Books, Chapter 1

"A First Time For Everything" (Dan Santat), "The Shipping News" (Annie Proulx), and "Archie Meedees and The Great Flood" (Rob McMahon) headline Chapter 1 of our Exploring Books series. Plus, if you think you're not getting enough sugar in your diet, put Rob's Peanut Butter candy recipe on your plate.

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Transcript

MAKING OUR WAY - A McMahon/Cheyne Podcast

Books, Chapter 1 (Season 1; Episode 5) - 12/12/23 

ROB: The nearest to death experience that we had on any trip was at the Grand Canyon. We were going to hike to the bottom and we were going to spend the night. Well, this was in August and the temperature as you went down increased dramatically, and the heat became intense, and it affected Jan greatly. We got to Phantom Ranch and she was in pretty bad shape by then. So I laid her in a little stream that was flowing into the Colorado River just so she could cool off.

[Music]

JIM: Yes, travel can sometimes be hazardous as we'll find out in a harrowing story from Robin Jan today. Plus, this is part one of our look at books, how we select books, why we keep books, what is in our libraries. And we'll also learn that Rob is a triple threat. In episode one, we met Rob the chef with his Christmas cookies. In our last episode, we met Rob as, I want to say, the singer. And in this episode, we're going to meet Rob the author. That and more as we are making our way.

[Music ends]

JIM: All right, so what are we drinking today?

ROB: I’m drinking coffee in a Cafe du Monde mug.

JIM: One of our journeys. Jan, what are you drinking your coffee in?

JAN: I am drinking my coffee in a Cape Spear Lighthouse mug from Newfoundland.

JIM: Cape Spear, the easternmost point in North America. I'm drinking coffee in a Rocky Mountain National Park thing. And there's no whiskey for your coffee today, Rob. Sorry about that.

ROB: I have to check that.

JAN: Oh yeah, fact check.

ROB: Fact check.

JAN: Never had whiskey in his coffee.

ROB: Never had whiskey in my coffee.

JAN: It makes a good story.

ROB: Yeah, it does.

JIM: Rather than what we're drinking, how about what are we reading? One of the passions that the four of us have is read, read, read. So what are we reading today?

JAN: This will be a little bit different probably than what you expect, but I spend some time reading young people's literature. And this love came to me when I was working on my masters. I took a class in children's lit. So right now, what I've chosen actually was a winner of the National Book Award for young people's literature. And it is called A First Time for Everything by Dan Santat. It's a great story about a kid that's in middle school who is basically - he's miserable. He's bullied all the time. He discovered in middle school. In elementary school, his life was great. But middle school, a whole different thing. So his parents are going to send him on a trip to Europe. And he is very suspect about that because he's going with these same people that are bullying him. And I'll just say, as it turns out, the trip is wonderful. And he has all these first time experiences from his travel in Europe. I love it for many reasons. Young people, travel, overcoming, all those things make that a good read for me. Yeah, that's what I'm reading right now.

JIM: When books are done, I know that there are specialists at libraries that know what age is appropriate for each level. Not so much of the content, but for the language that's used, the vocabulary and that. So when you say that's for young people, is there an age range for that?

JAN: Yeah, there is. I'm going to say middle school age. That's about what this one, I mean, that's the target audience and that’s - and he's, by the way, this is an autobiographical story. He's talking about his own time in middle school. So that's a great age to target literature for because kids are going through so much change in their lives.

JIM: So that's what you're reading. I just received a brand new book. I've got it here. This is beautiful. It's called Archie Meedees and the Great Flood. And it's written by, well, look at this, written by Rob McMahon, illustrated by Beth Baker. I know these people. Rob, what is this book, Archie Meedees, because I have a series of books here that have the same authors and illustrators.

ROB: It’s a series that I have wanted to - for a long time, having taught science, I wanted to write, I thought, children's books about certain scientific concepts, and a little bit about the scientists themselves, but mostly about a concept. I waited and waited and thought, this is never going to happen. And then when I retired, I thought, well, let's give it a shot. So the first one I did was Bern Oulli and The Attack of the Shower Curtain. The second one that I did was Maria Curious and the Invisible Rays. And you can probably figure out who that's about. And then this latest one just came out. This is Archie Meedees and the Great Flood. And I contacted my cousin, Beth, who lives in Michigan. She always was very artistic. And I posed the question to her, what do you think? If I wrote these stories, what would you think about illustrating them? And she said, yes, and she's still working. So, you know, this is something that she has to do in her spare time. So we're kind of slow in getting them out because I got about five or six of them ready to go that I've written, but they need to be illustrated. So, but this is the latest Archie Meedees and the Great Flood.

