A Catalogue of Divergence
Drawn from an abandoned cache of recordings in an annex at the Institute of Multiverse Studies, A Catalogue of Divergence follows conversations from worlds very much like our own.
Do not be alarmed - some of what you will hear does not exist in the history of our universe, though it may yet come to pass.
This is a tour of things that exist in other words and now, at least for a little while, in this one too.
A Catalogue of Divergence
The Tragedy of Roller Rodney
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Our explorers learn that the reason we can't have nice things is because you keep bringing corn dogs into the bathroom.
Drum from an abandoned cache of recordings in an annex at the Institute of Multiverse Studies, a catalog of divergence follows conversations from worlds very much like a room. Do not be alarmed. Some of what you will hear does not exist in the history of our universe, though it may yet come to pass. This is a tour of things that exist in other worlds, and now, at least for a little while, in this one too.
SPEAKER_01This is a catalogue of divergence. Welcome to a catalogue of divergence, a show where each week we spend time exploring a cachet of recordings from neighboring universes nearly identical to our own and sharing the most interesting ones with you, our listeners. My name is Jeff. I'm a veteran podcaster and multiverse enthusiast, and I'm joined as always by the former employee of the Institute of Multiverse Studies and the man who was lucky enough to be, quote unquote, allowed to take home this TARDIS-like container full of infinite cassette tapes when the Institute mysteriously closed down, my good friend Peter. Good evening.
SPEAKER_02Good evening to you. Good evening to you. It is evening for you, yes? Yes, yes, it is evening for me. Good morning. It is yes, good morning. In the future. Wait, is it is it afternoon for you? It's morning. It's 10 in the morning. Okay. So good morning. Good future morning. On Wednesday, yeah, and I can tell you, just in case, spoiler alert, but I can tell you what happens. Oh, okay. Uh between between then and now, which is that uh you sleep, or I sleep, and then I wake up.
SPEAKER_01Oh.
SPEAKER_02And take the kids to school. Any dreams? I had a dream that I was writing young adult novel.
SPEAKER_01Oh.
SPEAKER_02Okay. And I I wrote down the first like a sentence that appeared to me in the dream. So maybe I'll write a young adult novel.
SPEAKER_01The first sentence was Larry Potter was the boy who did math.
SPEAKER_02I I want to read about the boy who did math again. I listeners should know that I was just handed a cassette from Jeff uh labeled The Tragedy of Roller Rodney.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Roller Rodney.
SPEAKER_01This is one I found in the bin. Uh, and I I thought like, okay, this could either be like fun tragic or bad tragic. And luckily it was fun. Well, I think it's fun tragic.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I was gonna I was gonna ask about that, but I guess I'll have to wait and see.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, just pop that bad boy in and let's give it a listen. Alright, let's do it.
SPEAKER_00The following is the property of the Institute for Multiverse Studies, Planar Coordinates, Interval 7, Parallax Gamma 4.1, Drift 32X 14Y, negative 7C. Title The Tragedy of Roller Frodney. Format Audio Recording 2 Human Males Podcasting. Security level, barely troubling.
SPEAKER_01Alright. Welcome back to the Jeff and Peter Learn Everything About the World show. We are here to learn everything about the world or die trying. I suspect the latter. Yeah. Well, we'll maybe we'll die before we try. I don't think I'm gonna be like, well, hmm, okay. So does shuffling off this mortal coil count as learning something about the world?
SPEAKER_02Well, I guess the real question is, does it count as trying to learn everything about the world? The question is, does death surprise you? Like the concept? No. Mine personally? Possibly. Yeah. Will your death surprise you? But I mean, if you're if you're wasting away in a hospital bed and then and trying to learn about what the white light is going to look like, then yeah, I think you can die trying.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's fair. Or like I guess if you're the the pilot has abandoned the plane and you're trying to learn how to fly it as it's careening toward a mountain. Uh yes, that's true. That's also you know a way that trying could be involved in that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, if you die trying but failing to learn how to not die.
SPEAKER_01Well, those things are all a tragedy. And I've got another tragedy to uh tell you about. This is the tragedy of Roller Rodney. Okay. Um before we start, I have so I've got two questions for you. Okay. And uh I want you to choose one of them to answer. Okay. Okay. The first the first question is what were the top fun time slash uh fun time leisure slash recreational activities that you remember doing as a kid? So that's the first question. The second question that you can choose to answer is how much do you know about the country loos?
SPEAKER_02Uh I know surprising, a surprising amount about the country louse. In fact, I have been trying to learn about the country louse. Okay. But I will I will go ahead and uh answer your first question. Okay. If that's all right. Yeah, that's great. I loved to play soccer. Okay. I I think I loved to play soccer. I certainly played soccer.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02There was one summer where uh me and Brandon Bertelson played roller hockey every single day for hours in my front driveway.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that sounds cool. That sounds cool.
