Mary Arnett and Joseph Held

[00:06] MARY ARNETT: Hello, I'm Mary Arnett. I'm 70 years old. Today is May 8, 2001. And I am Joe's mom. Hey.

[00:18] JOSEPH HELD: And I'm Joseph Held. I'm 38. It's the same date. That will be May 8, 2021. I'm in Baltimore, Maryland, talking to my mother, Mary So, Mom, I wanted to talk to you because I always grew up hearing so many stories about kind of the unique sort of childhood and upbringing that you had. You spent so much time with your father and your family, traveling around. My understanding, at least, is you kind of travel around the Southwest in the middle of the desert, collecting beetles and studying insects. And that was kind of what you did between the school years. And whenever you were done, you'd come back to a different school than you started from in a different town and pick up until it was time to go to the desert again. And I wanted to kind of hear some of those stories from you and see what that was like and how it influenced you and, you know, what happened, kind of hear the story. So maybe you could start by telling me just kind of the basics. Where were you born? How did you grow up? How did it all start?

[01:23] MARY ARNETT: Well, I was born. I'm so tempted to do a line from the Jerk right now, Steve Martin. I was born a poor black child. But I can't, because that's not true now. Yeah, you're right. And I know I've told you stories throughout your upbringing about my upbringing, which at the time, I really didn't think was unusual. In fact, it wasn't until I was really, really far along in my career as an adult that I even realized that what I grew up with wasn't the same as everybody else. So my dad was an entomologist. His name was Ross H. Arnett, Jr. And he was pretty well known in his field. He was a research taxonomist.

[02:17] JOSEPH HELD: And who is that exactly?

[02:20] MARY ARNETT: That means that he. A taxonomy is the organization of things. A taxonomy is the way things are ordered and listed. So insects have a taxonomy, trees have a taxonomy, people have a taxonomy. And it's just a way to make order out of chaos.

[02:43] JOSEPH HELD: Okay, so he was kind of focusing on the. The understanding of an ordering of insects and how they. They work, their life cycle and all that kind of stuff?

[02:52] MARY ARNETT: Yeah, pretty much. And what he was really interested in, he was two things. He was micro focused on a specific insect called an edomerid, and he was macro focused on how beetles in the North America specifically related to each other in terms of their genus, their Species, their family, all that kind of stuff. So his research and most of the publications he did throughout his life were devoted to that classification systems and being able to have a reference guide for people who were also entomologists or who had an interest in it. And my mom, bless her soul, she was just a sweet little Irish lass that was swept off her feet by my father and they just ended up living this incredibly interesting life. Along the way they happened to have eight children, of which I'm the third.

[04:05] JOSEPH HELD: Just happened.

[04:06] MARY ARNETT: Yeah, yeah, you know, stuff happens, children come. And in 1956, my dad was working at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York and he got a grant from the National Science foundation to go on what they thought at the time was a three month trip to the desert southwest in Arizona to research a particular beetle that he was very interested, interested in. And that's the edemerids and specific subtype of beetle, specific species insect. And I will tell you right now, in God's name, I have no idea why that man spent all those years researching Edemerids, because as far as I know, there is no. They're, they're not pest insects, they're not beneficial insects, they're just insects. So as I get older, I really think it was just an intellectual activity, an intellectual exercise for him because no one knew their breeding habits, no one knew where they laid their eggs, no one knew anything about them. So I think he was just curious because it was something to investigate, that.

[05:29] JOSEPH HELD: Was kind of something that he could contribute to that field, I guess.

[05:33] MARY ARNETT: Yeah, kind of. Although I don't think he was that altruistic. I think it was just because he was interested in that particular exercise. So anyway, before we go down the Ed Amerid rabbit hole, because it is a long and winding rabbit hole, I.

[05:50] JOSEPH HELD: Can'T wait to find that.

[05:51] MARY ARNETT: Yeah, I know, I know. The entire world wants to know about Edomards, I promise you. So anyway, he got this grant and I was 6 years old in 1956, and what did I know? I mean, not all my siblings were still born in 1956. And so all of a sudden there was a Navy surplus pickup truck in our backyard. It was left over from, you know, the late 40s. And my dad was building a camper the back of it, which I thought was really fun. You know, I would help them, blah, blah, blah. Little did I know that that was going to be our home for a long, long time. My grandparents gave him a World War I army surplus tent. And we started out and we went Across. Actually, no. All right, all right, back up. Rewind. Our first truck, because we had many, was actually not a truck. It was a Volkswagen Mini Microbus. That's what it was. It was a really, like, sometime in the 50s microbus. Yeah. I know if we had that now, it'd be worth some cash. Yeah.