I also want to let our listeners know about the person that does the layout and design for the books, which is Cheryl Werner, good friend of ours, who lives in Atlanta and works for the Salvation Army at the Territorial Headquarters. And she does a beautiful job of the layout and design of these books. And I so appreciate what both she and Beth do. I'm very thankful for these two people that have made this idea of mine come to fruition. I really appreciate that.

I've written them specifically for my great nephew, Matthew, and my great nieces, Madison, Linnea, and Elin. And I always have a dedication at the beginning for the four of them. But it's all based on The Story. This has become known as The Story in our family. And The Story goes like this. Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Jan. And you know what? She was a stinker! And then you tickle. And when they're little kids, they laugh and they do that. And now they run away when I start to see The Story because they know what's going to happen. Some of them are getting too old for The Story. Matthew is probably a little too old for The Story now. But that's what it's become known as The Story. And each of these starts out the same way. Once upon a time, there was a boy named Archie Meedees. And you know what? He was a... And Archie was a stinker! Because he got into lots of trouble, as you would find out if you read the book. But anyway, it's a lot of fun. I enjoy doing it. And I'm really appreciative to Beth and to Cheryl for the work that they do to make it real.

JIM: It's a very nice artwork. I mean, the illustrations go very well with the thing. And yes, Cheryl's work - whenever I'm at a Salvation Army event and I notice that there's some sort of a printed program, I can say this looks like Cheryl's quality. It looks like something she did.

ROB: Yeah.

JIM: She was the one we asked to do our... The artwork for Dee's CD as well. It's good to see her work in this. The one thing I did notice that once it goes through this story of this Bern Oulli, at the back, you actually have some things that every teacher would appreciate. You actually have a paragraph of the story of Daniel Bernoulli. Some other things to explore and a vocabulary list there that people would have. So you've got Bern Ouilli, that's a guy. We've got Maria Curious, love that. By the way, she and I share a birthday, November 7th.

ROB: Madame Curie?

JIM: Yeah. And then Archie Meedees. He's the bathtub guy, right?

ROB: He’s the bathtub guy.

JIM: How do you weigh a crown and know that it's made out of gold? It's by the volume and how do you measure the volume? It's water displacement.

ROB: Water displacement. Yeah.

JIM: That’s the guy. Now, this is just for those little stinkers. Why not a wider audience?

ROB: Well, I have given it to some of our friends that have younger children. I don't know. I just do it for myself and for my great nephew and nieces. It's just something I don't really have any desire to make money on it or to publish or anything like that.

JIM: So these would not be useful to public school teachers, you don't think

JAN: Yes, they would.

JIM: Yes, they would.

ROB: Yeah, they might.

JIM: They’re very engaging. I mean, to look at it, to hear the story, it's very engaging. It's going to be right where these kids live. They should learn these principles and whenever they think about - you know, they’ll go off to college sometimes, someone will say something about Daniel Bernoulli and say, "Oh, you mean the shower curtain guy?" They will retain that, and they'll understand the principles because of the way you've presented them there. I think it's a great educational tool. I think it's a great entertainment. It's good for reading and the illustrations that help you flow through the story. Those are wonderful things, and you're not just an uncle anymore, are you?

ROB: No, I am not just Uncle Rob. I'm Great Uncle Rob.

JIM: Yes, there it is. So they are blessed to have these things. So thanks for sharing that.

ROB: Thank you.

JIM: We have an author around our table. Very good. That's what I'm reading. Rob, what are you reading?

ROB: Well, recently I've been reading an author named William Kent Kruger. They're mysteries, Cork O'Connor mysteries. But right now, I'm taking a little break from that and I'm rereading the Harry Potter series and I'm on the Chamber of Secrets right now. And that's a meaningful one for both Jan and I, I think, because our nephew, Brian, is really who got us interested in that series and it's so well-written and it's so much fun. There are certain series that I reread from time to time. The Tolkien trilogy, I've read that probably four or five times. That's the classic fantasy trilogy, in my opinion.

JIM: So we have different formats. We can do audio books, we can do books through like a reader device, something we have the actual paper and spine in our hands. What's your preferred method of delivery?

