MISCHKE: Waiting (ep. 111)

Summary

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Garage Logic – MISCHKE: Waiting (ep. 111)

Date: May 15, 2026
Host: Mishke (Gamut Podcast Network)

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the ubiquitous yet oddly fascinating phenomenon of waiting. Mishke explores the concept through musings, calls with listeners, and personal anecdotes, unraveling the cultural, psychological, and existential layers behind a seemingly mundane part of daily life. The discussion drifts from the absurdity of waiting rooms to historical consequences of waiting, emotional limbo, awkward human interactions, and memorable scars (literal and emotional) left by time spent waiting.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Philosophy and Psychology of Waiting

• Waiting as a Cultural Phenomenon

  • Mishke opens with his fascination for the act of waiting, questioning why we don’t have a “national waiting day,” and pokes fun at spelling Wednesdays:

    "Wednesday is kind of tough to spell. It's not like it sounds. You want to spell it W, E, N, Z, but that, of course, would be a mistake." (00:30)

  • He highlights the irony and dullness of waiting rooms, contrasting them with other purpose-driven rooms (break rooms, showrooms, courtrooms).

    “A waiting room seems so removed from everything else, so odd. A room purposely built for waiting. And that’s it. That is the only reason that room is there.” (01:31)

• Existential Anxiety and the Waiting Room

  • Mishke riffs on the architecture and furniture of waiting rooms—never truly comfortable—designed to keep people unsettled and aware they aren’t supposed to linger:

    "No one has ever looked at a waiting room and said, this is where I want to be at this point in my life." (14:39)

  • He likens the waiting room to a vision of hell:

    "What if that is hell when we die? Not a fiery pit, just a beige-walled waiting room...you wait, and wait, and wait, and you're told you're waiting for something, but it's never made clear what that is." (08:09)

• Waiting as a Display of Power and Status

  • Mishke discusses how making someone wait can be about asserting dominance—historically (like the Pope and Henry VIII), in social status, or even with institutions:

    "A waiting room...reminds you that someone else’s time is more valuable than yours." (10:12)

• Body Language and Social Contracts of Waiting Rooms

  • Analysis of waiting room etiquette: pretending others don’t exist, feigned reading, use of physical objects (phones, magazines) as social shields:

    "Everyone in a waiting room has silently agreed to pretend the other people in that room do not exist." (13:05)

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Historical and Personal Anecdotes about Waiting

• Historical Waiting with High Stakes

  • King Henry VIII and the Pope: the world-changing consequences of diplomatic delay.
  • Battle of New Orleans: lives lost due to the delay in news of peace.

• Anecdotes of Guilt and Suspicion

  • Mishke confesses to always assuming guilt when confronted by authority, even when innocent:

    "Some part of me was ready to confess to whatever they wanted to accuse me of. Part of me said I must have been the one responsible. I'm Mishke. Surely I've burglarized the dorms." (29:29)

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The Liminality of Waiting – Listener Calls

Hans (25:47–37:20)

• Theme of Liminality
  • Enters the conversation “briefly liminal”—both transitioning spaces and psychologically in-between.
  • They discuss the hardships of waiting for bad news and how uncertainty multiplies anxiety.
  • Hans shares a story about getting an ominous letter—evoking the sense of waiting for an undefined doom.
• Folklore Interlude
  • Mishke delves into Hans’ job “hunting for the Wendigo” in Minnesota, merging the show’s trademark blend of Midwest legend with existential reflection.

    [Hans] "It's a hungry spirit, and it's been driven mad by its hunger." (35:12)

Pete (41:51–60:16)

• Unexpected Connection
  • Call begins with a butt-dial and ends with a genuine, warm conversation about the Army, marriage, and community memory.
• “Hurry Up and Wait”
  • Pete: “Back in my days in the army, you hurried up and waited. Hurry up to get there on time. And on time in the army met, you know, an hour early and then you waited.” (51:13)
• Marriage as a Long Wait
  • Pete, on nearly 40 years of marriage:

    "Coming up on 40 years here, so, you know, can't complain too much. But I'm a guy. I can complain." (53:18)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Mishke’s Signature Wit

• On existential dread in the waiting room:

  "The waiting room is the only room on earth where magazines from five months ago are considered current reading material...They're there to give your hands something to do while your brain quietly longs for change." (12:52)

• On architects designing waiting rooms:

  "Make me a room where people will not want to really be, but where we'll have to be, but only temporarily." (11:55)

Listener Stories

• Pete’s “hurry up and wait”—the eternal refrain of the military.
• Mishke’s dramatic story of his brother surviving being hit by a car as a child, culminating in a triumphant homecoming, the catharsis after a long, agonizing wait (46:16–50:29).

On Memory and Identity

• Listener letter about being called by a sibling’s name:

  "My mother called me by my brother's name for three years before we all just gave up and I decided to change my name to Dave." (43:43)

• Mishke: "It's somehow the most human your family has ever been. Every uncomfortable truth, every weird memory that surfaces at dinner time, every moment where you laugh when you absolutely should not be laughing, because what else are you going to do? You're tired of crying." (44:04)

Mishke’s Final Reflection on Small-Town Life

• Reminiscing about Red Wing, Minnesota, trips to old diners, and the lore of the “Lois Club” (55:48–59:51).

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Important Timestamps

• Spelling Peculiarities and the Pain of "Wednesday" – 00:30
• The Waiting Room as Hell – 08:09
• The Social Etiquette of Waiting Rooms – 13:05
• King Henry VIII, the Pope, and World History Shaped by Waiting – 17:32
• Listener Letter about Names and Memory Loss – 43:43
• First Call: Hans & Liminal States, The Wendigo – 25:47–37:20
• Second Call: Pete & The Art of Waiting in Life and the Army – 41:51–60:16
• The Triumphant, Emotional Story about Mishke’s Brother – 46:16–50:29
• Reminiscing about Red Wing and Small-Town Rituals – 55:48–59:51

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Tone & Style

• Conversational – The episode meanders in Mishke’s stream-of-consciousness style, inviting listeners into both dry wit and deep pathos.
• Reflective & Self-deprecating – Personal stories are told with humor, humility, and edges of melancholy.
• Affectionately Regional – The quirks of Minnesota, its folklore, weather, and social graces flavor every segment.