SPEAKER_02It was good. It was a it was a fad that lasted one summer, but we hit it hard. Yeah. We used to play a lot of back in the the old neighborhood, before I moved up towards where you live, uh, we used to play a lot of like Capture the Flag, but at night. Oh, yeah. Over the course of the whole neighborhood, really, really big games with you know, like 10 people on a side. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, it was good. We had the whole neighborhood show up and but it was at night and it was it was over a huge amount of space. So one game, unfortunately, could end in 15 minutes, but nobody would know because they were all sneaking around. And we didn't want to just yell over the neighborhood, the game is over. Right, I captured your flag.
SPEAKER_01Right. Shut up! I'm trying to sleep. I gotta work tomorrow. Yeah, we would do similar things in my neighborhood, but with laser tag. Ooh. We had like the primitive like laser quest vests and the guns, and we would we would do capture the flag kind of things, but with laser tag. So it was similar to like capture the flag in Halo.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Maybe I have memory I mean that's capture the flag. Maybe I have memory hold this, but I don't recall knowing about laser tag like outside of a an arena.
SPEAKER_01It was something that we did uh a lot during the summer, and it was usually during the summers that you were at your fancy summer camp. Yep. That I was jealous that you got to go to. So you were you were unfortunately not around to be a part of our our laser tag, which honestly, I think you still you still won on that that one.
SPEAKER_02Well, I learned something pretty recently about that summer camp. Yeah. Which is that you know who was a a guest of that summer camp fairly frequently, I have learned. Ben Folds. Oh man, it would be way better if that was the answer. No, it's about the worst answer you could possibly think of.
SPEAKER_01Oh, did is he a guy who really enjoyed emailing people? Yep. Oh god. That's your man.
SPEAKER_02Oh no, no, so oh I may have seen I may have seen Jeffrey Epstein when I was I guess 17 or 18. I don't recall, uh, but apparently he was there a lot. Yikes.
SPEAKER_01Yikes. Well, well, you did mention uh roller hockey, which uh what one of the things that I remember growing up um that I would I would spend uh fun times away from home was uh skating around in a circle at the Skyline Skate Ranch, uh just outside of our hometown of Laramie, Wyoming. Um a skating rink, which is something that there just aren't that many of. I don't even know where the nearest one to me is uh that I could actually.
SPEAKER_02But they used to be fairly common.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, yeah. But this was a a skating rink slash like arcade. They had uh the area where you could skate in a circle, um, which was the hard roller skate floor, and then they had the world's stickiest carpet area that was uh had a bunch of arcade machines in it, and there was a um oh a concession stand um that had all sorts of concession stand sort of things, including Twizzlers. Oh yeah, yeah, the oh the cotton candy. Like the cotton candy is a staple there. There was it was there was a jar of uh pickled eggs um that I never saw anyone purchase a single one of, but they had it behind the counter. And shout out to them for that.
SPEAKER_02That's the thing about pickled eggs though, right? Like they can sit there until the end of time and they're just gonna get more pickled.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, indefinitely, as far as I know, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you could probably like it'd be like the two things that they found that were still edible in like the Great Pyramids were honey and pickled eggs. And this is this has nothing to do with uh the tragedy of Roller Rodney, but this is a fun little aside that we we have gone on to. And let's talk about uh so going back to the Skyline Skate Ranch from our childhood, it was also called a ranch because uh the border of the um the skating rink was like a makeshift wooden fence, I think, is is so they could like kind of get away without building a real wall. They just put in like a cow fence. Um do you remember the uh the big big warning sign that they had on the doors of both the the men's and women's bathrooms? I do not. So there was a and I I remember seeing this and thinking, this is weird. I don't know why this is, but like any adult I would ask also didn't know why it is. Um the sign said absolutely no corndogs, popsicles, or other stick food allowed in the bathrooms. Which I was like, okay, I don't think you should bring any food into a bathroom, especially a skating rink bathroom, but why specifically those are the two kinds of stick food I can think of. Hmm, yeah. I bet, you know, me living in the Midwestern America, I bet I could pull some other stick food. Like there's probably like uh fried Snickers. I think you probably have to eat that on a stick.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, now that I think of it, you have plenty of stick food. Yeah. You you live in like the stick food capital of the world, right?
SPEAKER_01Well, like a kebab. A kebab's pretty international. That's a stick food.
SPEAKER_02You mean a like a shish kebab, right? A kebab is a is a wrap sandwich.
SPEAKER_01Really?
SPEAKER_02Jeff, you gotta get out of Kansas. Oh man, I'd gotta get out of Kansas. Can I share uh uh uh an anecdote with you? Absolutely. Uh you mentioned corn dogs in Japan. We have corn dogs, but they're not called corn dogs. They're called big American dogs.
SPEAKER_01Oh no. Is there a holiday in which big American dogs are traditionally consumed there? Is it just kind of like uh Yeah, it's when you go to the convenience store. Oh, okay. Like a 7-Eleven. Yep. 7-Eleven's pretty big in Japan, right? Huge. Okay, all right. See, I'm not I'm not completely out of touch. I know some things. Mostly things I've learned from listening to other podcasts, but there's some things. You know lots of things.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's true. The average American knows too much about Japan.