ROB: Right now, my preferred is the Kindle. I like to have a book, but see, I do most of my reading at night and holding a book and having to have a light so that I can read the pages - I have to have a light on my forehead or attached to the book and then turning the pages - it’s a little bit more difficult because I do almost most of my reading before I go to sleep at night while I'm in bed.

JIM: How do you take it?

ROB: So the Kindle is just easier.

JAN: Well, so my format depends on what kind of book I'm reading. If I'm reading fiction, I'm going to probably read it on the Kindle, especially if it's something that I don't need to have on my bookshelf. If I'm reading nonfiction, something that I need to study, which I still do in retirement, I need a hard - I need a print book for that.

JIM: Right.

JAN: Because I have to have a pencil in my hand and I have to physically underline the material. So yeah, I still love the feeling of a book in my hands, but it's not as convenient for reading at night.

JIM: There’s a book about music notation called Behind Bars. It's by Elaine Gould. It's a big doorstop of a book, a great reference book. I have it in hard copy and I also have it through Kindle. The Kindle copy is virtually useless. You can find the information, you can read it, but you can't browse. You just can't. You can't just flip to a page. This is why I like actual books rather than devices. How about audio books? Do you ever have those like on the road or anything?

JAN: I was just going to say one more thing. I'm sorry. One more thing about the device. The book that I mentioned that I'm reading is actually a graphic novel for kids. And I tried downloading it onto my Kindle and that does not work. The images and the text do not match up. It's not a good format for that. So that's part of my consideration too for what I'm going to read, how I'm going to read a book. I have an interesting audio book story. So Barbara Streisand has a new autobiography out and it is a tome. It's a big book.

JIM: It’s 999 pages.

JAN: There you go. And so when I follow a lot of readers groups on social media and the best recommendation I had for an audio book was her autobiography. Because first she's the one reading it. So you get to hear her voice. Apparently she sings during the course of reading the book. And it just is a much more enjoyable experience to hear rather than read. So when Deanna, you know, gets a copy of this book from somebody, perhaps an audio book would be a great selection.

JIM: Yeah, I think she would like to. That's great. When I mentioned audio books, what triggered it was your thought about Harry Potter. Do you know who does the audio books for Harry Potter? The whole series. Stephen Fry.

ROB: Oh really?

JIM: Yes. And a lot of people say there's just no greater experience of those books than listening to Stephen Fry with all of his acting skills, put character into everything. But he had one story about it. The first time he was recording, the first one - Who is this author? Kind of unknown. She's got this book. The Philosopher's Stone, as it was called in England. So he's there to read it. And then she says to him, I'm working on another one as well. His reaction was rather condescending. “Oh, well, good for you.” Right? So now there's a little bit of friction between them. And then he's reading a book. And I think it's in the third one, the Prisoner of Azkaban. Is that the third one?

ROB: Yes.

JIM: …where she writes the phrase, Harry pocketed it. That was the phrase. Harry pocketed it. And Stephen Fry cannot get this phrase pocket-et-et-ed it. He can't get the, I mean, accomplished actor, he cannot say it. So he says, let's just take a break. I'll come back to that one later. So later on, he gives her a call. Okay. And this is where the rebound comes. He gives her a call and says, I can't get this phrase out. Could I just say Harry put it in his pocket? And she paused and said, no. [Laughter] And then when he tells the story, and then from all the other books, then on, she made sure to put in the phrase, knowing he would have to read it, Harry pocketed it.

So last time on our last episode, I was, we were talking about our favorite Christmas movies. I noticed that Elf didn't come up in any of them, but Elf has got to be up there. That's a pretty good one. But the, uh - I went back and I watched again, White Christmas. And then I noticed something the composer did, because sometimes I like to see what a composer is doing. There's that scene when Davis is telling Wallace, why don't you just get married? There's some music playing in the background that I had never noticed before until the other day. And do you know what song is playing in the background while he's giving them this advice?

ROB: Let me think. Isn't it Counting Your Blessings? Isn't it the blessing song? 

[singing]

JIM: Yes, Count Your Blessings instead of Sheep. It is.

ROB: Yeah.