[07:14] JOSEPH HELD: How many of you were there? At this point?

[07:18] MARY ARNETT: It's not really clear. It was 56, so I think there were six of us. I think if my sister Bernie. Aunt Bernie was born, she was really little. She was, like, still carrying around in her arms. And so I don't really remember that part of it, but I'm pretty sure the Microbus was the first vehicle that we had. And dad took all the insides out. He stripped it. There was a. The driver's seat and the passenger seat. And then he stripped it and then built a camper inside it. We had a little stove, and we had some bunks and this and that and the other thing. And we had, like I said, the World War I surplus tent that my grandparents gave us. And that was awesome. It had one in the middle, and it stretched out with strings and stuff, but it leaked really bad. And my two older brothers, Ross and Mike, had to sleep in jungle hammocks. And those were World War II surplus jungle hammocks. And the way we did that was dad drilled a hole on the rain gutter that went along the Microbus. And then he had a pole that he would extend out with guy wires. And then the jungle hammock would extend in between the VW bus and the pole. And my two poor brothers had to sleep in these jungle hammocks out in the. You know, no matter what was going on. I mean, I think once in an electric storm, we all huddled in the. In the van and stuff, like, oh, we're all going to die. But for the most part, we just slept. Some of us slept in the van, some slept in the tent. When I got a little older, I realized that it was a lot more fun to just sleep outside. But. Yeah, well, because it wasn't so crowded. But anyway, that's how we started out. We started out from Rochester, New York, and our goal was to go to Nogales, Arizona. But my dad never took a direct route anywhere, so. And I was six. So I was, what, in first grade? And I. Literally, my entire childhood, I never ended a school year and never began a school year because we were always out on these.

[09:40] JOSEPH HELD: You were leaving school early and then coming in late.

[09:43] MARY ARNETT: Yeah. He would take us out a week, two Weeks early. We'd come back, school had already started or whatever, and it just didn't seem like it was that big of a deal to him. But then I realized that the reason was because he was looking at the. What the rainfall patterns were, and he knew he needed to be in Nogales right around the time that the first rain started, because that had something to do with the way the insects were doing their thing. So anyway, we'd start out and we. By the time I was 10, I had been in every single contiguous state in the United States, all of the southern provinces of Canada, and as far south as Mexico City. And we did it all by car, by vehicle.

[10:35] JOSEPH HELD: You guys went that far north? I thought it was all in the desert southwest.

[10:39] MARY ARNETT: No, no, no. And that's not because the Edomarids were in Vancouver or Ottawa or wherever. It's because dad had never seen those places. So he thought, okay, well, we'll go. Off he went y go to Nogales by way of Vancouver, British Columbia. That makes sense. We're starting out from Rochester, New York, and we're going to go to new galleys by the long route. And we did that every year. And as the years went on, we, our whole kit just upgraded. That's why I got mixed up, because there were so many of them. Because after the microbus and we always had at least one graduate student with us at some one point we had five graduate students. So we expanded into quite a caravan.

[11:31] JOSEPH HELD: Yeah, that's one thing I remember hearing about a lot growing up is when people would tell stories, they're referencing one student or another, and I obviously have no idea what any of these folks are. So was it the same, the same group each year after year, or was it just completely different? Kind of luck of the draw, whoever his students were at the time, how did that work out?

[11:48] MARY ARNETT: No, I'm not. I know the one year we had the five, it was because it was a graduate level credit course that dad wrote. And at that point he was teaching at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. and so he wrote either that or Purdue, I can't remember. Because, you know, you're busy living your life. You're not recording it when it happens. So anyway, he wrote a course and these guys, I'm not kidding you, these graduates, students signed up, paid tuition to come out with us with a whole family. By that time, there was eight of us. My mom and all these graduate students, and my dad, who was like Professor Challenger from Arthur Conan Doyle series. And we traveled. At that point, we were in three vehicles. We had a GMC carry all and we had. And that's where most of us rode. And then we had a Chevy S10, I think with a. Some sort of homemade camper on the back. And then we had this one ton steakside Chevy truck. My dad was a Chevy man. I know he thought Fords, he thought Republicans drove Fords and he was a Democrat. So he drove Chevy's. I'm not kidding. His entire life he was Chevy's because Fords were for Democrats, I mean for Republicans. So anyway, on the back of the, of the big truck that was a one ton truck and that's the one I learned to drive on, was mounted a little Shasta trailer. He took the wheels off of the trailer and mind you, in all the different places we lived, this was going on in our backyard. We, you know, he didn't have like a shop or a garage or anything. And we certainly didn't have any money for people to do this for us. So we were all out there, you know, at sometimes all eight kids are out here with his harebrained ideas. And so he took the wheels off of the Shasta trailer and we mounted it on the bed of this stakeside truck. And for visual reference, it's like a farm truck. It's a truck, big old one ton truck with a flatbed. And then it looks like it's got farm fences around it. Well, he took.