SPEAKER_01Right, too much about Japan, but not enough about Roller Rodney. But let me take you to the year 1971. Okay. To a town named Lakefield, Ohio. Uh, our subject tonight is a man named Rodney Gasper. Uh he has the nickname Roller Rodney. Roller Rodney, aka Rodney Gasper, is the owner and operator of Hot Rods Rock and Roll Roller Rink. This is uh the premier roller rink in the Lake Field, Ohio urban area, I guess. It's just a it's not a huge city, but like it's it's about 30,000 people.
SPEAKER_02So it wasn't a skate ranch.
SPEAKER_01No, it was not a skate ranch, it was a hot rods, rock and roll, roller rink. So this being 1971, this was the place to be Friday and Saturday nights if you were a uh teen, you know, early mid-20s, and even even older than that. But it's it's an all-ages venue. There's there's music on vinyl, you got rock and roll, obviously. There's probably some disco playing at the at the time, or at least some early stuff.
SPEAKER_02I imagine quite a bit of disco, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So one of the uh and this leads us back to the Skyline Skate Ranch. So one of the traditions that the local teens started in Hot Rods, Rock and Roll uh Roller Rink is trying to prank Roller Rodney by uh flushing their corndog sticks down the toilets of hot hot rods rock and roll roller rink. Uh this was a the reason that this is kind of documented is that this idea for a prank caught on and kind of spread throughout the Midwest. It was sort of like this you know how how kids kids these days have like their weird YouTube things, like uh Skibity toilet or something. Kids on their TikTok. Yeah, well, like yeah, like Skibity Toilet or 6'7. Uh and and there are these things inexplicable. I mean, you and I had some. Uh well, our our whole group had some. What was it? Uh something about noses on a ceiling in a spaceship or something. Twelve. Twelve noses on the ceiling. That's right. Yeah, that was our six seven. But this uh this corndog stick prank um did spread across the the Midwest into the you even like the southwestern United States. Uh, just like you finish your corndog stick and you gotta go flush it down the toilet of the roller rink. And I want to say this is just like limited to people in the roller rink. This is not like external people coming into the roller ink specifically to flush their corndog sticks. People didn't have bags of corndog sticks. No, no, no. This is this was not corndog stick disposal. This was more of like just like a cheeky thing that you know, obviously the roller rink proprietors hated it. Um in hot rods, rock and roll, roller rink. Every once in a while the toilets would become so clogged that the plunger was no longer an option. They'd have to call a plumber, and like the rink would be shut down for a day or two while they did whatever work they needed to do to get these sticks out.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I imagine that those are hard to plunge at all because they're cylindrical, right? Well, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Wood likes to float. So that's the origin of the sign on the Skylinescape bathrooms. Um so as I was kind of researching that, I I stumbled into the story of uh roller Rodney.
SPEAKER_02So this is a so this is a prank, sort of the the the the ding-dong ditch of the roller rink, uh-huh. Which spread specifically to other roller rinks. Corndog flush, can we call it instead of ding-dong dish, corndog flush? Sure, the corndog flush. Although just the stick, because you're eating the corndog, and then I mean, I kind of get it. Right. You know, you don't want to skate all the way over to the trash can. Yeah. It's a place to put the thing that that that came with your snack, but that you can't eat.
SPEAKER_01Now, the question Where are you eating the corndog to where the trash can is all the way over, but the toilet stall is somewhere closer.
SPEAKER_02I mean, if you're eating that many corndogs, you're probably making a lot of trips to the toilet.
SPEAKER_01That's true, yeah. Yeah, you can only borrow a corndog.
SPEAKER_02That's true, yeah. So, so so wait, take me through this. So there's this corndog ditch, what are we calling it again? Uh corndog flush. Corn dog flush. Which spreads specifically to roller rinks. Is that right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it it spreads specifically through the roller rink crowd. You know, every roller rink has its regulars. The you know, the people who are are just super into roller skating, they do it five, six days a week. People that can shoot the duck. Yep, and do all of like the tricks that can go fronts frontwards and backwards and all the one foot. Yep. And you know, everyone travels, takes vacations, maybe they are a college kid, they go to college in a different place with a different roller rink, and they're you know, like, hey, you know it's funny, we do this in my hometown, check this out, and flush the thing, and everyone's like, Oh, this is so weird, like random, let's do that. And it it's like now it becomes a thing. Because like in the roller rink, those people who spend the most time there who can shoot the duck, they're the kings, they are the kings and queens of the roller rink.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so yeah, like when you're at the top of the social hierarchy, if the king and the queen is like, hey, check out this funny thing, you're gonna be like, My liege, please allow me to also flush my corn dog stick so I can gain your favor, your highness.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, culture, culture spread is a little bit inexplicable sometimes, but when you actually lay it out like that, yeah, it makes sense that it would because people that are really great at shooting the duck are are not spending a whole lot of time, you know, at baseball fields.
SPEAKER_01Probably not. I I would um imagine I could I spent more time than I ever wanted to at baseball fields, and I could never shoot the duck.
SPEAKER_02There you go. So so case proven.