JIM: They’re doing a preview of the relationship he's going to have. Now going through the movie, you're not supposed to catch that, because you're not going to hear this music that's playing, and then later on, when they're around the fireplace and talking about what sandwiches give you which dreams, you're not going to catch that. But then you listen to it again, you realize the composer has a story that he's telling. And then I watched another one because someone - that you guys had mentioned, Scrooge, and you use this whenever you're decorating the trees. But in that one, I noticed something the director did. And there's a point at which Scrooge's redemption starts to happen. And Albert Finney has this wonderful crunched up face as he's going through the first part of it. But then the Ghost of Christmas Present is there. And he takes him and he takes him to the Cratchits' house. And there he sees Albert Finney, Scrooge, is looking through the window. And as he's looking through the window, you see the way the shot is framed. And it's Albert Finney's face surrounded by this frosted window. And they've already put him in this Santa Claus beard he's going to have later when he visits the house and gives them every gift he could imagine to give them. That's his only way of thinking, how can I help this family? There he is already. So the redemption of Scrooge starts on that scene. And you know it's deliberate because you've got a set designer, you've got a production designer, you've got the cameraman, you've got the director, “get him right through here, frame his face on that frosted glass,” and that gives him the beard that he's going to have for real later on.

ROB: Yeah, interesting.

JIM: Just some things that you can find. So when you talk about reading, like rereading a series, it's not really to get a lot of new - but then you notice things. I mean, this is rich literature…

ROB: Yeah.

JIM: …that you can find all these corners in and say, "I never noticed that about Frodo before." Some things that are well worth keeping books around and going back to them again.

ROB: That’s great.

JAN: One of the wonderful parts of my job when I was a librarian at The Salvation Army was to help guide people toward good reading, depending on what they liked or what I knew about them. And what I recognized in that job was that it's not an easy thing to do. One of the hardest things you can do is - or it requires knowing somebody very well in order to make a recommendation, usually, for a book that they'll love. And so, because we read for different reasons. We read for entertainment. We read to learn things. We read to go other places in our minds. And the three of us here at this table read differently. We read, Rob and I read differently. We have some crossover, but we gravitate toward different genres. And Jim is on an island all by himself over there. In his eclectic approach. So I thought it'd be interesting to say, Jim, how in the world do you choose what you're going to read?

JIM: Well, eclectic approach. One of the things I needed help with was how do I choose a good fiction writer? And I didn't really know where am I going to go. So we're on this trip and I asked someone who shall remain nameless. The one, how's it say in Potter?

ROB: He who shall not be named.

JIM: So I asked someone  - he who shall not be named - what sort of author should I look for for things? And he gave me a recommendation of Michael Crichton. Okay, so I went and picked up a copy of Jurassic Park. And okay, it's got some stuff in it, but it's kind of right across the surface. It's not going to change me. It's just going to entertain me for a little bit and things like that. And so I went back to the he who shall not be named. And I said, you know, Willis, that recommendation you gave wasn't really, didn't really make it for me. He said, well, you should try the other one, A Lost World. The follow up to Jurassic Park. So I went and read The Lost World and I was equally unengaged.

Then someone else recommended an author. I think it was Bill Harris out of the Carolinas. He said, you ought to read Annie Proulx, who wrote a book called The Shipping News. Well, I picked a copy up and right away I'm engaged by it because it has on the cover a print from David Blackwood, who's a graphic artist in Canada and actually a relative of Ruby. And this one is about a man named Quoyle, and it's spelled Q-U-O-Y-L-E. But she starts each chapter by talking about different knots that sailors need to know. And so here it is. She says, “Quoyle, it's a coil of rope. A Flemish flake is a spiral coil of one layer only. It is made on deck so that it may be walked on if necessary.” So that's how she introduces her character. Someone who could be walked on if necessary. And how does she describe him? Within a paragraph or two, I'm sold on this book and I'm ready for it.

“Here's an account of a few years in the life of Quoyle, born in Brooklyn and raised in a shuffle of dreary upstate towns. Hive spangled, gut roaring with gas and cramp, he survived childhood. At the state university, hand clapped over his chin, he camouflaged torment with smiles and silence. Stumbled through his twenties and into his thirties, learning to separate his feelings from his life, counting on nothing. He ate prodigiously, liked a ham knuckle, buttered spuds.”

Already, I want to know about this guy. I mean, later on, he's described as

“a great damp loaf of a body. At six, he weighed 80 pounds. At 16, he was buried under a casement of flesh, head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair, ruched back, features as bunched as kissed fingertips. Eyes the color of plastic, the monstrous chin, a freakish shelf, jutting from the lower face.”

