Send us Fan Mail

Step right up! We're revisiting this one as we take a deep-fried dive into the Oklahoma State Fair — where childhood smelled like funnel cakes, diesel fumes, and bad decisions. Scott is joined by Garth and Ken from Fried Okla to swap stories about sketchy carnies, dunk tank jerks, and the glory of winning a live iguana you absolutely didn’t need. It’s a nostalgic, laugh-out-loud ride through 80s fairgrounds, where powdered sugar coated everything — and nobody wore sunscreen.

Show Sponsor

Don't Just Let Memories Live On FNAW
Digitize them with The Digitize Center

Angry that you don't have the latest Free Nights and Weekends Podcast gear? Fix that here!

Support the show

Free Nights and Weekends on Facebook

Our Website

Original music provided by a few of the gentlemen of Supernal Endgame

Send us Fan Mail

When we were kids, there was a piece of undeveloped land tucked away in my neighborhood that might as well have been another county.

There was a creek, a hill, woods, a field, a rope swing and a clubhouse. We rode our bikes through it, built forts, explored, swung across the creek and spent entire summers back there.

My buddy Todd and I even figured out how to catch crawdads with nothing but a piece of raw bacon tied to a string.

To us, it was as vast as the a big ranch.

Decades later, I went looking for it. I found the land on Google Earth, drew a line around what I remembered as our wilderness. The adult me found some surprises and connected some dots.

It wasn't Christopher Robin's 100 Acre Wood.

But it was a big piece of undeveloped land sitting right in the middle of our neighborhood.

Then I found something I never expected.

I found the man who owned it.

Mr. Phillips lived across the street when I was growing up. I called him and got to tell him just how much that piece of land meant to me and a whole generation of neighborhood kids.

He had stories of his own.

His kids played back there. He remembered the forts. He remembered the rope swing. He remembered the creek. He even confirmed that “Granny Grunt,” the mysterious old woman we were told owned the property before him, was a real person.

And I got to tell him something I've carried with me for decades:

I remember those woods.

This week on Free Nights and Weekends, we're going back to the places where Gen X kids disappeared for the day, built their own little worlds and somehow managed to survive them.

Show Sponsor

Don't Just Let Memories Live On FNAW
Digitize them with The Digitize Center

Angry that you don't have the latest Free Nights and Weekends Podcast gear? Fix that here!

Support the show

Free Nights and Weekends on Facebook

Our Website

Original music provided by a few of the gentlemen of Supernal Endgame

Send us Fan Mail

Parole denied! Oklahoma governor declines parole for the remaining member of three spree killers that shocked OKC in 1978.

In 1978, something horrific happened inside an Oklahoma City Sirloin Stockade.

Six employees went to work that night. They never came home.

For those of us who grew up in Oklahoma in the late '70s and '80s, the story became part of our collective childhood memory. We knew the name Roger Dale Stafford. We knew what had happened at Sirloin Stockade. We saw the news footage.

And we remember that giant steer out front.

48 years later, the story is back in the news. Verna Stafford, who was convicted for her role in the crimes, appeared before the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board this week. The board voted 3-2 to recommend parole on one of her two life sentences.

But this isn't a true-crime episode.

Scott and Jason talk about the Stafford murders, the victims, the restaurant, and the terrible story that became part of growing up in Oklahoma. More importantly, they talk about how Gen X learned about horrible things before the internet, social media, smartphones and the modern true-crime machine.

We heard about bad things.

We processed them the best way kids knew how.

And then we went outside.

Oh, and there's a 15 foot steer involved. 🐄

Show Sponsor

Don't Just Let Memories Live On FNAW
Digitize them with The Digitize Center

Angry that you don't have the latest Free Nights and Weekends Podcast gear? Fix that here!

Support the show

Free Nights and Weekends on Facebook

Our Website

Original music provided by a few of the gentlemen of Supernal Endgame