SPEAKER_01Okay, yeah. Okay, so backing up, one of these days where uh it was the Hot Rods Rock and Roll Roller Rink was closed into horn corndog sticks. Um Rodney was hanging out with his best friend uh and his mentor, uh a gentleman uh about 15, 20 years older than him, named Bo Abner. Bo owned Big Bo's Bafo Bollarama, which was uh next door to Hot Rod's Rock and Roll Roller Rink, uh in what was known as the Lakefield Entertainment and Leisure Plaza. So they're hanging out uh on one of these days at Rodney's Roller Rink. They are just sitting around, chatting, having a few beers, maybe having a couple jazz cigarettes, if you know what I mean. Um, the conversation uh kind of turns. Uh Rodney claims that he could easily bowl a strike while wearing roller skates. Bo is very adamant that the weight or momentum of the ball would would cause anyone on roller skates to fall over before they could effectively bowl it at pin.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the where does the leverage come from if you're on frictionless wheels?
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Well, they have an empty roller rink, and next door, one of them owns a bowling alley. So Bo disappears, comes back 20 minutes later. He's got a wheelbarrow filled with uh 10 bowling pins and a couple of spare bowling balls, and pushes it into the roller rink. They set up the pins and then have what Rodney later described as hands down the best afternoon of my entire life, the kind that is so magical and perfect it stays in your mind forever.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So it it was a challenge, but Rodney was able to bowl while wearing roller skates, and he was able to bowl well while roll wearing roller skates. Um, so the momentum provided by the skater combined with the weight of the ball actually allowed him to achieve a velocity that would have been impossible if he was wearing what uh apparently Rodney would call idiot shoes, um, which is what he jokingly referred to, anything that wasn't roller skates that people would wear on their feet. So uh Rodney bowls strike after strike. Uh Bo, on the other hand, is not as strong of a skater as Rodney.
SPEAKER_02Ah, this is an interesting question, right? Would the would the skater be better at skate bowling or would the bowler be better at skate bowling?
SPEAKER_01So it's different. Rodney has uh pure speed and power, like straight on can just wail the thing at these bowling pins, right? Uh but Bo has the bowling expertise, but is not as strong of a skater, so he's not able to get up as much speed, have as much control in the skates. But on release, he's able to utilize the momentum provided by the skates that allow him to turn his body more quickly and also move more quickly than he he would if he were just on foot or wearing idiot shoes. Um and get like an exaggerated spin that you know, they're also you have to keep in mind on a roller rink instead of in a bowling lane. So he's got these wild curves that he, you know, it looks like it's gonna just like go at an almost 90-degree angle and then curves around and just like crashes into the pins. And they're just trying to see like how crazy they can get with their shots, um and just are just laughing how they you know, like Rodney says, the best afternoon of his life. Yeah. So they continued until they were just essentially exhausted. Um, you know, you you can only bowl and skate at the same time so much, I guess, before you you have to stop. Um they uh agreed after sitting down over some beers that evening that what they had just experienced was way too much fun to keep to themselves. They needed to share it with the world, but in order to do that, they needed rules and a name. And hence bowler skating was born.
SPEAKER_02Oh come on. That was just that was just a name that was just that was sitting there for uh two millennia until 1971, and they dug it up. No one has thought of that before. That's absurd.
SPEAKER_01So initially, obviously, uh people were skeptical. Um they were skeptical of this idea of combining roller skating with bowler. Bowling, bowler skating. Uh and you know, I I don't blame them. I think that it is not necessarily too great taste that would taste great together, just a sight unseen. So they the only night of the week that was not taken up by a regular skate night or a bowling league or some other community event was Monday nights. So Monday nights were now being officially marketed as bowler skating night. So uh Rodney was able to borrow two sets of pins and a handful of used bowling balls from Bo. And together they uh would on Monday afternoon set up two lanes, one on each side of the rink, uh separated down the middle by like a makeshift divider of sandbags.
SPEAKER_02Sandbag. I was wondering. Sandbags is a good idea.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. It'll stop a ball, but it's easily portable so you could, you know, remove it from the rink when it was uh when when uh bowlers night was over. Yeah, I can see it. So the idea that they come up with is that people would just take turns bowling with regular bowling rules. Um Rodney would be on one side uh collecting and resetting pins, and Bo would be on the other, uh just to kind of make things go a little faster, keep things fair. They put down some electrical tape to to like say, like, don't this is the line you can't cross, and and kind of made the lanes quite a bit longer than they would have normally been, but it's not a problem because the extra velocity. Wait, now surely you can cross the line after you've released the ball.
SPEAKER_02You're not expected to stop on the skate. Okay.
SPEAKER_01No, no, no, no, no. It's it's the uh it's the you have to release the ball before this line line. Okay, yep. So apparently, uh the first night of uh bowler skating, four people showed up. Um three were uh teens who were regulars at the rink. And you know, like the kind of regulars that like if you are a proprietor of a place, you're kind of like, oh, it's these people again. Like uh, I wish they I wish these people weren't the regulars.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, happy happy to have regulars, but maybe unhappy that it that it's these people.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I wish it was like, you know, cooler regulars, maybe or not even cooler, like just not not those people. So three three of those people showed up.
SPEAKER_02That's the that's the Groucho Marx tragedy, though, right? Like you wouldn't want to be in a club that let you in, that allowed you in, right? Like duck shooters, there's only one kind of duck shooter in the world, right? There's only certain people that can that will ever be good enough at skating to shoot the duck, and that's people who spend a lot of time in roller inks, unfortunately. Yeah. We should pause here and explain to listeners who don't know what shoot the duck is.