Now, I'm ready for things. First of all, why do I like this? One, I should grab a dictionary and follow along her words because I've mispronounced ruched and it has something to do with the way fabric is folded. And now I'm completely engaged in this. And I go through and read this book completely engaging. Now, this is way before the movie came out. The movie that had Kevin Spacey, Judi Dench - oh, Judi Dench - Scott Glenn, Gordon Pinsent, and Pete Postlethwaite, Julianne Moore, Kate Blanchett, and a great cast. But the book is so much richer because you can get in deep. So that's how I chose that one. And that recommendation really held up for me. Annie Proulx for that.

JAN: You know, it was great about that segment that you read. Well, so much. I mean, it was riveting to hear the language. And this is why I think I'm going to say it's important to read good literature. Sometimes you don't really know that something isn't good until you read something that is. And every once in a while, I go down a road of just trying to escape. And I'll read something that nobody should be offended by this, but I'll read something that's sort of like a Hallmark Christmas movie. I mean, it's going to end happy. It's going to be fine. I'm not challenged by it. I can pick it up at any time. It doesn't change me in any way. But when you hear language like that, and you recognize the value and depth of that, I think we're drawn toward better books. So one of the things I do when I'm picking a book is actually, I look for books that have won awards, books that are well reviewed, or books that have been recommended to me by readers that I have an appreciation for.

JIM (voice-over): This is editing, Jim, breaking into the podcast. What I'm going to do is put a bookmark in the discussion right there, because this conversation went on for just about two hours. So we're going to spread this conversation out over a few episodes. And right now we have some housekeeping to do. Some listeners have written in with some questions. So let's go back to podcast Jim to answer some questions from our listener line.

JIM: So we have a listener, Greg Payton, a couple of weeks ago, he was asking us this. He would be interested to know if our grandparents began the travel experiences with our parents. And where did the yearning for travel truly begin? And were our grandparents immigrants? Just starting with the immigrant part, I know that dad's folks are both from overseas. I mean, his mom was born in Nova Scotia, but she was a daughter of Salvation Army parents who were stationed there from England. And then dad's dad came over with his brother to Chicago, went into the training college there, but they came from Scotland. So his parents were immigrants. On mom's side, we've tried to trace this back through your ancestry.com account. And we can get a little bit with Grandpa Robb through Canada. So somewhere he came through Canada from someplace, but the Moore family, it kind of emerges somehow in Kansas area, like Crawford County area, but I can't get too far back there. So I don't know if that family had been here for a while. So the immigrants, yeah, three out of our four grandparents were immigrants. And Rob, the Marks and the McMahons?

ROB: The Markses have been in this country a long time. My grandma goes back to Plymouth almost. But my grandparent, my grandpa McMahon, my dad's father, he's an immigrant. He came from Scotland. His whole family came at some point, and I don't know the story of who came first or they didn't all come together. I do know that. But yes, he was an immigrant…

JAN: From Scotland.

ROB: …from Scotland. That's right. And so that's one of four.

JIM: Jan, you did a DNA search, didn't you?

JAN: Yes, I did.

JIM: And our family is pretty well locked in where?

JAN: Scotland, especially the east coast of Scotland, Aberdeen area and north of that. Ireland, England. That's pretty much it. A little bit of France thrown in and I don't know how that happened.

JIM: Well, it was the Norman invasion. The name Cheyne is actually chêne, a French word meaning oak plantation or oak tree. And so Cheneys and Cheynes all come from that line. So that that might be French. I don't know about Robb, R-O-B-B, where that would come from.

JAN: I think it's Scottish, too.

JIM: You think that's a Scottish name.

JAN: Yeah.

JIM: Did Scandinavia figure in any of our genetic stuff?

JAN: Yeah, it did to a small degree. 3% of our DNA is out of Norway. And so that probably were people who came down into Scotland. That's my guess.

JIM: So that's where we're from on the immigrants. Now, were they travelers? I mean, did they take - when our parents were kids, did they go on family outings like we did when we were kids?

JAN: No, I have no memory of hearing any stories of our parents traveling as kids. Their travel really came down to moving from place to place as Army officers. So they didn't, they lived different places, but they didn't travel for vacation.

ROB: Same here.

JIM: So your family - does she really go all the way back?

ROB: All the way back, yeah. It's written out. I've got a copy of her lineage that goes back to the 1700s.

JAN: Well, you should mention famous ancestors.

ROB: Oh, well, I'm related to John Adams. I'm related to George Washington. Distantly, of course.