[14:15] JOSEPH HELD: Sure. I'm picturing Abels falling off the bed.

[14:17] MARY ARNETT: Oh my God, yes. But the thing about the trailer was. No, it wasn't for us. It wasn't for us to have accommodations or accoutrements or anything like that. The entire inside was an anechoic sound chamber because one of his graduate students was doing her graduate research on the strid of a certain water beetle and the way they communicated. Crickets stridulate. When you hear a cricket chirping, that's a stridulation. And her research was to figure out how these water beetles communicated with each other. Of course my dad said, well, we'll just build an anechoic sound chamber and we'll just drag it with us all the way out west because that's where the insects are. So anyway, yeah, I like I said, I don't. Go ahead.

[15:16] JOSEPH HELD: You would get out there and then what was your sort of daily life like? What would happen? You'd make the trip from New York by way of Canada to the desert and then what would you do?

[15:27] MARY ARNETT: Yeah, well, the place that we stayed, the main place is an area that's just about 19 miles north of the Mexican border. It's outside of Nogales, Arizona, and it's an area called Pena Blanca. It was in the Coronado National Forest. And when we were there in the. See, we did this for 10 years, from the time I was 6 to 16. And so when we were there, there was nothing there. We would camp, we would get there, and it was national forest camping. So it was a picnic table, a fire grate, a trash pit. You know, like, I don't know, those days you would just. It was dug in the ground and you would just flip a lever and throw your trash down. And then Manuel, the ranger, would come by and periodically and pick up the trash. And then over the hill was the outhouse. So whatever we literally, a water spigot. That was it. Picnic table, fire pit, outhouse. And so whatever we did, whatever we had is what we brought with us. And at the time, you know, I didn't know any different. I was 6, 7, 8, 9, you know, on up. And I just thought that's what you did in the summer. You just dragged yourself out to the desert and you hung out. On looking back at it, I realized that, as I said, that's not what every family did. So I realized that it was a little different. But at the time, it was amazing. I mean, it still is. We, from the time we got to the campsite, we always had the same one every year because nobody else would do it. We just were completely free. We didn't have any kind of boundaries. We didn't have any sort of schedule. We, meaning the kids, you know, we had to help out because my mom was cooking for us and doing all that. And we had to do our normal kid chores, but we just did them in this wilderness area. And so during the day, after breakfast, we were just free to go wherever we wanted to in the desert. And my brother Ross very quickly figured out he's seven years older than me, and he very quickly figured out that this life sucked and so he wasn't into it. So after about the second or third year, he bailed and went to stay with my grandparents in New York. But my.

[18:24] JOSEPH HELD: I didn't know that. I always thought that you were all there together.

[18:26] MARY ARNETT: Now, Ross bailed and that gives you an insight into his character, right? Just kidding there. Anyway, but Mike stayed with us until he aged out.

[18:36] JOSEPH HELD: And so Mike being the oldest brother, is that right?

[18:39] MARY ARNETT: Pardon?

[18:41] JOSEPH HELD: Mike is your second oldest brother.

[18:42] MARY ARNETT: It goes Ross, Mike, me, and then all those little kids. And so Mike stayed with us and he was kind of like our leader. So after lunch or after breakfast, we would pack a lunch and then we would just go out and explore. And it was wild. I mean, there was literally cholla cactus, prickly pear, saguaro cactuses, some scrubby stuff, manzanilla bushes, things like that, and just dirt and rocks. And we would just go on all day hikes and just wander around and just notice what was there and hang out and we'd play. We'd, you know, build forts and stuff like that. And we would meet some people along the way and then we'd come back. The rule was you had to be back in time for dinner. Well, none of us had watches, so we had to figure out, I'm not kidding you, we figured out by where the sun was, what we had to do to get back in time to eat dinner and not get in trouble.

[19:47] JOSEPH HELD: So you were like pioneer homesteaders in 1957?