SPEAKER_01Oh, sure. Yeah. Okay. So from what I remember, shoot the duck is when you're skating, and then you crouch down. So you're essentially resting your your rear on the heel of your foot in a full crouch. Uh and I believe it can be done with either foot. And then you hold, you lift and hold your opposite leg, so in my case, right leg, straight up in front of you as though you are operating some sort of rifle, uh, shooting the the proverbial duck.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, all the while skating forward.
SPEAKER_01Yes. If you are particularly talented, I've I saw some people able to like turn, uh like go around the roller rank circle. Um, the times I tried to approximate shoot the duck, I could only go in a straight line.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm not sure if I was able to shoot the duck. One one issue I remember, I was a fairly small kid, and roller skates were heavy back then.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yes, they were.
SPEAKER_02So you had to not only did you have to you know hold up your leg, but you had to hold up a heavy roller skate at the end of it. So you had to have quite a bit of core strength, I think, to do it.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah. I think the closest I ever got to shooting the duck was stretching my leg out in front of me while crouching on the other leg.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01With it like kind of like dragging on the ground. But if you let the heel drop too much, then you're gonna like flip over like that semi-truck in the dark night. Yep. And uh yeah.
SPEAKER_02The failed shoot the duck semi-truck.
SPEAKER_01Yes, the failed shoot the duck semi-truck. The other person who showed up that first night was the guy who was usually drinking at uh Bo's bowling alley. Um, but since it was closed because Bo was helping set up pins, he just came over to bowler skating. And uh, you know, at first there were, you know, there were a few falls. There were some, you know, people took a little time to get used to it, but then it clicked. And they stayed the entire night and wanted more. So Rodney told them it's like, hey, we're doing this every Monday, come back next Monday, we can do more bowler skating. The next week it jumped from four people to 30 people at the next bowler skating Monday. Holy moly. Yep, and uh they had to actually reduce the games from 10 frames down to five and then eventually to three because they did not have enough room with two lanes to accommodate more than if you had, let's say, five people on your team, like 10, 15 people at once if there were two teams on the same lane. So they essentially like just cut it down to three frames, which people liked because it meant that they could play their game, go get some concessions, come back, and it wouldn't be that long before they could play another game. Sure. You know, they're they're sort of building the the plane as it's flying here, making up these rules as they're going, but it's working, people are still enjoying it. Uh the next week it jumps from 30 to 70. That uh and then the week after it where there were over a hundred people there. Um yeah, Bo ended up bringing over some prototype mobile pin setters that he'd been working on, I guess, so he could do like remote bowling at like birthday parties or something, you know, like you're block off your street and use the mobile pin setter and you like bowl on your street, which sounds uh it sounds about like a half-baked idea, but I mean he's an iconoclast, right? I guess, yeah. I just can't imagine bowling on gravel. Like that's seems seems bad. Yeah, like you just hit like a little pothole or something, the bowling ball flies up.
SPEAKER_02You know what they say, man, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
unknownYep.
SPEAKER_01But these mobile pin setters worked really well for the uh bowler skating because he's able to wheel them into the ends of the roller rink, and instead of him and Rodney constantly chasing down and trying to set up pins by hand, they're just able to feed them into these mobile pin setters and then uh get through frames a lot more quickly. Sure. They started expanding it to Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday nights. The crowds were not splitting up between those nights. It wasn't like, okay, this this crowd of a hundred people is now 30 people on each of these nights. It was like, okay, there are a hundred people here now on Monday, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Wow. They've essentially hit the ceiling of what they can do. And then the corndog sticks, they struck again. They had they had to close down for almost a week, um, during which Rodney and Bo were kind of getting antsy. They'd they'd made quite uh a handsome sum of money over the last uh few weeks with this uh uh bowler skating, especially bringing in essentially record crowds for either of their businesses combined, even larger than some of their Friday and Saturday night crowds. Sure. So they make the decision, you know what? We need to stop just trying to use this roller skating rink for bowler skating. We need to build the world's first and only bowler skating alley rink. And they stayed up all night, uh, mostly led by Rodney, um, sketching out architectural plans. Uh Bo in his memoir described him as quote, a man possessed, um, just just sketching out the architecture of their bowler skating alley rink. He sketched out everything from a modified multi-lane setup that's smart, uh, with a larger rink around the outside for people to skate while they were waiting for their uh lane to open up. Yeah, new electrical sound wiring um with like larger speakers for like more intense like rock and disco music, modified concession stand offering more stuff, and of course, an overhauled sewer system with wider pipes and what uh Rodney noted on the original plans as extreme flush pressure. They are really, really committed to selling corndogs. Listen, I don't know if it was because of the tradition or because it's a Lake Field thing. Pretty much everyone who came into the roller skating rink would buy one or two corn dogs.
SPEAKER_02And so they're kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like you know, the mar you could buy a a this was what 1971? You could buy a box of frozen corndogs probably for like a quarter. Yeah. And so and you're you're selling them probably for what 50 cents each. Sure. So you're making a huge profit margin on these these corn dogs.
