of the TV. Because I didn't fully have
my bearings yet, I tried to call my room a
three times before realizing, duh, I'm not there to answer it.
My new best friend called the front desk for me,
and they sent someone to take me back to my

(16:00):
room one floor up. Holy shit, Who knows how many
doors I knocked on and if I took the elevator
or the stairs. But this guy really did me a
solid by staying chill and not murdering me. And who knows,
maybe he even let me pick the movie. I'm sure
he's been telling this story ever since too Oh, and

(16:21):
everyone always asked what I was wearing. Quit being weird.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
I had on shorts and a T shirt. Quit being weird?

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Okay, quick some other quick sleepwalking greatest hits. I fell
asleep on the CTA Red Line train in Chicago, took
it to the end of the line, got out and.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
Walked a block. Ooh.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
Took all the clothes out of a dresser drawer, stucked
them in a suitcase, and put the suitcase at my
front door. Woke up with my pockets full of Brunola
bar wrappers, assumed I'd eaten them all. Found the box
full of unwrapped bars safely in the cabinet later. Can
you imagine to sleep, You walk in the kitchen and
there's just someone fucking like your women.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
Just making all those barstale immediately, and the last one
is texted a friend.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
Oh No, Whitney Houston died like five years after she died.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
It's still affecting all of us to this day.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
Truly, truly, stay sexy and in bed. Ryan, Oh man,
I love sleepwalk stories. Send them please.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
That is it's so, it must be really unnerving, it
must be scary. Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
The only thing that ever happened to me that was
like I could understand that from is I once woke
up on the couch as like a teenager, Like I
was sleeping. The phone started ringing and I started grabbing
for the cordless phone that was sitting on the couch
and I just kept grabbing it and I couldn't pick
it up and I couldn't answer the phone. And as
I'm coming to I realized I was grabbing my foot.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
It was just my foot that I.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
Thought was the cordless phone, and it was the fucking weirdest.
It was ringing, but the phone was like somewhere else. Well,
I just was like trying to answer my foot.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
And basically you went from understanding what's happening in dream
to like you watched yourself come up out of that,
and then that's the weird thing. Normally we don't experience
this switching from dreaming too being awake, and you like
basically had to come to.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Oh, I was just like, what is happening?

Speaker 1 (18:23):
In the hell. Okay, the subject line of this email
is my dad has an eighties era world record. Good morning, ladies,
good morning. I like that. I'm writing you from the
sweaty underbust of America, South Texas. Oh it's so hot there,

(18:43):
Oh so hot. I was listening to the latest episode
called Why Pigeons, and every time I hear those titles,
and y'all were saying how big the Guinness Book of
World Records was in the eighties, and I knew I
needed to write in. My dad was born in sixty
five and grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah. As
you can imagine, being a Mormon teenager in the eighties

(19:04):
was quite boring. They didn't drink, didn't do drugs, and
didn't really get into any trouble whatsoever. So what else
do you do? You break a world record? Of course,
imagine it. The year is nineteen eighty two. My dad
and his friends were sixteen through seventeen. They decided to
break a world record for jumping on the trampoline. As
a group they called the Guinness people. I don't know

(19:25):
if they have official names, and they said a data.
A few weeks later, a Guinness guy came out and
watched sevent teenagers jump on a trampoline for thirty seven hours.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
All of this is a time capsule, and that is insane.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
My dad said that they were allowed ten minutes every
hour to go to the bathroom, get food, et cetera,
but one of them had to be jumping at all times,
so they took staggered breaks. After thirty seven hours, they
called it and they were officially the world record holders
for a group trampoline jumping. My dad still has the
plaque that they give you, and this is his number

(20:04):
one go to party story. Yeah hell yeah, I love
hey yeah. You walk through the door of that party
yelling I am a Guinness World record holder. They were
the only world record holders for a few weeks, and
then someone else jumped for longer than them.

Speaker 3 (20:20):
But oh my god, that's heartbreaking. That is heartbreaking for
a few weeks. You don't even get it for a year, totally. Uh.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
But those few weeks were the most glorious of their
teenage lives. Thanks for all you do. I look forward
to episodes every week so I have something to listen
to while my toddler watches Blippy Megan. Oh my god, slippy.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
That is great. I just love that our listeners know
the assignment. Yes, like, we didn't ask. We just talked
about it for a minute. And then of course we
want to know your fucking dad's world record story.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
Of course we didn't want to know. Was your dad
the Guinness guy that went to watch teenagers trampoline jump
for thirty seven hours? What about that story? What was
his life?

Speaker 2 (21:06):
Was he on the road all the time finding Rando Guinness?

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Fucking Did he have a special stopwatch? Did he have
a backup stop watch like a clipboard? What's the deal anything?

Speaker 2 (21:17):
What is going on?

Speaker 1 (21:17):
Anything at all? Oh?

Speaker 2 (21:18):
My god, amazing. Okay, my last one is called after
life story. I let my child watch someone die and
then it says instead of lighthearted, it says happy.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
Okay if you insist it doesn't sound great right now,
gotta tell you.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah, Hi, there, you asked for after life stories, So
here's a sweet one I will never forget. Nine years ago,
we said goodbye to my papa during his final moments
as he passed away. My son Rockwell, only a year
old at the time, was in the room, and I
remember worrying if he should be there at all. As
we were all grieving, crying and weeping, and I didn't

(21:58):
want to upset him, but he was quiet and calm,
so I thought he's just a baby, he won't remember
any of this. Then fast forward a few years, he's
three years old. I'm scrolling on Facebook and this picture
of my papa holding him as newborn pops up and
Rockwell asked to see it. After looking it over a minute,
he said, Hey, I like that guy.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Hmm.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
I told him this was his great papa, who he
had been as a little baby but was now in heaven.
Oh yeah, I know, he replied, matter of factly. I
paused and said, you'd know because I had never really
talked to him about his papa dying, or the fact
that he was in the room when it happened. That says,
because why would you? Yeah, exactly, And then, with the
innocent genuineness only a child can possess, he looked up

(22:42):
at me with sweet, sincere eyes and said, very seriously, yes,
I know, Mama. I was there and I saw all
the angels that day. I was simultaneously hit with disbelief,
a little freaked out, and emotional all at once. I
just started bawling. Quote everyone was so sad, but the
angels weren't. And he was happy. Oh, he said, and

(23:06):
shrugged and went back to playing a game on his tablet.
He's ten years old now, and when I ask him
about it, he doesn't remember. But I truly believe he
saw quote all the angels that day. Stay sexy and
know that sometimes kids see things we don't Courtney Courtney.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
Oh, and he was happy, and he was happy similar
to the one from the last show we just recorded. Yeah,
I like that THEMEO Oh, amazing, another amazing batch. These
are great. Another great batch.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
If you want to send yours in, if you want
to be a contender, send it to my favorite murder
at Gmail. It's not the pressure is not as high,
really not. It just tells a good story, you know it.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah that includes Yeah, because all your friends who filled
up this MINIESO just showed it to you. So do
what they did and then some exactly and in the meantime,
stay sexy and don't get murdered.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Get guy, Elvis, Do you want a cookie?

Speaker 1 (24:09):
This has been an exactly right production. Our producer is
Alejandra Keek. This episode was edited and mixed by Leanna Squealache.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
Email your hometowns and fucking arrays to My Favorite Murder
at gmail dot com.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at my Favorite
Murder and Twitter at my favor Murder. Goodbye,