The town that slept with half of the police department

Journey to the small town corners where everyone knows your name, your business, and the color of your underwear before you've even bought them. Join Jessica and Karmen as they play the game of telephone...on steroids. They'll dissect how Mrs. Johnson's lost cat turned into a rumored panther sighting and led to the establishment of a neighborhood watch program, complete with night vision goggles and camo gear donated by the local thrift shop. These rapid-fire rumors aren't just funny—they're a binding glue in these tight-knit communities. Don't miss your exit.

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Episode Transcript

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Heck yeah, I'm wearing mine rightnow. Navigating to small town US
A shoal Wockers for Harle Italian.Hello, Jessica, Hi Garments. Beautiful

(02:38):
weather here a t s on Arizonaas usually as prey uge. Yes,
my lemon tree is flowering. Nice. See I've noticed a lot of flowering
happening already in the roads and stuff. The wild flowers out here so pretty,
you know, h Jessica, it'sWomen's History month. Yeah, I

(03:00):
was looking. I was doing someresearch on women's history and I came across
sort of a funny, kind ofgossipy story. I don't know. Oh
really, Yeah, I think weshould throw this in because this is sort
of a female empowerment story, okay, and also a little scandalous. But
in a small town about ten yearsago, this person writes in and says

(03:23):
that one of the convenience store clerksmanaged to convince like half of the police
department too yeah, to be intimatewith her in exchange for not giving out
tickets to her and her friends.So she doesn't really remember how it all
unfolded, but she doesn't remember thatit was. It really hit the entire

(03:44):
town very hard and basically destroyed anytrust anyone had in the police, which
led the cops to being more aggressiveon things such as writing tickets to try
to get more funding for themselves andalso to fix the terrible reputation they had
created. But can you have imagineone little convenience store clerk just leave it
with half the police department for tickets? Like, how many tickets did you

(04:08):
get? Oh? What? Whatexactly? Is she getting tickets for prostitution?
I don't know. Do you gettickets for prostitution? I don't know.
Maybe arrested, but they call itpaper arrest, right, right,
it's not like in the movies.I've never tried it, so you know
it's on my bucket list. Doyou think that's like a rumor that it's

(04:32):
half the police department when maybe likemaybe there's two police the total, and
so half is one? That's possible? How small is the police a small
town and there's only like yeah,I mean I would say, what is
the smallest police department in a smalltown? Twenty people? Maybe? Maybe?
I don't know, like if youhave a thousand people live in there,

(04:53):
Like how many police officers do youreally need? But my question is
how many tickets are is she gettingmake it worth sleeping with half the police
department? And were they married?Like was she married to the one police
officer that would account for her sleepingwith half? I'm saying the possibility she

(05:16):
slept with half the police department andit just happened to be your husband.
Small towns are like that. Smalltowns are like that, like and you
know, everybody knows, so yeah, everybody knows, and there's rumors and
who knows who knows, and there'sa ripple effect. I'm sure people were
going into the convenience store saying,listen, I know what you're doing,
you gucci monster. You're gonna giveme this slurpee for free? Or I'm

(05:42):
telling your husband. I would I'dprobably press some stuff like that. I
would, you know, I mean, peanuts are expensive, so I would
go in. This is what Iwould do. I wouldn't take a full
advantage, but every day I wouldget I would get a diet doctor pepper
and like some mixed nuts. Mixednuts are expensive. I would get free

(06:03):
mixed nuts and a free diet Doctorpepper. And or I'm telling or I'm
telling, and I would take allthe lemon juice packets that I wanted.
Yeah, and I'd be like,listen, Ryl, you don't want me
to spread this rumor around. Yeah, You'll be getting tickets left and right.

(06:25):
Maybe the reason they were giving ticketsis because they knew how she would
handle those tickets. So maybe theywere like, hey, you got a
ticket, you across the road andyou j walked. So here's a ticket,
you know, like how frequently peopleget those, But it's because they
knew she was going to pay up, you know, so instead of golden
tickets, they would get a scarletticket with a big letter A on it.