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Summary Takeaway

Mishke: Waiting transforms life’s dullest moments—the in-between, the hesitant, the boring—into a profound meditation on human vulnerability, community, and the endurance required to simply be present for whatever comes next.
Whether in a beige waiting room, at the end of a long hospital stay, or killing time with cap guns and malts in Red Wing, the episode finds the comedy, agony, and poetry in waiting.

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Transcript

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[Mishke]

Just a heads up to you folks sitting with a notebook and pen Mishke, the new podcast here in Garage Logic Land is now coming out twice a week, Wednesdays and Fridays. If you're in fact scribbling this down, Wednesday is kind of tough to spell. It's not like it sounds. You want to spell it W, E, N, Z, but that, of course would be a mistake. Friday is spelled just like it sounds. You're going to be okay there, but Wednesday's a bugaboo, let me tell you people. Just a pain in the patoot. Jeez, it's hard. Everybody talked about it since I first moved to Oregon. The big one. The earthquake that trashed the whole West Coast. Total destruction.

[Podcast Promo Voice]

Officially calling it the largest natural disaster in American history.

[Mishke]

I just didn't know what would help me next. So I took it all. Even the gun. It was time.

[Podcast Promo Voice]

Cielo American Afterlife, presented by Pair of Thieves, the number one fiction and drama podcast in America. Listen wherever you get your favorite podcasts available now.

[Mishke]