[19:51] MARY ARNETT: Kind of. Kind of. But I. You know, in a way, yeah. But we knew that we had a real house to go back to, so it wasn't like it was do or die.

[20:04] JOSEPH HELD: You know, that's one thing that always struck me. It seemed like it was almost like two entirely separate lives. You would bounce between half the year you were out, you know, 100 years living the life of a frontiersman from 100 years ago, and then you'd go back to normal 1950s America when it.

[20:18] MARY ARNETT: Was all over with, you know, And Joseph I think that could explain a lot about me. I mean, and I'm not. I'm not trying to be a smart ass, but it really was. There was a huge dichotomy in our lives because I really did not know how to do certain things that other kids knew how to do, like, you know, go to a pool party or hang out on the playground. I had no idea how you did stuff like that. When I was an adult, when I met your dad, one of our first dates was to go to a pool party. And I literally. I'm 20 years old and I had abs. Number one, I didn't own a bathing suit, so that was a little interesting. I had to go buy a bathing suit. And number two, I had absolutely no idea what you do at a pool party. And God knows I couldn't swim because we're on the desert, you know, there's no water on the desert. Remind me to tell you about how we would build dams. So I literally was just frozen in this cultural wasteland of unknowing what you do in a typical normal situation. But Your dad being your dad, God bless him, you know, he was so wonderful. I don't know if you remember or know what fizzies are, but they were these little discs that you would drop into water and they would effervesce. Like Alka Seltzer. Yeah. And they were colored and they were supposed to taste like fruit. They tasted like shit, but they were supposed to taste like soda. Well, he did not know this. I didn't. I'm sitting on the edge of the pool, got no idea what the hell is going on. And he had two fizzies, one in each hand. He dove into the pool and swam underwater with the fizzies in his hand. And there were these two streams of color coming out from behind him. And I was just gobsmacked. I just thought, oh, my God, that is the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life.

[22:28] JOSEPH HELD: And, yeah, it sounds really cool. It's like magic.

[22:30] MARY ARNETT: Yeah. I honestly think that's when I fell in love with him, is when he did that fizzy thing. It was just like, you know, no matter whatever happened between us, sense or whatever, I will always cherish and love him just for that.

[22:47] JOSEPH HELD: Oh, wow. I never heard that before.

[22:48] MARY ARNETT: Yeah, it was a. It was amazing. I still remember it. It was so vivid. Those streams of color, and he's just swimming underwater like some marvelous person.

[23:02] JOSEPH HELD: That's pretty cool. So let's go back a second. You said there was a story about some dams that you would make out in the desert?

[23:06] MARY ARNETT: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, this was huge. We always camp next to what they call a wash. And a wash in deserts are dry stream beds. They only run water intermittently, and they fill with water after the storms have come in the mountains and the water rushes down and it fills the wash. And the water may last for a week or three weeks or a month, but they're just cyclical streams. They're not year round. And every year our goal was to get to the campsite before storms hit, before the water came down, because, excuse me. That had something to do with the gestational cycle of the insects. So we would get there, the wash was dry. And the way you knew that the water was coming is you could literally hear it. It was almost. I don't know if you remember what tornadoes sound like, but. Yeah, I thought you would. It was almost like that, but the sky didn't get dark or anything. And it would have been dry as a bone where we are. But you could hear the rumble and the roar of the water.

[24:27] JOSEPH HELD: And so the Water just came at once. It wasn't just like a subtle build.

[24:31] MARY ARNETT: Up, new, new notes. Do you remember in oh Brother, Where Art Thou? The scene where the reservoir filled up and the water came crashing in right as the guys were gonna get lynched and everything blew up and the cow was floating by in the cabin and all that? Do you remember that scene? It was really similar to that.

[24:52] JOSEPH HELD: Interesting.

[24:53] MARY ARNETT: And so this wall of water, probably about 6ft, would just come rushing down the wash. And you could hear it. You knew at least half an hour, 40 minutes beforehand that it was coming. So we were super excited. The water's coming, the water's coming. And we would all stand around watching it. And it was like there was tumbling rocks and big branches and parts of trees. I didn't see a cow. Never once saw a cow floating down, you know, and I was a little disappointed about that. But, you know, you can't have everything in your life. And once the big rush of water came by, then we would go out and we would build our dam because that was the only way that we could hold on to the water long enough to play in. So when it was a whole group effort, all the kids built the dam. The big kids did the big rocks, the little kids, blah, blah, blah. And we had this dam. And at the most, at the most, at our best dam building endeavors, we had 18 inches of water, but yet we had water. Well, I have a scar on my left foot that's about 3 inches long from where my brother Mike and I were carrying a big rock. And it slipped out of his hands and landed on my foot, which caused a lot of pain and a lot of blood and stuff. But my mom looked at it and she was kind of the sort of mother. Of course, we're a million miles from nowhere. We're 19 miles from anything. And she.