(06:49):
Adultress. That was a good storyto start our gossip episode on,
because there's a lot of gossip insmall towns. I mean, I think
you and I both lived in smalltowns, and it is like rampant,
you know, everybody gets into eachother's business, and whether it's a gossip
about something totally small and silly,or if it's something that's really like meaningful

(07:13):
and heartfelt, where then you getthese really like poisonous and toxic gossip that
really like drives the community away fromlike one person or a family. It's
just kind of crazy how much ithappens. But there's always the talk of
the town, like what's happening rightnow, you know, And so we
have stories that were sent from individualsliving in small towns about their current gossip,

(07:35):
their state of gossip in their town. So there was a lama loose
in a town, not even thepolice could actually catch it. The humane
society couldn't catch it or locate it, and no one was actually saying it
was there, so nobody said,oh, yeah, that's my that's my

(07:56):
lama on the loose, Like nosigns were posted like hey have you seen
this slama? You know, notnone of that sma. Yeah. It
was sited on different locations and theoutskirts and like the town and on people's
farms, and this would wander intolike people's yards even inside of town.
And people are complaining about this becausethe police can't corral it, like they

(08:20):
can't get it together, so theyhave claimed it and called it as the
wiley coyote of the lamas Ah justdoesn't want to be caught. So this
anyway, So we have a looselama in a town, I would catch
that lama. But if it's reallya wily coyote lama, why didn't you
just drop an anvil on its head? I know, I mean, come

(08:43):
on, I love lamas. Ithink they're well lamas too, but I
always think, like, uh,like what I picture in this town is
like you're just walking downtown and allof a sudden, from the side of
a building, this long neck kindof goes like hello, I'm here,
runs away or something you love that. I would think that would be the
mascot of the town. They shouldmake that that. They should change the

(09:05):
town's name to Mama Lama ding Dong. Listen to this. This is a
doozy of a story of a gossipsmall town English teacher who is thirty nine
got divorced when she was thirty withtwo kids. Her husband was cheating on
her with a lady. The ladyhappened to also be the mistress of the
superintendent of the school. The superintendentgot mad, so he became a thing

(09:31):
with the English teacher. They wouldleave school early to see each other.
Her excuse was always I took niquilinstead of day quill, and I need
to go home now I'm used toit. I accidentally took Yes, I
have done that. Yes. Whenit got out, the principal of the

(09:52):
high school was fired because he wasletting the superintendent use his car so that
he wouldn't be caught. The Englishteacher started up a new relationship with the
new principal and was caught by thejanitor after school one day. Oh my
god, the principal resigned and left. She is now pregnant with her boyfriend,

(10:13):
and she that she had throughout thisentire situation. She is still a
teacher because she is related to everyoneat the school. Well I know how
she's related. Can you imagine.So that's that's definitely small town stuff because
you know, there's just not enoughI don't know, not yet definitely around
so people just have to share ordouble up. Yeah, exactly, exactly,

(10:37):
Yeah, yeah, you know howkids I mean, like nowadays,
when I was a kid, thatwould have been hilarious for me. Yeah,
that would have been funny stuff.But now you know, they're going
to say that these teachers traumatize thekids. All the kids knew she said
she took Nike will I think it'sI mean, it's gross, it's funny,

(10:58):
gross, it's funny, but yeah, it's girls at the same time.
Right. Yeah. About two yearsago, the mayor of the town
that I live in got caught drunkdriving his lawnmower down main Street at two
am, just about six weeks afterbeing elected. You know, at least
he wasn't driving his car, andyou know, maybe he was going to

(11:20):
mow the park or something. Heprobably thought like, well, I'm gonna
go celebrate, was I'm elected mayor. But I don't want to be caught
drunk driving, So I'm gonna justuse my lawnmower that way. It's not
it's not, yeah, I can'tget caught. If he was smart,
he would have said he was doinghis civic duty and he was going to

(11:41):
mow the park for free, andhe wanted to do it before everybody woke
up, so as not to bringyou know, attention to himself for herself,
for you know, doing this verykind thing of mowing the whole park
for free. Clearly that mayor wasn'tas clever as I. There's a place
a small town. I don't knowif you've ever seen wild turkeys, but

(12:05):
they're beautiful. So in this littletown, the major road was shut down
because a rafter of wild turkeys decidedto hang out in the street one day.
So is that what you call aherd of turkeys? They must be
here? You know? Crows?Do you know what they call a bunch
of crows? A murder? Amurder? I always think that is so
like, what are they called twocrows? I don't know, attempted murder?