I've been thinking a lot of late about the act of waiting. Waiting for something. Sitting around, waiting. I've been meditating on the concept of waiting of late. W A I T I N G Waiting. My name's Mishke, and I've been waiting to come up with some interesting take on the concept of waiting. And it's been quite a wait. Waiting fascinates me. I don't think we have a national waiting day, do we? But we ought to. And I don't mind telling you I'm willing to wait for that day. When was the last time you found yourself waiting and what was it like? Was it enjoyable? I doubt it. And you're waiting right now for this theme song to be over with? We do a lot of waiting, don't we, in our lives? Do you ever keep a diary of the times you've waited and what you've waited for? I was sitting in a waiting room yesterday and I looked around and I said, this. This is a funny little concept, a waiting room. A room designed solely, solely for waiting. It Just suddenly struck me as so odd that we have this in our world. There's a break room at work. There's a dark room at a photographer's studio. There's a classroom inside that school building. There's a courtroom downtown. There's a showroom at the car dealership. But a waiting room seems so removed from everything else, so odd. A room built purposely built for waiting. And that's it. I mean, that is it. That's the only reason that room is there. It's for waiting. Some poor guy had to build that, and he had to tell his friends, yeah, that's what I'm building. Nothing fancy. Can't really brag about it. It's going to be a room where people just. Well, from what I hear, they're just going to wait. The hell kind of a room is that, Doug? Well, they call it a waiting room. That's what they're going to do. They're going to wait around. You look around, and everyone's doing the same thing. And what they're doing is not very interesting. In fact, it's utterly uninteresting. Actually, it could be the least interesting thing in the world one can do. And yet they felt a need to build a room for it. A room for the least interesting thing you could ever do. It holds the least interesting activity on earth. Nothing of note happens there. People are just sitting there, waiting. There's Tim staring off into the distance, Margaret looking for a magazine to read. But all of them are also uninteresting. So she fidgets with her glasses as her life ticks away. Don's trying to talk to his wife, but she's not only bored by this whole waiting business, she's bored by Don. She has completely cut Don out of her consciousness 90% of the time. When Don talks, his wife tries to daydream up another existence for herself and certainly another partner. And Don's oblivious. He thinks she enjoys hearing him mention that the quarter round molding near the ceiling is the same quarter round molding in their den back home. Don's wife wants to scream. And oh, how healthy I think it would be if she would scream. To just scream. To scream at the top of her lungs. The horror of her life. The horror of this bland room with its awful music, with its banal, glossy literary offerings, its gray rug, gray walls, and the comatose looks on the faces of those gathered. Gathered here just to wait. Each person having been told of an appointment time and told not to be late. And yet the professional they're here to See does not feel the same pressure to be on time and makes them sit and sit and daydream, daydream about another partner, about another room, about another life. The professional they're there to see thinks they've covered their ass by setting out a People magazine. And as if that can make up for the 35 minute delay. Guilt ridden, the professional eventually has an aquarium installed in the waiting room. But that just makes him feel more comfortable about making them wait longer. They can wait now, there's an aquarium there. Whose idea was it to try to bring comfort to these people by showing them living things? Trapped. What is this room, this waiting room? What is this hell invented by modern man? The waiting room. What if that is hell when we die? Not a fiery pit, just a beige walled waiting room with a painting of a forest on the wall and a little water dispenser. And you just sit there with others and you wait and you wait and you wait and you wait and you're told you're waiting for something, but it's never made clear what that is. And eternity slowly passes until finally people start screaming. And then all anyone does is sit there next to the yellowing periodicals, screaming, screaming and screaming in an eternal waiting room. Wouldn't that make more sense as a hell? Anyway, I sat in that waiting room and I thought about waiting rooms. And pretty soon waiting was all I could think about. Think about a waiting room. It's the only room that defines itself by what isn't happening. There was something happening in your life before you came into this room. And there will be something happening after you leave this room. But this room is the great in between. It's a room that exists solely to make another room feel important. The other room is so important a separate room had to be built to wait to get into the important room. See, the living room automatically seems not as important. The living room in your house due to the mere fact that another room wasn't built to wait in for a chance to get into the living room. In a waiting room, you're in a room specifically designed to remind you that someone else's time is actually more valuable than yours. They built you a room to wait for them rather than meeting you at the appointed time in the room you're going to be in with them after you leave the waiting room. Somewhere an architect had to design a room whose entire function was for people to sit and feel vaguely anxious. That's the whole blueprint. Make me a room where people will not want to really be, but where we'll have to be, but only temporarily. So temporarily that they're not going to make any chair terribly comfortable. They want to remind you that you're not here for long. Don't relax too much. No one has ever looked at a waiting room and said, this is where I want to be at this point in my life. Right here, right now, this is where I want to be. That's never been uttered in a waiting room. Are you where you want to be in life, David? I was going to say yes, but I. I realize I'm in a waiting room right now, so, no, this right here, this is not where I want to be. Not here. Half hour ago, I would have said, yeah, I'm where I want to be in life. And a half hour from now, I'll probably say that too. But right now, no, no, this is not where I want to be. There's that vague anxiety. When can I leave this room? The waiting room is the only room on earth where magazines from five months ago are considered current reading material. Those magazines are not there to entertain you or to enlighten you. They're there to give your hands something to do while your brain quietly longs for change. Everyone in a waiting room has silently agreed to pretend the other people in that room do not exist. You're all experiencing each other. You just don't acknowledge it. And if everyone else in the room would get up and leave, you wouldn't feel bad about that at all. There'd be a kind of relief. And everyone knows that. Everyone knows that you're leaving this room would bring relief. There's an entire language in the waiting room. A body language. The way someone will angle their chair, use their phone as a shield. That magazine, they're only pretending to read so you don't talk to them. The moment someone makes eye contact, both parties immediately look away. Because eye contact means you're in this room together, and no one's ready for that kind of intimacy. We don't want to be in this together. It's bad enough that here at all, but to feel the weight of another person's waiting would be too much. I already have to deal with my own waiting. I don't want to deal with yours. Who named it the waiting room? It should be the patience chamber. The four walls of dread. The holding zone. The room before the thing. Then there's the moment they call you. Someone with a clipboard or calls your name, and you get up and you walk toward them and you wait for the dreaded question, and you know it's coming and you know it's gonna hurt and you don't want to hear it, but there's nothing anyone can do about it. How's your day going? I always answer that the same way I hear that. How's your day going? I say the answer to that question is complex. No one ever knows what to say after that. I've opened a door they don't want to walk through. Think about it. They ask, how's your day going? And I say the answer to that question is complex. They think about that line of mine and they realize it leaves them with no good responses. None. None at all. To ask why the answer to that question is complex would be to invite in all the complexities. And they cannot deal with that. But silence also feels awkward. I've dropped a sentence on them that compounds the weirdness of their afternoon. So there's just silence. Anxiety ridden, weighty, strange, uncomfortable silence. And the seconds pass like minutes after I say that every now and then, every now and then, there's a woman, and it's usually a woman who says, after I say the answer to that question is complex, There's a woman that says, uh huh. What the hell's that mean? How's your day going? Well, the answer to that question is complex. Waiting. What are your thoughts about waiting? King Henry VIII was trying to divorce his wife, and he had all these powerful people write letters to the Pope to grant him a special divorce dispensation. And the Pope would have given it to him, but the Pope waited before replying. And because he waited, King Henry had to wait as well. And he didn't like waiting. Waiting is for poor people. It's for people who stand in lines. Kings don't wait. The Pope changed history by taking his time to respond. Henry was insulted by waiting. He said, you know what? I'm too powerful to wait. I'm not going to wait for the Pope. I'm King Henry VIII. You think you, Mr. Pope, have the power that you can make me wait? No. I'm going to do a little end around here, Mr. Man, Mr. Cockadoody Man. I'm going to just go ahead and break from the Catholic Church. I'm going to install myself as the head of the Church of England. This waiting business is bs. He did an end around. The Pope tried to exercise his power. And Henry said, let me show you power, camper Dan. It'd be like, say, when I was a kid in confession, saying to the priest, I know you ordinarily would be the one with the Power here. What with you being a priest and all and me just being a fourth grader. But, Father, things are about to change. I've decided to leave the Catholic Church and start my own religion, right here, right now. I'm calling my new church the Church of Tom. And what happens in my doing this is. You suddenly are not the one capable of directing my forgiveness nor my penance. You're suddenly just a guy in a very small room. Much like a waiting room, actually. And much like being in a waiting room, you now have nothing to do. We're both in our little rooms now with nothing really to do. I have half a mind to say, how about those twins? But I fear you'd just be silent, trying to process what's happening here. I know you said I should say three Our Fathers and two Hail Marys, but I was thinking instead that I'd sing Sweet Caroline. Would you like to hear that? You want to hear Sweet Caroline? I know all the words. Are you there, Father? Padre. Anyway, the future direction of the world was shaped around King Henry VIII interpreting the Pope's waiting and giving him a response. It was all about waiting and the willingness to wait or the unwillingness to wait. Do you ever wait? Not in a waiting room, but in your mind? Because that's the toughest waiting room of all. That little room in your mind where you wait and you think and you wait and you think. Say, for instance, you text someone and you expect a reply fairly quickly and you don't get one, so you add a second text and still nothing. Now, there could be a hundred reasons for this delay, but your mind begins to work on this, and that's when the trouble starts. Why is she not replying? Have I offended her? What did I say? When was the last time we actually spoke? Did everything go okay then? What is the status of our relationship? Are we truly friends? She has seemed a bit distant of late. Maybe she's moving on from our friendship. Have I lost her? Oh, God. I've lost my dear friend. And the grieving starts. And then the next day, a text reply. Sorry, I had misplaced my phone for a few days. Finally found it. Hey, I'd be happy to go to lunch. Just tell me when and where. Sometimes the weight can be very tragic. During the War of 1812, there was a truce that was signed. A treaty ending the war. And it was signed in Europe. But the message from that peace treaty did not arrive in the US for weeks. It took a long time for information to travel. And weeks after the treaty was signed, There was the Battle of New Orleans. The noose was still on its way across the ocean. That battle was wholly unnecessary. The war had ended. The battle had no impact at all, no importance, meant nothing. But it was fought because of that wait for that information to arrive. Thousands of soldiers died because of this weight. I've never died in a waiting room. I've wanted to. I've often prayed to. I've prayed for death. As the time has slowly moved past and the elderly lady next to me has continued to cough into her wretched hanky, and the parents with the crying kid have kept saying, oh, shush, you big complainer. Oh, I've wanted to die looking at a stained Popular Mechanics magazine, longing for sunlight and fresh air and escape. Who hasn't? Years ago, there were these rooms built in these mansions called antechambers. In these large houses, there were these rooms you sat in prior to being invited into the main room. Guests would arrive at the front door and they'd be seated in the antechamber. Why not just allow them right into the main visiting room? Well, the antechamber was to create the sense that the person you were visiting was important. His or her time was far more important than yours. They might not be ready for you when you arrive. So you sit in the antechamber and they would see you when they were good and ready. And in the meantime, you would wait. It's once again a case of their time being more important than your time. Just like in today's modern waiting rooms. You see what happens once a man like me goes down the rabbit hole of waiting rooms of antechambers. It isn't long before you land in the world of vestibules. The vestibule. Now, what the hell's that vestibule? That's the small room between a building's outer and inner doors. That's that strange transition space, the vestibule. You're not quite inside yet, but you're not really outside either. It's like a waiting room. It's a space in the great in between of life. No one late in life, looking back on their existence, will ever spend much time contemplating a vestibule they passed through. It may be the most forgotten and forgettable space ever built in the history of buildings. The waiting room is more interesting than the vestibule. Now, when you get to houses like yours and mine, you don't talk about antechambers or vestibules. You talk about the entryway. We've dropped down several notches here. We're in the entryway now. People who come to your house and visit often stand in the entryway at the end of an evening with a long goodbye, their coat on, but still standing there in the entryway that for some reason we have failed to call an exit way. Which is exactly what it is at this point. It's the way to the exit. And they're standing there in the entryway. And they too now are in the great in between. They've not left yet, but they're also not really there. They're on their way out, but they're not out. They're standing in the entryway for the great exit, participating in the great Midwestern waiting room for the long goodbye. It's all so interesting, isn't it? And I haven't even gotten to the foyer. The foyer. I'm exhausted and don't have the energy to go further into the foyer, whatever the hell that is. I want to tell you about Gerald. Gerald was at a casino buffet. He had done three plates. He was on his fourth. Gerald was what I like to call in the zone. And that's when the sneeze guard fell down. You know what? The sneeze guard is at the buffet. It didn't just tip over. It didn't just wobble. It fell like it had been thinking about it for years and finally committed 12 pounds of tempered glass and aluminum framing straight onto Gerald's dominant hand, which was holding a pair of tongs. Tongs that were gripping what was described as an impressive crab leg. Gerald lost his crab leg. Gerald lost his tongs. Gerald did not lose his lawsuit because Gerald called Bradshawn Bryant. Gerald got a settlement and Gerald went back to that buffet. And Gerald now has lots and lots of plates and lots and lots of money. Bradshaw and Bryant, personal injury attorneys. No fees unless you win. Learn [e-mail] Quantum Quantum wherever you go,