SPEAKER_02And yeah, and you just you just bake the the monthly plumbing into the price.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, especially when you have such a uh you know large crowd of people. Now you do have to factor in the time that you're closed for the plumbing. That's true. Um, taking away from your revenue stream, but with the new pipes and the extreme flush pressure, it's not a not a problem. So they're kind of uh doing the thing that probably every roller rink in the uh Midwest and Southwestern United States thought, hoped they could do around this time, which was have better toilets.
SPEAKER_02But bowler skating made it possible.
SPEAKER_01Yes, bowler skating made it possible. They're they're really blazing the trail on every front here.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I mean, I smell franchising here.
SPEAKER_01So the last day that the old rink was opened was Christmas Eve of 1971. Uh Christmas Day it closed, and on Boxing Day, uh the day after Christmas, the construction began and it continued until the grand reopening on the 4th of July of 1972. The rink was reopened, well, I should say the alley rink was reopened as Bad Bo and Rad Rodney's bowler skating alley rink and fun zone.
SPEAKER_02Lakefield.
SPEAKER_01So this is the official yeah, this is the official title. This is not the colloquial title.
SPEAKER_02Uh the colloquial title would be a little too long to put in a single podcast.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah, absolutely. And it had all the bells and whistles that Bo and Rodney wanted. You know, they had they had put their entire life savings into it. Um, they had been able to sell some things. Uh Rodney mortgaged his house to to get this uh to get some capital for this, and it reopened and the crowds were there and they loved it. It was packed. It was packed seven days a week. It was absolutely their dream come true. They were able to hire uh competent staff. Um, so Rodney and Bo were able to kind of let go of the day-to-day stuff and spend their time just out on the in the alley rink bowling and uh and skating and bowler skating, and it was, you know, it was it was their dream come true. There was one small detail that they overlooked um that ended up being a problem. So when they handed off their management, uh you know, they they talked about the day-to-day and everything and blah blah blah. They had their new sewer pipes. Uh, Rodney thought, should I should I mention the corndog problem? Do do I need to have someone posted at the bathrooms like I used to be when I managed the uh the the skating rink, um, making sure that no one was taking corndog sticks into the bathroom kind of like a bouncer. Yeah, essentially, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Got any sticks on you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, hey, what's that in your pocket? Is that a corndog stick? Is that a handful of corndog sticks? I've seen you. I've seen what you've been doing today. Oh man, what a job. Yeah. I think the the avoidance of the humiliation of having to do that, plus the fact that you know, hiring someone is essentially a corndog stick bouncer for the bathrooms when they have the problem uh effectively figured out. They just don't ever go over it in the management training. So life goes on. Life goes on, traditions are are continued, everything's fine, the pipes are working uh just great, at least as far as the Bad Bow and Rad Roddy's bowler skating alley rink and fun zone is concerned. Now, I do want to point out I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but Lake Field is not called Lake Field just because uh it's a Lake Field thing. Um, it is right on the shore of Lake Erie. Okay. Um a lot of the water and sewage infrastructure is connected, um, if not directly, then tangentially to the lake water. Sure. You know, it's it's where the storm drains empty and and a lot of their uh I there's there's stuff that has to do with plumbing that I don't understand at all. But it's all it's all kinda in the same the same thing without being like gross, you know? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So it's where it's where the town it's where the town goes num number two, right? It's where Lake Field goes number two, the effluent.
SPEAKER_01Well, but then it goes into like a water treatment plant and then it goes out to Lake Erie. And then I think they take water in from Lake Erie and then Lake Field water treats it and then they drink it. Sure. So yeah, kinda, but it's like a little different. I you know, I don't I don't know the specifics of it, but it's a circle of life, man. Hakuna matata. It ain't no worries. I'm not worried about it. I don't live in Lakefield in 1972.
SPEAKER_02That's the that's the other t-shirt that you could have bought in Lakefield.
SPEAKER_01I don't live in Lake Field in 1972. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Very specific t-shirts.
SPEAKER_01Hukuna matata, and it's got like bootleg Timon and Pumba on it. Or it's got like like Pumba and Stitch from Lilo and Stitch on it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That says yeah, Hukuna matata, but it's spelled wrong. So yeah, everything's going great. I read a news article from around this time about an incident that occurred. Uh, they interviewed a uh essentially a water treatment engineer specialist, described a combination of the old piping infrastructure that the new Badbow and Rad Rodney's bowlers getting Alarink and Fun Zone piping was leading into, combined with the high pressure flushes and the sheer number of corndog sticks, formed what they called a quote death bubble uh within the Lake Field sewer system.
SPEAKER_02That was the name of my thrash metal band.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, I remember that. Death bubble. It was like th like a mashup of uh thrash metal and k-pop, right? Yep. K metal. Yep. I remember that. Yeah, K metal. Death pop. Yep. Death Pop. I like Death Pop better.