(12:33):
That's a good one. Oh mygod, use that one. Oh,
Jessica. I love you, Jessica. So you know I love towns
that do shut the road down forthe for the animals. EST's Park,

(12:54):
Colorado. The elk are just sucha part of the town that people do
have to wait for the elk acrossthe road, and the elk orithm well
in that community that they'll just laydown in your yard and eat your grass.
But yeah, people getting to work, they have to wait sometimes for
the elk to cross the road,and it's just part of living there.
I wonder what our boss would sayif we were late for I don't know,

(13:18):
an eight o'clock meeting it was becausethere were turkeys on the road.
Then you had to tect that toyour boss. Yes, do you think
I'm sorry, I can't make ittoday. So I'm going to tell you
a story about turkeys. Wild turkeys. And this has to also do with
my family. My aunt was abus driver for a school district and she

(13:39):
was driving I don't know, ateam. I believe it was either in
the morning or the afternoon. Idon't know what time it was, but
she was driving a bus on thehighway, which is probably just a two
lane road up where and from andall of a sudden, these two turkeys
flew in front of the bus andactually smashed through the bus windows. Holy
moly, Yeah, they went throughthe bus windows too. I think it

(14:01):
was two birds. I'm pretty sureit's two. Might have been one,
you know, in her bus witha bunch of kids. It's dead,
you know, it died the collision. So she was like, you know,
well, what do I do?Do I report it? I think
she reported it, and then shewas able to take it and we took
it home and ate your turkey.I can't remember if we were invited.

(14:24):
I think it's possible we had.I can't remember that we ate that turkey
together. I'm not sure, butI remember the story that I remember having
dinner, so maybe that's what itwas. I can't remember, but yeah,
yes, well that seems like anice way to end a turkey disaster.
Yeah. Make some gravy, baby, Yeah, stuffs that bird.

(14:46):
Yeah, you know what. Sheat least called the police and got it
because you know, there's a seasonfor turkeys, and so you know,
she got it handled legally and shewas able to get home. For people
who don't to live in cities andhave never really been part of rural America.
The hunting stuff is big. Itis very foreign, is very foreign

(15:09):
to a lot of Oh sure,sure, sure, and yeah so if
you hit, if you hit adeer, you can tag it and if
you don't want it, a lotof times they will take the meat to
homeless shelters. Or I saw abear one time. A bear was actually
very like a violent bear coming intopeople's yards and just really a danger to
the neighborhood. So unfortunately there wasa bear that had to be put down

(15:33):
because of that reason. But whatthey did with it is they gave it
to the Native American community, uhhuh. And they were able to take
the whole bear. You know thatthey were going to use every bit of
it for their community, as wellas the fur and everything the skin.
So you know, I thought thatwas a really cool story. Yeah,
not for the bear, not forthe bear. But yeah, So this

(15:54):
is a guy that wrote in aboutgetting his haircut in a small town in
Arkansas. He grew up in Memphis, but he would go to Arkansas,
a really small town in Arkansas everya couple of weekends every month, and
he got his hair cut there andthey actually put a bowl on his head
and cut around it. And theguy that was cutting his hair had only

(16:15):
three fingers on one hand. Threefingers. How do you, I don't
know, how do you cut?Like that? Was it on the cutting
hand? If he's ambidextrous, I'msure you'd have to be if you lose
your fingers. You know, it'sjust weird. Like in small towns,
how everybody people know, like thebarber we'll call him Floyd. Floyd was

(16:40):
the barber from Andy Griffith, rightright, but everybody knew, what are
you going to do? You onlyhave one barber? So what he only
has three fingers? Small towns.Small towns are hilarious that the gossip and
the news from small towns is alwaysso funny. You know. It's like
they have to fill up the policeblotterer section of the newspaper. And I

(17:00):
love reading. I remember when Iwould travel. I love getting a paper
newspaper uh huh and turning to thepolice blodder because every small town has that.
And the stories are usually like alama broke into Miss Winchester's yard and
ate her marigolds and then the lamawas sick. There's a story about one

(17:22):
guy basically What happened was the guywasn't able to open a gas station because
it wasn't zoned for gas station,but the town wouldn't change it for him.
So he gets so pissed off thaton all his properties he put free
standing toilets on all of them andkept them up like beautiful roses coming out

(17:45):
of a toilet lid, all overthe different properties. And he can't they
can't stop him from doing it.So, you know, I don't understand
like this then sounds like a littlebit of a war. Why not let
him open agains station. It's sostupid, Like, just change the coating
the zoning for him, so youget rid of all of the toilets around

(18:08):
town. You know, it's sostupid, but that is such an interesting
thing to do. So I wentto college and flag Staff and I lived
there for some time. And aguy sent in a story when he grew
up in Flagstaff in the eighties anda favorite place of his to go on
Saturday was Rough's Gun and Liquor,And it is exactly what it sounds like.