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[Mishke]

Here's a note from a listener. My mother called me by my brother's name for three years before we all just gave up and I decided to change my name to Dave. Okay, Mom, I'm Dave. I'm not really Dave, of course. Dave lives in Tucson, and Dave And I look nothing alike. Dave, frankly, is a disappointment in ways I don't have time to get into right now. But I was going to be Dave for the next few years, at Thanksgiving, at Christmas, at Dave. And here's the thing nobody ever tells you about watching someone you love lose their grip on reality. Mishke. It's somehow the most human your family has ever been. Every uncomfortable truth, every weird memory that surfaces at dinner time, every moment where you laugh when you absolutely should not be laughing, because what else are you going to do? You're tired of crying. To this listener, I want to say the Wellshire Memory Care center in Bloomington and Medina gets it more than you know. They get it. They understand that this isn't just a medical situation. It's a family situation. This is life, messy and loving and exhausting and occasionally absolutely insane. And there is no one, There is no one in this region of the country better equipped to handle it. The Wellshire Memory Care Center. Tour it. Hello, Hans.

[Hans]

Oh, my goodness. Misky.

[Mishke]

Sounds like you were just coming in the door there.

[Hans]

Yeah, something like that.

[Mishke]

I heard a door.

[Hans]

Yeah, I was briefly liminal.

[Mishke]

Liminal? Let me look that up. You were briefly liminal. You may be the first listener that's ever been liminal.

[Hans]

I doubt that, Mishke.

[Mishke]

A state of being in between, transitional. It can refer to psychological states. Might you have been referring to your psychological state?

[Hans]

I was doing both because I was physically moving from inside to outside, but I was also transitioning from one conversation to another.

[Mishke]

You know, it's fascinating to me when people are willing to bring their insides out.

[Hans]

Yeah, that's what we all want. Everyone wants to really be seen. But then it's the mortifying ordeal of being known.

[Mishke]

Are you willing to be known?

[Hans]

Desperately.

[Mishke]

Well, this is going to be an interesting call. Then. When you look back on your life, when you look back on your life, can you think of when it was the absolute hardest for you to wait? I'm spending some time on this show looking at the phenomenon of waiting human beings waiting. When you think of your life and times when you've been waiting, something must come to mind.

[Hans]

I think the worst times of waiting are when you are waiting for something that you know is bad, but you just don't know how bad it's gonna be. And you live in the anguish of all of the suppositions of how bad this is going to be.

[Mishke]

Sort of like waiting for medical test results.

[Hans]

Sure, sure. Or like you've got a mysterious letter in the mail from the police. Department investigation into an incident. And you are scouring your mind for something that you might have done wrong. And it's almost worse that you can't think of anything because you're like, well, my God, what did I do? I can't even remember it.