SPEAKER_02Let's go with it.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Death pop. Let's do it. It's a Lake Field thing. It's a Lake Field thing. So there was one uh it was a normal uh Saturday night in in Ohio, in Lakefield, Ohio. The bowler skating rink was hopping. Yes, this was in October, so the bowler skating rink had been open for a couple months and business had hadn't shown any signs of slowing. Rodney and Bo were as happy as can be. And uh there was one of those like late fall pre-winter lakefront storms that hit Lake Erie.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that caused a storm surge to push back into the municipal water pipes of uh of Lakefield. Um it caused the uh death bubble uh essentially to be pushed back into the piping of the bowler skating alley rink, and essentially the center of the bowler skating alley rink itself erupted in a old faithful like geyser of what was described as lake water, human waste, bowling pins, and tens upon tens of thousands of corndog sticks. Oh my. So luckily the there were a few minor injuries, but no one was seriously hurt, no one was no one was killed. That's remarkable. Yeah, well, the the location of the geyser itself, you know, was kind of out of the way that anyone would have been skating or doing anything. It was between the two bowling lanes. Or I at this point there were four bowling lanes, but it was right in the center of the middle two. Uh, and and most people were skating around the edge or uh at concessions or just kind of like away from the center area.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I guess come to think of it, like if there's going to be a say a meteor strike or I guess a geyser from below at a bowling alley, the safest place is right in the middle of the bowling alley. That's where nobody goes.
SPEAKER_01Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's I mean, that's already the dangerous place that no one wants to go because there's like 15-pound bowling balls flying at you. That's true. Yeah. It's a it's a sc it's the scariest part of the bowling alley. So obviously, this is extremely upsetting to Bo and Rodney, who not only, you know, saw their their dream bowlers alley rink uh erupt, literally, in in their face, blow up in their face, but uh, you know, they'd also spent their entire life savings and everything they had in opening this place. It was insured. Yeah. The insurance company didn't know how to cover it or what to really classify it as.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm not sure that your policy often includes uh corndog geysers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. There's no there's no bubble on the like the business insurance policy that's like patrons flushed so many corndog sticks down the toilet that the floor exploded.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I mean not not yet. There wasn't yet, but now I know what now I know why that's net there now. Yep.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's called Rodney's Law. Yeah. Um, yeah, they uh you know they ended up giving them just kind of the minimum coverage. Uh it was enough to uh essentially pay out any of the the medical fees of the people who were injured. Um they had to pay some fines, I guess, to the municipality for uh uh uh allegedly destroying a big chunk of the uh Lake Field uh municipal plumbing.
SPEAKER_02Now when you say allegedly, uh huh, is this are is there questioning as to who's culpable?
SPEAKER_01So yes, and I and I kind of uh Rodney argues while the corndog sticks originated through the toilets and plumbing of his establishment, he was not the one flushing them down the toilet. Therefore, ultimately the people who are responsible for the corndog sticks being in the sewer are the the patrons of his business. And in fact, you know, there were still signs up that says, hey, don't do this.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And come to think of it, if the if the death bubble has already been working its way through the municipal water pipes, who knows where those corndog sticks came from?
SPEAKER_01That's true. That was one of the arguments that Rodney made. Unfortunately, uh they had started um working with the Tyson company. Um Tyson does offer if you buy in bulk, they will uh essentially print your name uh of your business on the corndog sticks before uh manufacturing them. Yeah, it makes sense. Um the the corndog sticks taken from the scene um did say Bad Bowen, Rad Rodney's bowlers gating alley rink and fun zone.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's some pretty damning evidence, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, uh-huh. But the another reason I say allegedly is that um Bowen Rodney ended up settling with the town of Lake Field uh over the the alleged costs of the or not the alleged costs, the actual costs of the crime that they allegedly committed did not have to go to any sort of civil court. So there was there was never a ruling about this. Okay. Um and I and you know I tend to take Rodney's side on this. I think there was a level of irresponsibility on his part of not hiring a bathroom a bathroom bouncer, essentially. But at the same time, you know, people need to be responsible for their own actions. When someone is doing something fairly buck wild, unintended, there, you know, it's this is not the this is not in the instruction manual for the toilet of like how to flush a corndog stick, because you don't do that. No one does that.
SPEAKER_02It's a bit of an act of God, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, or an act of Lakefield, honestly. Like you can't it's a Lake Field thing, you know.
SPEAKER_02It's a Lake Field thing. Can I make a another uh argument? If I'm the lawyer here, can I make another argument? I'm not sure if this would fly. I'm not sure. Sure, if this would fly today or maybe even outside of Lakefield, but one argument I would make is that uh it's extremely rock and roll.
SPEAKER_01Yes. So that was actually uh one of the arguments that uh Rodney's lawyer presented when they were discussing the terms of the settlement. Um now if I uh gave you three guesses, knowing what you know about Rodney as to who his lawyer was, who would you think Rodney's lawyer was?
SPEAKER_02A man named Bo?
SPEAKER_01Uh no, but you're close.
SPEAKER_02Rodney himself?