[26:37] JOSEPH HELD: That was something I was wondering about is what would happen if something major happened.

[26:41] MARY ARNETT: Well, yeah, Eileen got bitten or stung by a scorpion. That was really interesting. We had to rush her to the hospital. And she was not out. She was one of our graduate students. And every night before you went to bed, you had to check all your bedding for scorpions and all that, you know, various vermin that would crawl in. And you always had to tap out your shoes to make sure there was no creatures in them. Well, she forgot to do that. And she felt something crawling on her and she picked it up and it was a scorpion, and it was a little one. And they're the nastiest. It stung her. So in the Middle of the night, my dad had to drive her into the hospital. And by the time he got there and it's all nasty roads. It's not tar roads or anything. It's. It's just washed out gravel roads. And by the time he got there, she was unconscious and. Yeah, yeah, she was in the hospital for two days with that. So, yeah, there were some interesting things. One time, yeah, one time my brother Joseph fire ants are all over the place there and we hate fire ants. And one of the things I loved about my dad was that he didn't seem to think that there was any problem with children handling stuff like gasoline or cyanide. And so he. We would pour gasoline down the red ant hills and light them on fire, which was. Oh my God, that was so much fun. You pour gasoline down and then throw in the match. You had to throw the match in the right way because otherwise it would suffocate and nothing would happen. So my brother Joseph threw the match in and of course we had this. Big guys are aflame and all the red ants are just boiling out. What we didn't know is that they have escape tunnels. We learned it, but we didn't know it at the time. And so Joseph was standing on the, on this, the mound and all the ants start coming out. They're not coming out through the fire. No, they're coming out through all their tunnels. Where is he? Right there. And he probably had several hundred ants just all of a sudden crawling over him and stinging him and, you know, biting him. And of course we're all trying to get the ants off of him. And then my sister Barb, she's like, I'm not doing that. There's ants all over me, you know. So we finally got all the ants off of him, but he was pretty messed up for a day or so because of all. And you know, he would never light another anthill on fire. He said he learned his lesson.

[29:24] JOSEPH HELD: Probably a good lesson to learn at that point.

[29:27] MARY ARNETT: Yeah, yeah.

[29:29] JOSEPH HELD: In addition to playing with gasoline, that you played with cyanide a lot. I remember hearing one thing you've said time and time again is that when growing up, you didn't know that other kids didn't have their own cyanide box. What is that all about?

[29:44] MARY ARNETT: Yeah. And that again, that's where I'm. And I still struggle with this to this day, not really quite understanding what that cultural dichotomy was. But cyanide was the preferred method for killing the insects. And there's a specific way that you Go about making your kill jars. Now, huge disclaimer here. My dad was incredibly responsible, incredibly aware of the safety and the need to, to make sure that he was not endangering the lives of his children or others or anything. But he also had a really strong sense that if you teach somebody how to handle something responsibly, they're going to do it. So we learned how to make our own cyanide kill jars. And the way you start out is you put a layer of crystal cyanide in the bottom. Now, I'm sure he had to get that through some sort of regulated means. I don't think he went to CVS and bought cyanide, but anyway. Yeah, well, it was the 50s, so maybe, I mean, let's look at BBC. Yeah, all right, all right. So anyway, and then he would put the cyanide. We put the cyanide crystals in, then a layer of sawdust, then a layer of plaster of paris. We each had our own jar and he taught us how to use it and how to go up to the, the wherever, whatever we were collecting, how to get the insect into it and then close it down really tight. And I didn't know that other kids didn't know how to do this. And so when I was in school and I would be talking about my cyanide jar or something, the teachers would get a little worked up.

[31:37] JOSEPH HELD: I could see how that might raise an eyebrow.

[31:38] MARY ARNETT: Yeah, yeah. And so it's just stuff like that, you know, just things that to me were typical and normal that weren't for a lot of kids.

[31:49] JOSEPH HELD: So you mentioned at one point that you learned how to drive on that old one ton truck. I think I remember being a story of you actually taking your driver's license exam.