(18:30):
Yeah, are you ffs? Ihave been there. I've purchased booze
there, I have purchased worms therefor fishing, sure, and I think
it's closed now because they put thisbig, gaudy hotel in the middle of
town. But yeah, there wasa place in Flagstaff, Arizona, right
up the lane from US where youcould buy guns, ammo, bait,

(18:52):
booze, and a bag of chipsare jerky like everything you really needed for
a Saturday. There's also a tinyairport outside of flag Staff, and the
elk would come out of the treeline and they would lay on the runway
because it was warm, And everymorning the guys who work at the airport
would have to go out and chasethe elk away so the planes could land

(19:12):
and take off. It's just likepart of their job. It was in
a small town something that's just notweird. The reasons that power goes out
is a little different than your innercity reasons. Like, you know,
power goes out because a raccoon didsomething crazy to the power line or got
electricated or bit it or something.You know, like that stuff happens all

(19:34):
the time. When you live ina small town. Everybody hears when one
of the power things like bursts,because it's so small that the sound carries
for the entire town. To hear, and then we speculate. I bet
it was the freaking mayor ran intoit with this tractor drunk again. Master.

(19:56):
Then the rumors start, Then thegossip starts. I have I have
kind of a funny thing to closeon small towns. So we know that
if you have a celebrity in yoursmall town, it's a big dang deal.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, Soeverybody gets to say, like I
grew up with him, and oh, by the way, Sean Connery was,
yeah, I have to tell yeah, you know, and you have

(20:18):
some famous people in yr. Yeah, but I mean, like I could,
I could. Judy Garland's mother wasbabysat by my great grandmother, So
like this is like, I know, isn't that crazy that that amazing happens.
Yes, anyways, so all ofthe the more of the story is,
you're right, because I have allthese things too, and I grew
up in a very small town.Well this is sort of like famous person

(20:42):
adjacent. Okay, so this guygrew up in a small town with another
member of the community who looked alot like Tom Hanks, with the exception
that this guy was a lot right, but he was also a massive jerk.
Okay, So pretty much everyone inthe town you meet there would say,

(21:03):
tell you a story. One guysaid, personally, I've seen him
pulling daffodils apart in a in ajudo suit and trying to scare people on
the bus. He's tried to pushone one person into traffic, and that
this guy is seen all of thesethings and heard all these stories, but
he's like, yeah, and onetime he kicked my ball way above the

(21:23):
roof when I was playing with myfriends outside. It's like, why do
you always have to be a freakingjerk? Tom haggs, Oh my gosh,
can you imagine? I mean,Tom Hanks seems to be like one
of the nicest guys in the world, and now his dappelganger is This dapple
ganger is a jerky. He's ajerk. He's tearing daffodils up and shoving

(21:45):
people into traffic. You know it. Snowtown's are crazy. I've read one
that says two places make a certainkind of dip, like a dill dip.
One accuses the other of stealing therecipe. That the local dentist is
also the whole dentist. My dentistis not available. Is gonna be at
the farm down the road when hegets done washed and snooker's teeth, he's

(22:06):
gonna come over and do a fillingfor me. Gossip happens everywhere, but
there's not nothing quite like the gossipthat happens in a small town. We
have to hang on to every juicytidbit we get and perhaps even embellish it
a little bit. I mean,is that what gossip's all about? But
it's so easy to spread it becauseeverybody is hungry for something interesting, Like

(22:30):
yeah, oh my god, Imean we'll we'll talk about somebody's mole removal
for at least a week, Ohyeah, definitely, And there was like
complications, my got it could goon for a month. Yeah, you
know. Joyce down at the diner, she got her mole removed from her
face, the one on the left, yes, of course, the one
on the left, that big one, the big one that was right on
the left side of her face.And at first they thought it was a

(22:52):
spider bite. Well then that's whatpeople hear, and they go, Joyce
got a spider bite. A spiderchewed the mole off of her face.
And I saw her down at theMcDonald's. Did you know that the McDonald's
was thinking about adding a drive through? And man, what do you think
that would do to our small townhaving to drive through? Man, all
the traffic we're going to get inthat corner. Speaking of McDonald's, my
band's playing there on Saturday. Truefact. We're setting up around three So

(23:18):
Marana, Arizona. Yeah, Donaldsdoes have bands, Ladies, gentlemen,
They have bands on Saturday and theyplay, Oh it's March. You can
have a shamrock, shake the moveto a local band play some bluegrass music.
Thanks everyone for joining us today onsmall Town USA. If you want
to hear more small Town hit subscribenow, go ahead, I'll wait.

(23:41):
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