[Mishke]

You're reminding me of something there. I don't know if I've told this story before. I feel like I have, actually, at this stage of the game, I feel I've told all my stories. So forgive me, those of you who have heard this one. I have had the experience in my life of the police stopping me, not necessarily in a car, just stopping me somewhere with concern. And I assume right away I've done whatever they're thinking I've done, just because in my life in general, I was usually screwing around in a way I shouldn't be. I like to play with the limits and the lines. And technically, I'm sure I'm always doing something illegal. I mean, you could. You could find me doing something wrong. Most days I just feel that that is the story of my life. I'm not always following the rules, and sometimes purposefully not just because I don't want to be that kind of person who has to do everything right. You know, going back to my childhood, generally when I was in trouble, I had it coming. Now, there were a couple instances where I didn't have it coming. I had a teacher in high school come down the aisle, hold his arm up and bring it down with the force of a Nazi. And I only say that because he was my German teacher. He unloaded on my head. That's the kind of high school I went to. You could unload on a student's head. And it was the guy behind me who had been responsible for the infraction. On this one afternoon, I was innocent. And I'm telling you, the rage one feels at the injustice of taking the punishment for something I didn't do, it was such that I stood up and rammed my desk into this guy. I mean, I shoved the entire desk into his legs. He then proceeded to go insane. He wanted me pummeled. He's coming at me, and I'm ducking and pushing more desks into him, and he's swinging at me. I eventually got kicked out of that class. Well, eventually got kicked out of that school. But there was an instance where I didn't do anything that day. But there was a time. This is the story I wanted to tell, which you reminded me of. I used to not have a piano at home, and I loved Playing piano. So I'd. I'd go to a nearby college to play the pianos that they offered for their music students. Now, there was no sign that said I couldn't do it. I'm sure in general, it's for the students. But there was no sign that said, if you don't go to school here, you cannot play this piano. So I'd go into the little piano rooms and I play these pianos, and then I'd leave. That's all I did. I just walk to the campus, play piano for an hour and a half, and go home. That's all. Turns out they had cameras in the hallways, and they had a record of my coming and going. And I don't know if I became a person of interest because I wasn't a student there or what, but one day, two security officers from the campus, they come in the room, and there's just them and me and the piano, and they're blocking the door. And there was something about that. That blocking the door, that cornering me thing that I think played into this thing. But they said, you've been coming here a lot lately. And I said, is there a rule against people who aren't going to school here playing these pianos? And they said, we're not here to talk to you about any piano playing. There have been some burglaries of dorms on this campus. Now, I should have at that moment said, phew. I thought they were gonna kick me out of here for playing piano. I should have felt absolutely fine knowing I hadn't been burglarizing dorm rooms. I was a father with children at home and a wife and a job. I was in radio, for God's sakes. I was living my life. Wasn't a burglar, certainly wouldn't burglarize dorm rooms. What the hell do college students have? They don't have anything. But I flashed back to all the times in my life that some guy, a cop, a principal, some colonel at a military school, someone was coming at me for something I did do. And some part of me was ready to confess to whatever they wanted to accuse me of. Part of me said I must have been the one responsible. I'm Mishki. Surely I've burglarized the dorms. How can they be wrong? 99.999% of the time, people coming after me for something are right. I started to sweat, and they were looking at me, and I said, no, I don't go on to any other floors. I don't go into any other Buildings. I like to play piano. And that's pretty much it. You sure about that? Because we've seen you coming here quite a bit. We got security cameras here. And just talking that way had me thinking. All right, you got me. Then I'm saying to myself, but, Mishka, you didn't do it. I know, but usually I do it. It was the weirdest feeling. It sort of reminded me of you getting that letter. You got the letter and you didn't think, wait a minute, I'm a law abiding citizen. There's nothing to worry about. I'll open this without any concern. No, you started to think of things you might have done that resulted in you getting that letter and being guilty of whatever this thing's gonna be about. That was like me in that room. That was my letter. Even if I didn't burglarize the dorm rooms, if you guys dig deep enough, you'll find something you can get me on.

[Hans]

So to them, you were already a deviant. So they're like, well, what else would this guy be capable of? Maybe he's robbing the place. It's weirder that you would just come and play the piano. They wouldn't understand that as much as they would understand stealing an ipod from a college kid. You know what I mean? That they would understand. You know, I think a lot of us, Mishke, yourself included, and certainly almost all of your listeners at some point have felt like we're just not quite the same model as everyone else on the road. And so once you've accepted that about yourself. Yeah, you know that you're guilty. I know I'm guilty of pretending to be a normal person. Once you start accusing me of things, I think, well, the jig is up. They've seen the seam in my human costume. It's only a matter of time now before I'm ferreted out completely.

[Mishke]

Hans, what do you do for a living?

[Hans]

I had a short lived gig where I went out with a TV crew and we hunted for the Wendigo.

[Mishke]

Now, the Wendigo isn't known nearly as well as Sasquatch. In fact, I would say 99% of people listening right now don't know what you're talking about.

[Hans]

And we're not supposed to talk about it when. When the snow is off the ground. We're not really supposed to discuss the Wendigo, but there's a close to Bemidji here. There's Cass Lake, and there's a unique little geographical thing where we've Got island in a lake that has a lake within it. So a lake and an island in a lake. And that lake in the island is called Lake Wendigo. So I was a production assistant on a TV show where they were looking for the Wendigo.

[Mishke]

And what is the Wendigo?

[Hans]

It's a hungry spirit, and it's been driven mad by its hunger.

[Mishke]

Did you find it?

[Hans]

I signed an NDA that doesn't allow me to disclose, but I will say that I personally did not see one during the shooting of that episode.

[Mishke]

The windigo is a malevolent, cannibalistic spirit rooted in Algonquin folklore, symbolizing insatiable greed, hunger and the harshness of winter. It often possesses humans who turn to cannibalism or are consumed by selfishness, causing them to transform into giant, emaciated, ice hearted creatures. Holy smokes. Often described as a giant, emaciated creature with ashen skin, sunken eyes, sharp fangs, and a smell of decay. Boy, let me tell you, you can take your Chanel number five to the bank, but if you want to really have a wild night out, have your gal put on the smell of decay.