SPEAKER_01It's a man named Rodney, yes. Uh yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Now that I think of it, yeah that was that should have been guess number one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Uh so yes, Rodney did argue um that it was an extremely rock and roll thing to do. He's right. He that is what the uh the opposing lawyers for the city agreed, um, but they also uh agreed that rock and roll really doesn't have anything to do with municipal plumbing. Um so both fair points. How how rock and roll the action that led to the destruction, yes, of the municipal plumbing was did not be taken into consideration when you see sometimes the justice system works. Yeah, and sometimes the insurance system doesn't work, and I think Rodney experienced both of those things in this. But eventually, after settling up with the city and salvaging what they could, Bo and Rodney uh, you know, their time in Lake Field was over. Uh, you know, the the city they they were still hailed as local celebrities, but you know, the they were worried that the city was gonna want more money for that uh from them. Uh okay, so they're not like run out of town. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. But they're just like it, they're just done. You know, it's like you you you can only drive by the crater of your the alley rink. Your dream uh and and look at your life's work in like a just a big wet hole uh so many times before that just takes a toll on your your morale and sanity. Yeah, I know that. I know that. So they ended up moving uh to New Mexico. Um during their time in New Mexico, they tried to combine other sports, a lot of them with volleyball. So there was like basketball ball or volley skit ball was one that they tried to do. It just nothing really stuck.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. They're thinking that their genius lie lied laid laid in in their concept of combining sports, not the specific sports they combined. Yes. Correct. They're thinking there's a ripe market here for second-level sports.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Yeah. They they essentially tried to bottle the lightning, but instead of trying to bottle the bowlerskating lightning, they literally tried to bottle real lightning.
SPEAKER_02See, this is what makes me This is what makes me made me super angry, and still to this day, but as a kid made me super angry whenever I watched Wiley Coyote cartoons. Yes. He would he would have a plan which was a really good plan, and then some small thing would go wrong, and instead of trying again, he would just come up with something new.
SPEAKER_01How have we been friends for almost three decades and have never talked about this? Because that I am the only other person that I knew up until now who had that exact same problem with Wiley Coyote cartoons.
SPEAKER_02I just couldn't watch them. I was so frustrated.
SPEAKER_01No, it's it's like, okay, yeah. So you you realize that the bird like knows how to bite through the the fuse on your TNT. So okay, then bury it next time. Figure out some way, like or or he would do things the bird would like the bird would like would lose.
SPEAKER_02The bird would the it would work, and then he would accidentally get in the way.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_02Like just iterate, man.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you you can't you can't just abandon your whole plan when it doesn't work the first time. No one ever gets anything right the first time. If you do, it's luck.
SPEAKER_02It's exactly right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. But uh, yeah, they actually did try and bring back bowler skating um in the early 90s. Uh, but the moment, the moment was gone. The roller skating, bowling, it was all the popular leisure activities of 20 years ago. You you know, there were people who did it, obviously. I mean, you and I spent time at a roller skating rink and bowling alley growing up. Um but it wasn't like it wasn't the thing that the whole town was doing, it was an option for a thing that people could take their kids to and like have them blow off some steam.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, options were really expanding. There was more and more to do in the world. And I guess in the end, video games would have would have started to eat away at these things, right? People started bowling alone or bowler skating alone.
SPEAKER_01And yeah. Yeah, there it there is another world where bowler skating caught on, and bowler skating would have been one of the uh sports included in the original Wii Sports.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's true. They would have they could have crossed over, but just the timing was off.
SPEAKER_01Yep, the timing is off, and it just uh you know, it it never had a full chance to catch on uh uh in more than just the hyper local Lakefield area. And you know what? It's a Lake Field thing. It's a Lakefield thing, it will always be a Lake Field thing. What a tragedy. Yeah, and that is the tragedy of roller Rodney. See, it wasn't that sad.
SPEAKER_02That's true, yeah. I I mean I I one thing that I've noticed about uh a lot of these cassette tapes that we're that we're finding are uh I'm very similar to me in the other universes because I gotta tell you, towards the end there, I couldn't listen to you uh or to us anymore. I was just so frustrated about Wily Coyote.
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh, I was too. Ah, I can't I'm it is comforting to know that while there are differences between these multiverses that we are experiencing through these cassette tapes that we have in this bin, that our personalities, the core parts, the core building blocks of our moral code, uh like are they are consistent between the two.
SPEAKER_02I think there are universal truths. Yes, yeah. I think that just exist. I mean, this is to me, this is this is a proof of God if I've ever heard one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, honestly, yeah, I'll I'll go there. Although if it were a universal truth, then every other person that I've ranted to about Wiley Coyote wouldn't have responded with, I don't know. Yeah, I get a lot of okay. Yeah, it's it's almost like people don't see how much this matters, but you do, and that's why we have this show.
SPEAKER_02It's a spark, right? All it takes is a spark. Yep. And it'll ignite. There's people like us all over the globe that just never knew that they were not alone.
SPEAKER_01Uh I truly, with all of my heart, believe that we are going to we are going to ignite that spark and change the world, and then a hundred years from now they're going to make Le Miserable Two about us.
SPEAKER_02Uh I believe it'd be Le Le Miserable Deu. Yes.
SPEAKER_01No, it's gonna be two.
SPEAKER_02Avec Pierre How do you say Jeff in French? Uh huff.
SPEAKER_01Avec Pierre Uh the Willie Coyote. See, I yeah, I don't know, I don't know French, man.