JAN: Distantly, of course.

JIM: Shake the tree enough Genghis Khan will fall out.

ROB: Absolutely. But yeah, in terms of travel, no, my - neither of my grandparents travel with my parents that I am aware of. You know, when you think about the times that they grew up, they were difficult times. I mean, my, my, my grandpa McMahon, my grandparents McMahon were Army officers. They didn't have a lot of money and a lot of time to travel around the country. Both my parents grew up during the depression. So those were times when, you know, there wasn't a lot of ability to do that kind of stuff. What I do remember is my mom's parents, grandpa and grandma Marks, they started their travels with us. I think their first major trip, and it was a camping trip, was in 1962 when we went to Yellowstone. We spent 30 days. My mom is fond of reminding us that they paid $29 for our lodging in those 30 days. It cost $29…

JIM: For the 30 days.

ROB: …for the 30 days. Because we stayed in National Parks and National Forest campgrounds. So, and they were either free or a dollar a night.

JIM: To make a long story short, if that's possible at this point, Greg, that we had the experience of the travel really began with each of our fathers - Jim Cheyne, Dave McMahon - and they were teachers, had the summer, we saved up, and then we hit the road, usually camping, national parks, national forests, things that were just expanded our horizons greatly. I can't thank them enough for what happened to us because of that.

Then we have another query from Adely Charles. He's the divisional music director for the Salvation Army in the state of Florida. He's doing a great job there. And he was wondering if any of our travels turned out to be rather dangerous. Like, did we have any near death experiences? A rather macabre question, but actually it has a very rich answer. So I'm going to ask Rob, can you fill in some details about any near death experiences you may have had?

ROB: The nearest to death experience that we had on any trip was at the Grand Canyon. We were going to hike to the bottom and we were going to spend the night. There's a campground part way down, it was called Indian Gardens Campground. There's a plateau that you reach. So what we did was we hiked down, we set up our camp, and then we were going to hike down to the river to Phantom Ranch, where people can actually spend the night there. But we weren't going to do that, we were just going to go down so we could get to the river and to Phantom Ranch and spend some time there. And then we were going to hike back to the campground at the plateau, and then we'd come out the next day. Well, this was in August. And the temperature as you went down increased dramatically. So by the time we got down to the campground, it was pretty hot. People were just waking up pretty much because we went early. And so we set up our little tent and we got our backpacks and our water and we got ready and we started to hike down. And the heat became intense and it affected Jan greatly. What were you thinking at the time, Jan?

JAN: That I was out of my mind for ever having done this. I mean, what I ended up with was probably sunstroke. I had a bad headache and it never went away.

ROB: We got to Phantom Ranch and she was in pretty bad shape by then. So I laid her in a little stream that was flowing into the Colorado River just so she could cool off. And then I went and I looked around in Phantom Ranch and did that. I don't think you ever went inside.

JAN: Yeah, no.

ROB: No, the building. So you spent your time laying there in the cool water. We came back out and tried to get you to eat a little bit and you weren't really hungry either. So we started back and I honestly, I thought I was going to have to carry you back because it got really bad. We got to a point, there was a bench kind of set on the trail and she laid down on the bench and actually fell asleep. While she did that, I actually went swimming in the Colorado River, and didn't know what else to do. So I was keeping as cool as I could. So I took a dip in the Colorado River and I came back and I let her sleep for a while. And then when I finally woke her up, I said, "Do you think we can make it back to the campground?" And she said, "I'll try." It was pretty pathetic. But we finally got back to the campground and we got to sleep that night. I don't know how much we actually slept.

And then the next morning we hiked out. We got up really early before the sun was up and started up. But that was a very difficult hike coming out of the canyon with the heat. We were both sick to our stomachs at that point. We were throwing up on the trail from time to time and drinking. And then we throw it right up again.

JAN: Too much detail.

ROB: Anyway, we made it out. But that was the closest near-death experience I think we ever had on a trip.

JAN: Well, we envisioned death. We might not have been close, but I could see it from there.

ROB: I think you wanted to die at one point.

JAN: Yeah, I was miserable.