[Narrator (Wendigo Segment)]

The chill wind blows. Hunger. All it feels is hunger. Eyes hollow, skin pale, mouth slavering, covered in blood. It is famine. It is the hunger that should never be. And far to the north, by the lakes, it stalks the people. Wendigo. They kidnap a person and carve them up just like wild game. And once they've eaten, they think of it just as a meal. No different from any other Wendigo.

[Mishke]

Well, I've enjoyed hanging out with you. I'm glad I finally got a hold of you. How many months you think you've been on that old list?

[Hans]

I signed up last fall because I thought. Well, you know, I'm not really doing much for the next four or five months, so I'll have plenty of time to answer Mishke's phone calls, but half a year.

[Mishke]

All right. Well, again, thanks for your time and hope to speak to you again somewhere down the line. All my best to you.

[Hans]

Yeah, right back at you, Misky.

[Mishke]

All right.

[Hans]

Loving your show. Yeah, Just glad that you're still around and doing it.

[Mishke]

I appreciate that. I'll keep at it for a bit more.

[Hans]

All right, sounds good.

[Mishke]

You be well.

[Hans]

Bye now.

[Mishke]

You folks still willing to do me a favor? It's a simple little thing, and it is a favor to me. I'll owe you. I'll square up with you at some point. Snap a photo of your breaker box, will you? In your house that electrical panel, just snap a photo of it. Yeah. Maybe you can open the door of it and just boom, take a picture of it. Send that picture to MSP. Minneapolis St. Paul Plumbing, Heating, air and electric. I made it easy for you and Mishki podcast.com. yeah, it's real easy. Go to Mishki podcast.com well, here's what you do, actually. You put in Mishki podcast.com breaker and there's the page where you upload the photo. That's all you got to do. Just please do that for me and I'll owe you. Meanwhile, you may get $7,000 worth of home electrical work because someone is going to be pulled out of a hat and given a free breaker box. Those things are so expensive, you have no idea what's involved in installing a new breaker box. Thousands of dollars of work. MSP is going to give you up to $7,000 in free work on that new breaker box. And five of you who don't win in this drawing, five of you will get a free full house. Exhaustive electrical evaluation. I had it done at my house recently. I was quite stunned. I didn't know it would be that big of a deal. It's very involved and what I learned about and the whole way the electric thing is set up and what's really working wonderfully and what's a little scary, what I learned may save my family's life one day. And they're gonna give it to five of you for free. That normally costs close to 400 bucks. So you've got a lot to win here. Doing something pretty silly. You open up your breaker box, you snap a picture, you send it out. You go to mishki podcast.com breaker. There it is, real easy. Upload it done.

[Podcast Promo Voice]

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[Mishke]

Everything okay? Everything all right? Anything I can do to help? Hello? Pete? Everything all right there?

[Pete]

Hello?

[Mishke]

Hi, Pete.

[Pete]

Hi. I can hear my pocket talking.

[Mishke]

You heard your pocket talking? Yeah, I was hearing a whole lot of things.

[Pete]

Well, I was in the basement doing some laundry, moving stuff around. Yeah, I didn't even hear it ring. Just heard you talking. Maybe my pocket answered it.

[Mishke]

Has this ever happened to you before?

[Pete]

I couldn't verify that.

[Mishke]

Wonder if a lot of people are calling you all the time and your pocket's just answering and all they're hearing are these astounding noises.

[Pete]

Well, that's just a day in the life.

[Mishke]

What kind of life do you have going on, Pete? I know very little about it right now, but I know it involves a lot of action, a lot of activity, a lot of movement.

[Pete]

I'm retired, so I get lots of little jobs to do here and there for people, just to help out. Today I was unclogging a shower drain.

[Mishke]

You know, you got that quality in your voice of a guy who unclogs shower drains.

[Pete]

Yeah, it wouldn't be my first time.

[Mishke]

I don't imagine there's a sound in your voice that almost is the tone that comes with being that kind of a guy.

[Pete]

Oh, well, thank you. Say, my reason for signing up to talk to you. Have you ever done voice work for, like, authors or things like that where you read a book and people listen to you?

[Mishke]

I never have.

[Pete]

Okay. Because you got a voice that would interest me in a bad book.

[Mishke]

You'd like me to read you a bad book, Pete? Are we talking about a naughty book here?

[Pete]

No, but, you know, sometimes a good book read by a bad reader when you're listening to audiobook, makes you like, why am I doing this? Your voice and inflection can make a bad book better.

[Mishke]

Yeah.

[Pete]

You know, that people listen to for entertainment.

[Mishke]

No, I hear you. It's just that in the town I grew up in, there was a bookstore, and inside the bookstore, there was a curtain, and the bad books were on the other side of that curtain. I wasn't allowed back there because I was underage.

[Pete]

We had an old bookstore that had the same kind of deal, and I didn't know what the curtain was for. I thought that was employees only.

[Mishke]

Well, of course, if you're curious enough, and I was, you get back there eventually. And I. I had to get back there. So I'd have my buddy distract the bookstore owner and I'd head back there and see what the books were. And there were a lot of books written by Xavier Hollander. You familiar with her?

[Pete]

No.

[Mishke]

She was a Dutch gal. And I don't know if you know much about what goes on in Amsterdam, but. Pretty freewheeling world over there.

[Pete]

I've heard that. I've visited a couple times, but only short period of time over to Amsterdam for my work.

[Mishke]

You ever clear a drain over there at all? No.

[Pete]

No. I worked in nuclear industry, so not much drain cleaning involved there.

[Mishke]

You know, I was gonna guess you were in the nuclear industry. Is the nuclear industry a pretty sound industry to get into as a career?

[Pete]

I think so.

[Mishke]

Pete, did you ever find yourself mulling over how to make a bomb?

