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Up Your Average is the “no nonsense” podcast made for interesting people who think differently. Learn to navigate your life with unconventional wisdom by tuning in to Keith Tyner and Doug Shrieve every week.
I think intimacy is a gift of life. And the more intimacy you have with people, I just think life that that's invaluable even compared to the wealth we help you with.
Caleb:Welcome to the Up Your Average podcast, where Keith and Doug give no nonsense advice to level up your life. So buckle up and listen closely to Up Your Average.
Keith:Doug, here we are. It's Thanksgiving time.
Doug:I'm thankful for this basement. Was this your idea?
Keith:This idea was a combination of people, I think. I think I had the idea we needed some more space. I don't remember if I was talking to John or Micah, but whoever I was talking to, they said we could do something nice down here. And it turned out really nice, gave us some more office space, gave us some space to do podcasts in different format. And it's quiet down here, so you can even take a nap over here if you need to.
Doug:Yeah, I think it's the getaway space at Gimbal. We work in an open concept facility, and sometimes for the introverts in our office, it's nice to be able to get away and recharge the batteries without me making requests all the time.
Keith:That's beautiful. Well, I thought that we'd just do a special holiday edition of Up Your Average, and I realize a lot of times that this meme might be a part of it. But when you get around the table with family and friends, sometimes things don't go the way you want. So I thought it'd be important to remind you to don't forget to bring up politics at Thanksgiving so you can save money for Christmas this year. And so so
Doug:oh my goodness. That would be terrible, wouldn't it?
Keith:Oh, yeah. And this is what I found. Let me see if I Yeah.
Doug:I didn't grow up with that. And, I'm thankful for those who went before me that set the, example. Yeah. Did you say bring up politics?
Keith:Yeah, I did. Now my
Doug:grandma, this was I've probably shared this before. This is my great grandma. During Christmas, she sat me and my two cousins down, and she gave us the talk. Great grandma gave us the talk.
Keith:And what was the talk? The talk.
Doug:Like birds and the bees. And this was Christmas? This was Christmas Eve, my great grandma, my sweet great grandma. And it's one of my family's favorite memories. My dad loves to bring this up, and I love to hear about it because my dad interrupted her when she was in like I mean, she was describing things.
Doug:And my dad comes in and he says to his grandma, he says, Grandma, I think we need to cut Social Security. And then she just went on a tyrant about that. So thanks to my dad for stepping in and helping my cousins and I out.
Keith:Well, and that's really when we're talking about conflict management and changing the topic at holidays. If somebody is going with the politics, you can switch it to a good question. And maybe that's what we can bring out today are some good questions that maybe you might think of. And, you know, as I was prepping for this, I thought of Dion Warwick. How how's that name?
Keith:You know that one, blast from the past?
Doug:No. Warwick, tell tell me.
Keith:She she was a musician in the sixties and seventies, and she had a song, What the world needs now is Love, Sweet Love. Okay.
Doug:That's not what I was thinking.
Keith:Yeah. Kind of a like the seventies kinda hippies thing anyway. And then the other thing that came to mind to me was the nineteen seventies. You guys can go you can show this family on the YouTube that during the holidays, it was a Coca Cola commercial is I'd like to buy the world a Coke. Yeah.
Keith:And it helped them sing in perfect harmony. And I think that's the essence of what I was wanting to talk about today. How do we bring harmony to a conversation? How do we bring something to make whatever is going on when you're gathering together a special memorable time. And I I was gonna show a picture of a Christmas tree, and I can't control this thing in Caleb Bluff.
Keith:So if he happens down here before we finish, we'll show that picture. But it was a picture of what a Christmas tree looked like in simpler times. And so let's just have a conversation here and think about 1980 Dung Shreve Christmas or not Christmas, Thanksgiving Day. What did 1980 Thanksgiving Day look like for you?
Doug:Yeah. I appreciate you asking that because it brought back some good memories. We would go over to my mom's, mom and dad's, and, it's not the house that we always hung out with. It seemed like on the regular, like a regular weekly occurrence, we were going to my dad's parents. We were hanging out with them all the time.
Doug:And so to go over to my mom's parents, that was a little more out of the ordinary. Was that more formal? It was more formal. And what's so cool about that is just thinking about all the lives that were there, and the majority are still alive today.
Keith:All right, let's bring forward to 2024. What did Thanksgiving twenty twenty four for you look like?
Doug:It's the best because we have full control over it.
Keith:So if I have control, it's all good. Have the perception of control. What's my
Doug:friend Michelle say? Control is an illusion. I think that's what she says, I love that. But yeah, we have it at our house and I just love it because my wife, she loves to plan, prepare, and host. And so the more, the merrier.
Doug:And I love to smoke a turkey.
Keith:I love it. I love it. How about you? So 1970 would be my 1980. So 1970, we would get up and we would go to my grandmother and grandfather Huynh's probably 1,200 square foot house.
Keith:There's five of us. My cousin's family had four of them. So it's at nine, eleven people. The adults would sit at the dining room table. The kids would sit at a card table We or card
Doug:still break those out.
Keith:Yeah. And grandma can, she couldn't cook a turkey to save your life, man. I didn't know turkey wasn't just dry and chokey, you know? And so that's what it looked like. But we would rush through the mill.
Keith:We'd all load up in cars and drive to Robert Stadium in Evansville every single year and spend the next three hours watching a circus every Thanksgiving Day.
Doug:Okay. Cool. Thanksgiving Day Circus.
Keith:Yep. Every day every year. That was that was 1970 for me. Then 2024 Like elephants and everything? Clowns, elephants.
Keith:Do you like the circus? I mean, I've been to literally 20 circuses, and I don't know how many you need to go to in a lifetime. 20 is probably a good number for me.