[31:59] MARY ARNETT: Yeah, yeah. It was the only vehicle we had at the time that was available and I had to take my driving test because we were getting ready to go out west again and he needed another driver. So it was the old one ton truck with the Shasta trailer mounted on the back and it was a manual shift. And so in order to get the clutch fully engaged and get the gear shift over into the highest gears, I had to stand up because I couldn't reach the clutch pedal and the. So I learned how to shift the gears kind of half standing and stuff. So we took that down to the, to the driving license place and at that point you had to do it on the road. You know, you didn't have a closed course like they do now. So the driving examiner took one look at it and we went, we got in the truck and we went around the block. And then he said, do you know how to parallel park this thing? And I said, yeah. So I parallel parked it. And he goes, okay, you passed. Yeah, yeah. And then, I don't know, I was 16 or so and then I was driving one of the vehicles out west. So yeah, that was.

[33:22] JOSEPH HELD: Makes sense. I mean, I guess that's the next step. Just learn how to drive and then immediately go completely across the country out in the middle of nowhere.

[33:29] MARY ARNETT: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it made sense at the time. Is that how you learned to drive?

[33:35] JOSEPH HELD: Not quite exactly. I learned on that old. I think it was the Chevette that we had at the time.

[33:40] MARY ARNETT: Oh my God, the magic car.

[33:44] JOSEPH HELD: One thing I find interesting in hearing all these stories when I was growing up, I remember Grandpa Arnett, your dad, being a very, very stern, sort of by the book, you know, do not cross him type of man. Then hearing all these stories. It's interesting seeing how sort of carefree and just kind of off the wall he seemed to be. How did growing up, how did that sort of difference play out for you? Am I interpreting that correctly?

[34:13] MARY ARNETT: Yeah, it seems like when you're out.

[34:14] JOSEPH HELD: West, you were just kind of left to do whatever you wanted. But then when you were back home, it was very by the book and very strict again.

[34:20] MARY ARNETT: Yeah. And maybe not quite because we were pretty much always left to our own devices, but maybe he felt a little more constrained when we were back in so called normal land instead of bizarro world because he was, you know, a little more strict. But yeah, he had a real funny side to him. He would pull pranks and do things and just. He was also very driven though, and he was very focused on what he. What he did for his work, for his work and his research. So I think a lot of that no nonsense sense that you got from him, especially toward the end of his life, is more that he felt like he had so much more to do and he was running out of time to do it.

[35:13] JOSEPH HELD: Okay, that makes sense. He was very focused. I remember as a child, yeah. He came across. I remember there being a story of him cutting the TV cord.

[35:23] MARY ARNETT: Yes, tell me about that. We were sitting in the living room and we were all fighting. It was probably six of us and we're sitting there. We only had one TV. It was probably a little 13 inch piece of crap TV. And we were fighting over what show to watch and he was in the study and trying to get something done and he got really mad because we were fighting. So he came out with a big giant pair of scissors and just cut the cord. Just cut it. It was plugged into the wall, cut the cord, turned around and walked back into a study. Didn't say a word. And we're all just sitting there, you know, on the couch, like, oh, my God. Well, I'm not kidding you. That TV sat like that with the cord cut, cord still in the wall for probably about a month. My mom finally said, well, I think it's about time we get rid of that. So. And then we just didn't have a TV for a while because they just never got around to getting a tv.

[36:23] JOSEPH HELD: So, yeah, I mean, that kind of settles that, I guess.

[36:25] MARY ARNETT: Yeah, it really did.

[36:29] JOSEPH HELD: So there was another thing that you mentioned at one point when we were preparing for this. There was a story about old Ruby Road. What was that all about?

[36:36] MARY ARNETT: Ruby, Arizona, is an old, old gold mining town. And it was abandoned. The gold mines were abandoned many, many years before we ever got to the desert. And we didn't know anything about it. But one time we had to go into town, probably to get groceries or go to church or something. And there had been a really bad storm. And it washed out a good section of the normal road that we took. The Pena Blanca to Nogales road had been washed out. So my dad said, well, that's okay. On the map it shows another road. They call it the old Ruby Road. We'll just go that way. So we all pile into whatever we're doing and we drive. And I remember it was terrifying because there was. It was just. It was just this old gully wash that we were driving down. We finally got into town. We got to church, where we always went, and the priest said, how'd you guys get to town? We heard that the Nogales Road was washed out. And my dad said, oh, we just took the old Ruby Road. And the priest said, nobody's driven on that road in five years. And so my dad said, well, okay, but here we are. So it was just this old gushed out road that dad decided we had to go to church. So we went to church on the.