[Pete]

No, not. Not that kind of bomb, anyway. As a kid, we used to like to take apart firecrackers and make them into other things. Blow up GI Joes, whatever, you know, because they didn't have their own real bombs. Or even the little firecracker or the little cap shield that used to go bang, you know, on your pistol when

[Mishke]

you were a kid, you say cap gun, and I flash back to a day in my life back in the 60s. I was maybe 5 years old, and it's the most glorious memory for me of firing off my cap gun. My brother, in early June of that year, right after we had moved up to the lake cabin for the summer, had made the mistake of walking into the middle of Highway 8 in Wisconsin and picking up a dead bird. He was only nine years old, and Highway 8, that was one of those roads where people did about 65 miles an hour.

[Pete]

Yeah, on cars that hardly had brakes.

[Mishke]

So he walked out there, middle of the road, picked up a dead bird, and damned if he wasn't hit by a woman named Ruth Lee. I still remember the name, mostly because it made the paper. Ruth Lee, 65 Chrysler. Hit him without slowing down. She wasn't able to slow down because she came up over a little hill and There he was, 9 years old, standing in the middle of Highway 8. And she took him out. He went cartwheeling through the air. At nine years of age, flying through the air. His buddies on the side of the road, who had been with him walking up to the candy store, they watched him fly through the air. And he landed and Ruth pulled over. A lot of people pulled over, and his buddies ran over to him and he was unconscious, blood pouring out of his head, and he was choking on a piece of Gum. Some guy from that candy store, which also happened to be a bait store, little bit of everything store. Some guy there ran out with a pair of needle nose pliers and went into his throat and pulled out the gum.

[Pete]

So did your brother survive?

[Mishke]

He did. And it's quite astounding. I think you replay that accident a hundred times and 99 times he dies. I know he went into the St. Croix Falls hospital and was there for a long, long, long, long, long time in a coma for a long time. And then eventually came out of the coma. And they thought that he had some sort of brain damage. And they realized after a longer period of time, he actually didn't. Which is almost impossible to believe when you think about it.

[Pete]

Can't imagine he didn't have broken bones and stuff like that.

[Mishke]

He had a lot of broken bones. Lot of broken bones. The lack of a traumatic brain injury is what surprises me. I was with my mother when this guy drove. The buddies that my brother had been with drove them back to the cabin. And the kids came to tell my mother what had happened to my brother. And my mother fainted. It was probably due to the. The kid saying to her, Mrs. Mishke, Mrs. Mishke, Dale's been hit by a car up on Highway 8. And I think he might be dead. The kid. The kid probably shouldn't have said that. But anyway, she fainted. And that was June. That was early June at the end of the summer. He finally got out of the hospital. Long, long haul. And I remember we all got word on the north side of the lake that he was coming home. This was the north side of the lake filled with huge Catholic families. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 kids each. Everybody knew everybody. And word got out and we lined the road. The old dirt road that came down toward the lake, we lined it and there were people with streamers and people blowing off firecrackers. And I had my cap gun, and that's what I was doing. Shooting off my cap gun up in the air. As that car came down slowly down the road. And we all ran to it. People jumped on it, jumped on the hood, jumped on the trunk as the old man drove my brother down the road, into the driveway, down the long driveway toward the lake, toward the cabin. Everybody running alongside, cheering, cap guns going off. I remember my brother got out of the car with a big Hefty bag filled with get well cards. I don't know how many. A giant Hefty bag full of. Filled, packed with them. And Ruth Lee, she had sent one Every day. Every day. Anyway, that's what you reminded me of when you talked about that cap gun.

[Pete]

Yeah, that's kind of a sad story. I usually think of cap guns as kids having fun.

[Mishke]

Well, this was pretty fun. This was pretty celebratory. He was back, he was alive, and he really shouldn't have been. My mother should have lost a child. I don't even know how it's possible that he's alive. You take any nine year old kid, you throw him on Highway 8, you hit him with a 65 Chrysler going 60 miles an hour, he's gone.

[Pete]

Gosh, makes you wonder.

[Mishke]

He had the last rites of the Catholic church on the side of the road. A priest from a little town driving by pulled over and gave him the last rites. Figured that was it. Sayonara. Now it's the sacrament of the sick. But back then it was so long. Been a good run.

[Pete]

Yeah. They used to only give it to you at the end. Now you can get it for almost anything.

[Hans]

Yeah.

[Mishke]

I got a question for you. If I bring up the notion of waiting, not wading into a lake, but waiting for something, waiting around, endless waiting. When I throw that at you and you think about your life, does anything come to mind when you think about waiting?

[Pete]

It does. Back in my days in the army, you hurried up and waited. Hurry up to get there on time. And on time in the army met, you know, an hour early and then you waited. I look at it as patience. Whether you're 4H kid, you know, waiting for a project to get finished, it's just a bit of patience, waiting.

[Mishke]

So when you were in the army, what years were those?

[Pete]

1980 to about 1993.

[Mishke]

You went into the service at a time, and I'd be curious if you're aware of this at a time that is considered the nadir of interest in military service in the United States. There were fewer people interested in military service in 1980 than at any other time before 1980 or since.

[Pete]

Yeah, and just after I and a couple other guys enlisted, they started giving out bonuses to enlist. We missed it.

[Mishke]

They were trying everything. I was turning 18 about then and they were, they were throwing everything at us, wanting us to join the service. And what was really sad is they started to lower their standards a little bit and they got caught taking in some, well, there's no other way to say it. Mentally challenged fellas.

[Pete]

Yeah, I remember a few of those.

[Mishke]

It's hard to get excited about some of these guys backing you up in a firefight.

[Pete]

Yeah, that's Something you tried to put out of your mind if you had one of those in your unit or a neighboring unit, you know, did you

[Mishke]

ever go to your superior officers and say, could we get this guy maybe in some sort of special needs program?

[Pete]

I did one time because Pete was not doing his job the way he should have? Pretty tough shape mentally.

[Mishke]

Did you ever get married?

[Pete]

Yeah, I did. Yep.

[Mishke]

How'd that go?

[Pete]

Still married.

[Mishke]

You don't sound excited about it, Pete.

[Pete]

Well, you know, you have your ups and downs.

[Mishke]

Sounds like today might be a down day.

[Pete]

Well, coming up on 40 years here, so, you know, can't complain too much. But I'm a guy. I can complain.