ROB: Yeah. You know, we should have been forewarned because I had experienced something like that before with my brother and sister. We hiked down to the plateau, went out to the point of the plateau, through the campground and out to the point in the plateau, and then hiked back up the same day. We did that all in one day. And Sandy - Rick, he ran back up, I think, and he was at the top long before we did. I stayed with Sandy because she got sick. She, again, it was the heat. It was in the summer because that's when we traveled. And she got sick like you did. And she had to stop a lot on the way up. And I was worried that I was going to have to carry her out too. And in doing so, I experienced the same kind of heat stroke going back up. So I was sick as well. So by the time we both got to the top, we were both not well. So it should have been, you know, a cautionary tale, but I didn't think about that at the time.

JAN: So Adely, the last thought on this whole story is to let you know that we will, in fact, bring you some cookies to DHQ.

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JIM: It's sugar in peanut butter form.

ROB: Oh, it is.

JIM: What are we looking at here, Rob?

ROB: You are looking at pure sugar, basically. These are, this is a recipe of my mother's, peanut butter candy. And the recipe is very simple. You need a cup of white granular sugar and a cup of brown sugar, a half a cup of milk. You stir that. And that's the easy part. The hardest part as you heat it, getting it to the right consistency so that it will form candy. And it won't just be rubbery or just, you know, mush. And so you get it to a boil. I keep stirring, keep stirring. As it boils, you could turn the temperature down. And then I add the peanut butter and that melts in.

JAN: How much?

ROB: I usually use just three big scoops with a soup spoon. Three big scoops of peanut butter. And mix that in. And as it boils down, every once in a while I test it with a little glass of water. You take a little bit of teaspoon and drop some of the candy into the water. And when it forms a ball, not a solid ball, but…

JAN: But a soft?…

ROB: …but a soft ball, you know that it's ready. So you take it off the heat and then you, I don't know what this is called.

JAN: Whisk?

ROB: You whisk it, I guess. But I don't use a whisk, I use a spoon. And you do that and that cools it and that adds air to it as you're whisking it away. And do that for a while. Keep doing that until it's thick enough that if you tilt the pan, you have to sort of scrape the candy to get it to go down. It wants to stay where it is. And at that point, you pour it onto a plate that's been buttered. A smooth plate, as I found out last night, nothing with ridges in it because then you end up with candy crumbs.

JAN: I can't tell you the destruction that I witnessed last night.

ROB: It was terrible.

JIM: Was that what you brought today, was your crummy?

ROB: I bought the best.

JAN: That’s the best of it. Listen, there was, I can't even tell you.

ROB: Yeah, the rest of it's just a pile of crumbs. But anyway, if you butter or grease the, it's just a regular dinner plate that's smooth, pour it in there and then just let it set and you're ready to go. You should probably cut it before it gets really hard and then it tends less to break up into little pieces. So as it's hardening, you can cut it into squares or whatever. But that's it. Mom’s peanut butter candy. It’s good stuff.

JIM: And I just had a piece. I want to buy a human-sized hamster wheel and run in it for about an hour to run through this sugar. That was great. By the way, what kind of peanut butter do you use?

ROB: Jif? What do we use?I don't even know what the peanut butter is. [Laughter] It comes in a jar.

JIM: It comes in a jar.

ROB: What kind do we get, honey?

JAN: It’s Skippy natural.

ROB: Skippy, that's it. Natural.

JIM: Skippy. Do you know there's a number of people who believe they use something called Jiffy peanut butter?

ROB: Yeah.

JAN: I believe that.

ROB: That’ll work.

JIM: No, it's called the Mandela Effect. Do you know about the Mandela Effect? It's where people believe things in a different way. A famous example from the movies. “Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.” She never actually says that one. “Luke, I am your father,” is never said.

JAN: Wow.

ROB: Wow.

JAN: [inaudible]

JIM: He never says, Luke, I am your father. It's the way it's been parodied and so that's entered the thing. The idea is it's called Mandela after Nelson Mandela, who many people have a clear memory of having died in prison in the 1980s, and it's right there. They're ready to go, no, he died. So there is no actual Jiffy peanut butter. It's Jiff peanut butter.

ROB: Any peanut butter will work.

JIM (voice-over): So we'll wrap it up there for now, but the discussion continues next time when you might hear references as diverse as Graham Greene. Harper Lee, Bill O'Reilly, Isaac Asimov, the Hardy Boys, and even Miss Pickerel goes to Mars. Again, you can join the conversation through our Listener Line. The email address is chainpodcast@gmail.com. That's C-H-E-Y-N-E podcast@gmail.com. This has been Jen and Rob McMahon and me, Jim Cheyne, making our way. Until next time.

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