[38:08] JOSEPH HELD: I guess he proved them wrong.

[38:09] MARY ARNETT: Yeah. Yeah, apparently. And now I guess Ruby is a tourist attraction.

[38:14] JOSEPH HELD: Oh, is it?

[38:14] MARY ARNETT: Yeah. And Pena Blanca, they took our lead and they dammed up whatever the water source was. And there's a reservoir there now.

[38:24] JOSEPH HELD: Oh, wow.

[38:25] MARY ARNETT: Yeah. I've never wanted to go back because I don't want to see it as a reservoir with, you know, power boats jamming around on it.

[38:33] JOSEPH HELD: Yeah. And I guess that's. That's kind of a good, good question now is how. How do you think that would be to go back and visit those areas now so many years later? Is it completely different? Is that something you'd ever want to do or see how it's changed or anything like that?

[38:47] MARY ARNETT: There's part of me that really wants to go back, and my siblings and I, you know, your aunts and uncles have talked about it maybe having a family reunion in Pena Blanca. And there's part of me that. That just doesn't, you know, I just want to keep my memories.

[39:09] JOSEPH HELD: Yeah. So with. With everything that you. That you had growing up and shifting around and all of that, is there any particular, I don't know, way that you think that that's influenced who you are as a person growing up, hearing all these stories? I mean, I know that's kind of a silly question. In a way, all these stories just really drove home just how unique of an upbringing that you and your whole family has and how that made you such a unique person, and then in turn, how that really kind of made, I think, me pretty unique person. But I'm wondering, like, looking back on it all, is that something you'd want to do again? Would you choose to have those experiences? Would you want a more sort of traditional upbringing? Like, how do you feel about all that?

[39:55] MARY ARNETT: I think that's a really good question. If I were younger and you had asked me that, I would have said I absolutely 100% wanted the typical suburban pool party upbringing. But looking back on it now, absolutely not. I wouldn't have changed a thing. I think it gave me a sense of resilience and a sense of strength that I wouldn't have ever had otherwise. And I really think that's what helped me raise you, was because I knew even though I was doing most of it alone, I knew I could do it because I had always done, you know, I figured out how to do things and, you know, I don't know. Yeah, I really. I wouldn't have trade. I wouldn't have changed a thing.

[40:52] JOSEPH HELD: Yeah. It seems like those lessons that you learned really stuck with you and kind of carried you through life throughout everything else that came.

[40:58] MARY ARNETT: Yeah. And I'll tell you something, a really funny story about one time when a bunch of my girlfriends and I were camping on Assateague island just two or three years ago. And we always go into the walk in campsites. You know, you and I did that one year in the walk in campsites yeah.

[41:19] JOSEPH HELD: Yeah, that's great.

[41:20] MARY ARNETT: And it's super fun. You have to truck all your crap up across the dunes and things. And so each person who was going to do it had a responsibility. And Ann, her only responsibility was to bring the charcoal. And so that's what she did. She brought the charcoal. But I know we were all proud of her for that. But Ann did not know that charcoal lighter comes with charcoal and that you also. If you're responsible for the charcoal, that means you're also responsible for the lighter. And she didn't bring the lighter. She didn't know she was supposed to. So everybody's freaking out and going, what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? We don't have any. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And so it didn't even dawn on me. I just built a fire. Like, well, here's what you do. Here's how you build a fire, and then we'll just add the charcoal to it, and pretty soon we'll have the charcoal burning, and then guess what? We can cook our chicken, bitches. We're fine.

[42:23] JOSEPH HELD: Oh, it's great.

[42:24] MARY ARNETT: Yeah. So, yeah. But I have a question for you.

[42:29] JOSEPH HELD: Okay.

[42:30] MARY ARNETT: Apparently. And you're not the only one. I've had this validated from other sources. Apparently, there's a cadre of people who feel like I'm not a typical person in so many regards. So what was that like having me as a mom?

[42:47] JOSEPH HELD: Looking back, I think it was pretty great. Obviously, you know, there's highs and lows with anybody's life, but it gave me a lot of insight and experiences I wouldn't have had otherwise. There's a million stories that I'm sure I could tell in another iteration of this. Oh, my God.

[43:05] MARY ARNETT: Yeah.

[43:05] JOSEPH HELD: But overall, I feel like everything that you kind of internalized and experience played well into how I then got to experience life. And I'm really thankful for that. And it's really worked out pretty great, in my opinion. So.