[Mishke]

What are the big complaints, Pete?

[Pete]

My biggest one is expectations put on me that I don't know about. You know, I was supposed to do something or not do something, and. But I was never told, so. Yeah, yeah. You know, that communication deal.

[Mishke]

What do you suppose she says to her gal friends when they get together for coffee? What do you suppose she says about you? What do you figure the complaints are that she passes along?

[Pete]

I don't want to know. I don't want to know because I'm sure there are a few. I know women do a lot more gabbing about that stuff than guys do.

[Mishke]

You almost sound like you would have fit into an era when they sang that song. In the good Old Summertime, you know? In the good old summertime in the good old summertime I remember that Walking down that shady lane with that gal of mine I hold her hand and she holds mine and that's a very good sign that she's my tootsie wootsy in the good old summertime Was she kind of a tootsie wootsy?

[Pete]

I'm gonna have to give that some thought.

[Mishke]

So 40 years you've been married. That's all my dad and mom got was 40 years. I used to think that was a pretty good run when I was young, man. I thought, 40 year marriage, that's all right. But you're probably thinking you're gonna get another 15.

[Pete]

I hope to.

[Mishke]

How old are you?

[Pete]

63. Be 64 in the fall.

[Mishke]

So I'm 63, and I'm going to be 64 in the fall. And yet, weirdly, I feel like we're from two different eras.

[Pete]

Yeah. Even though we grew up in the same time. But you grew up in a big city. I grew up in a small town.

[Mishke]

Well, there it is. There it is.

[Pete]

We didn't have everything that you could offer in a big city that used to be like an all day adventure to go up to Sears or one of those stores that had almost everything on five floors.

[Mishke]

So you'd go to Sears and wander around saying to yourself, where the hell am I? Is this Oz?

[Pete]

Usually I'd get stuck in the tool section. Who cares about dresses and shirts and washers and dryers back then, you know, you're 10.

[Mishke]

Yeah. Did you ever have a buddy though that would find himself staying a little too long in the dresses area and you'd say, I don't know if I'll be going to Sears with you anymore, fella.

[Pete]

We hardly left town unless we were going to visit grandpa and grandma or something like that.

[Mishke]

What town did you grow up in

[Pete]

where they make shoes and boots?

[Mishke]

Red Wing.

[Pete]

That's all we're known for.

[Mishke]

It's a lovely town. My old man published a newspaper when I was growing up. And when it came time to get the newspaper published, I'd take the actual dummy copies, the photos, all the articles, everything. They had it all pasted up and now it was just getting it to the printer to get it printed out. And I was assigned the job as a 16 year old of getting that thing to Red Wing, Minnesota to be printed at the Red Wing Republican Eagle.

[Pete]

That was my buddy's dad doing the print job. He used to work the overnight running presses.

[Mishke]

Then they'd take it in trucks the next day, 50,000 copies, they'd take it back down to St. Paul. You tell me if this rings a bell. The reason I got excited about doing it was that the old man gave me a little money to stop at a cafe after and get something to eat. And it would be late. I'd be driving this late on a Monday night, every other Monday. And I'd get to Red Wing and I'd go in the back alley. Do you remember that entrance you went down? This eerie set of steps into a basement.

[Pete]

Yep. Been there many times as a kid.

[Mishke]

And I'd go down there and deal with these grizzled old fellows. Then I'd have my cash to stop. And you know where I went. Maybe you remember this place. Larry's.

[Pete]

Larry's Broiler. Larry's Broiler, right on Main Street.

[Mishke]

Yeah. I'd stop at Larry's Broiler and my old man said, you could get whatever you want, you know. So I'd get a couple of burgers and a couple of malts, just hang out in Larry's. And I thought, I don't think life gets a lot better than this. I got a maid. I got to drive by myself all the way from St. Paul to Red Wing. You know, I'm only 16, just got my license. I get to spend whatever money I want at Larry's. You know, I'm looking around. The other guys there are loners. Guys whose wife kicked him out of the house. Waitress who smoking a cigarette.

[Pete]

And me, the gal late at night behind the cook stove. Would have been a gal named Lois. Lois, big tall gal, but six four big gal.

[Mishke]

Big old six foot four Lois working at Larry's late night.

[Pete]

She had a club here in town. Lois club. I don't know how many members they had.

[Mishke]

I'm terrified. I'm terrified to ask what happened in the Lois Club. I fear you went into a basement. Much like that weird basement at the Republican Eagle. There you went into a basement and there was Lois, 6 4, perhaps in a Tarzan outfit. And some vines hanging from the ceiling. And all the people who joined the club. Well, I won't say what went on, but it got loud.

[Pete]

Well, I think they met across the street from the Republican Eagle in the basement of the library. So I'm not sure.

[Mishke]

I forget what that basement was like. I think there were a couple of little false tunnels and then a weird little area with mirrors facing each other before you went into the main room where the cigar smoke was.

[Pete]

What, at the library?

[Mishke]

Yeah, I think that was on Lois night.

[Pete]

Oh, well, maybe they set that up. I don't remember mirrors down there. I do remember.

[Mishke]

Oh, yeah, they set those up and then they had this little neon light thing that said it's Lois night. I'm working right now on several things all at once. A song, a short story, a painting, a cartoon for Saturday mornings. Lois is in all of them, by the way, six foot four.

[Pete]

Unfortunately. I think I remember reading or hearing a couple years back, the last one of the Lois Club passed away.

[Mishke]

So I guess I will ask Pete what the devil was the Lois Club.

[Pete]

I wasn't invited to join, so I have no idea.

[Mishke]

Oh, God, I could only imagine. Do you think that there is any relation at all between the club and her height?

[Pete]

I have no idea.

[Mishke]

Well, I've enjoyed talking to you, Pete.

[Pete]

Me too, Misty. And if you get time, give another jingle. We'll talk about something else.

[Mishke]

You can count on it, Pete. I'll get back to you.

[Pete]

Okay. Thank you much.

[Mishke]

You take care of yourself.