[43:18] MARY ARNETT: Yeah, I think so. I think it's been a good partnership so far.

[43:22] JOSEPH HELD: Yeah. I have to agree.

[43:25] MARY ARNETT: Yeah. I was having happy hour with some of my friends yesterday in my house because we're all fully vaccinated. Yay. And somehow we got on the topic of bottle rockets and the time you called me at work and said, mom, have the cops called you? Do you remember this story?

[43:42] JOSEPH HELD: Oh, yeah, I remember that story.

[43:44] MARY ARNETT: So. And I said, no, honey, no. No cops have called me. And you said, okay, that's good, and hung up. Well, of course, I came straight home to find out that you and Rob Council. Oops. Use his last name. I don't want to incriminate him. Sorry. Rob had been shooting bottle rockets into the can factory. Do you remember that?

[44:07] JOSEPH HELD: Oh, yeah.

[44:07] MARY ARNETT: Oh my God, it was so funny. But then the upshot of it was the thing that pissed me off the most was that you guys used up all my bottle rockets. That was the thing that just really.

[44:19] JOSEPH HELD: You shouldn't have left them out.

[44:20] MARY ARNETT: I know, but it just frosted me and I still, I still kind of hold just the tiniest little bit of resentment that my bottle rockets were gone.

[44:35] JOSEPH HELD: Well, next time I see you, I'll buy you some bottle rockets.

[44:38] MARY ARNETT: Okay, Maybe that could be my Mother's Day present. But again, here's where the reality of my life crashes up against other people's lives. Because I'm telling this story, it's a funny story, it really is. And I'm telling it to my lady friends at happy hour last night. And the question here's what they took from it is why did you have bottle rockets? You know, And I'm like, why not? Why wouldn't you have bottle rockets? So in some way that sums it up, I guess.

[45:10] JOSEPH HELD: Yeah, I guess so.

[45:16] MARY ARNETT: I don't know. One last thing I did want to say, and it's just a little another story, but I have to say it because this made such an impression on me when I was growing up.

[45:27] JOSEPH HELD: Okay.

[45:28] MARY ARNETT: We were wandering around out in the desert, Mike and all of us little kids, and we came across an old gentleman who was walking along just our paths just happened to intersect. And he had on a white button down shirt, a pair of khaki pants, and some really old wingtip shoes. And the leather was all cracked. And you could tell that these shoes were really, really old. He'd had them forever. And so we got talking with him. He's just an older gentleman. This was probably maybe 1959 or so. And he had a little cabin that he had built way out in the middle of absolutely nowhere in the Coronado National Forest. And so there was the 50s, we didn't think anything of it. We went back to his cabin with him and hung out. And on a little stand he had a picture of him as a young man. And standing next to him was Pancho Villa. And this guy had, in his 20s and back in the 20s, when Pancho Villa was doing his raids into the Southwest, he, he rode with Pancho Villa's gang and was one of Pancho Villa's outlaws. But the last time Pancho Villa did a raid, this guy stayed behind, never went back to Mexico. And we had his name, it was Val Kaysen. And I didn't think much of it. We'd visit him, you know, every year we'd go out and go hang out with Val. And then one year we went and he was nowhere around. His cabin was all abandoned and he had died that previous winter. So I didn't think anything more about it. And then just recently, I was beginning to wonder if I had made it all up or not. So I did a Google search, and he was a real person, this Val Kaysen. So I didn't make it up. He died in 1963. And I just remember so many times sitting in his cabin or walking with him along some trail and just. He didn't talk about Pancho Villa so much, but he just talked about stuff, the things in the desert and the way of life, essentially. And I would have to say that Val Kaysen is one of the most influential people that I ever met. Yeah. So I just wanted to give Val a shout out.

[48:08] JOSEPH HELD: Well, I'm sure he appreciates it. Well, that's an incredible story. I love hearing about all these things and just the experiences that you had. So thank you so much for sharing that with me today. Well, Joseph it's fantastic to hear it all together.

[48:23] MARY ARNETT: Thank you so much for asking me. When you asked me. Like I said, it really touched my heart because I never really thought that anyone would want to hear about me.

[48:38] JOSEPH HELD: Well, of course. Of course I do. And I'm really glad to be able to share it with you.

[48:45] MARY ARNETT: Me, too. It was a good thing.

[48:47] JOSEPH HELD: Yeah.

[48:51] MARY ARNETT: So there's.