Doug:The things you can learn about a guy. I mean, we've been working together how long? I didn't know you've been to so many circuses.
Keith:Yeah. I've been to a lot of them. I don't I like I I don't mind going to one, but I don't I'm good. I'm good for I was just kinda like New York City when I was there a few weeks ago. I'm like, I'm probably good.
Keith:The rest of my life, I probably got enough of that in me.
Doug:New York City, Evansville Circus. I see the pair no.
Keith:So so 2024, we just I probably smoked a turkey. Yeah. A good smoked turkey. I love it. Yeah.
Keith:So we we I I wrote in last month's Anchor about a dining room table, and to me, life doesn't get any more rich than the conversations that happen there. And sometimes ours are full contact, but I think the main rule around the table for us is keep it kind. Like, if you can keep it kind, we can have some really fun conversations.
Doug:Yeah. What about I can tell you this in 1980. From my view, I don't know what it was like from any adult's view, I would have been five, and I would just say from five to whatever teenage years, I remember it being peaceful. Yeah. And I'm really thankful for that.
Doug:We do try and create a peaceful environment at our house. We've always got sports on, there's always some great football games on, but I think keeping it peaceful is the name of the game.
Keith:And you can do that by choosing what questions to ask. Like you can, if you cause stress, you can ask a different question to redirect it, right? Yeah. So here's an idea that I had that I just realized in the last few weeks that when I would go to grandmother and grandfather Yuen's house I think I called him grandma. I don't know.
Keith:I don't remember which whether it's formal like that or not. When I would go to their house, sitting at the table there was somebody who was alive, who knew somebody who had been in the civil war.
Doug:Dang. Okay. Right? Wow.
Keith:That was my Thanksgiving table in 1970. My grandparents had to know people that were alive or involved in the civil war. And so I don't know what that would be today. It would probably be somebody it would be somebody who that knew somebody that fought in the World War II, and you probably will have somebody at the table or know somebody at the table that fought in Vietnam. They don't tend to like to talk about it.
Keith:But if they do, I think it's worth your while to ask them, What did you learn from that? How did that impact you? What would you tell me about getting along with people from that? So let's talk about holiday traditions. It could be any holiday.
Doug:You don't like holiday traditions. I do. I do.
Keith:I just don't lean into them.
Doug:Same one that you like.
Keith:I like Christmas tree light watching. Okay. Yeah, you do. Yeah.
Doug:And you get popcorn. Yeah. Yeah. We go to the we
Keith:go buy the movie theater popcorn.
Doug:Yeah. Keith always shakes up traditions. That's why I put
Keith:him on the spot. Yeah. I I think if you if they become like a god to you, which I've been involved in that, it can get really stressful for people. But if you can just if you hang on to Christmas or any tradition loosely, yeah, if you can hang on to it loosely, I think it's a blast.
Doug:Yeah. Well, you've caused me to think about the traditions.
Keith:Well, we did at the Tyner House, and please don't call child protective services. We had a thing called Wedgie Time for the for my kids. And they would go throw on eight pairs of underwear, and we would start singing VeggieTales. You can
Doug:take the boy out of Evansville, but you can't take the Evansville out of the boy.
Keith:Oh, yeah. The kids, they would run. I would sit on the surf on the sofa and they would run circles and we, I'd sit, we'd sing wedgie time wedgie time wedgie time. And they try to get by me and I try to just, then eventually this is, you guys are gonna appreciate that. If the underwear got torn off, because he didn't wear about four pairs of underwear.
Keith:If it got torn off, it got hung on the aluminum foil tree. So that was a I don't know if you wanna adopt this one in your guys' tradition, but it was a tiner to those.
Doug:Well, maybe having some bizarre traditions is good. I mean, if that's gonna come up around the Thanksgiving or the Christmas table, like in ten years, that's gonna age.
Keith:I mean, that was one of the questions I was gonna ask her. Plenty of family things that have happened, and that just evolved. It wasn't something because your kids didn't say veg, they didn't probably watch VeggieTales.
Doug:Watched the Little VeggieTales, but nah. Yeah.
Keith:Any traditions that come to mind for Thanksgiving?
Doug:No, not really, but I can tell you the best Thanksgiving ever. The best Thanksgiving ever was we went to New York City to watch the Thanksgiving day parade. And I hear people say stuff like, oh, I would love to do that. Or I love to watch the parade on TV. And it's kind of like your RV trips when you took off and you did some big stuff.
Doug:People think, Oh, that would be nice. I would like to. And I would encourage you, if you have a Thanksgiving Day parade dream, you just gotta go do it. You gotta make it happen. And so maybe it's next year you make it happen.
Doug:But that will forever be a highlight for us. Watching our son march, that was the excuse to go there. And then my friend Diane, who owns a coffee shop, she says, she challenged me. She said, Hey, Doug, are you guys gonna go watch your son march in the Macy's Day Parade? I was like, I don't know, Diane, that's pretty expensive.
Doug:I don't know. And she goes, Well, you've got to do it. And so I wanna encourage you. If you've got something like that on your radar, you've got to do it.
Keith:And and those of you that are even more ambitious than Doug, I bet you can get a hotel room in Evansville, get you some hottie shrine circus tickets this Thanksgiving day. Is it still going on? It does. I think. I I've it's been decades.
Keith:So alright. We gotta we're gonna take a lot of you guys' time, but I thought we'd just throw out some good conversation topics and do them lightning round to help our friends that they're trying to find some interesting things. So So start date, when can the Christmas tree go up?
Doug:Oh yeah, this one, it should not be up now. I mean, if your Christmas tree is up now, you need to call your counselor because it needs to go up. I mean, you gotta wait until at least the day after Thanksgiving.
Keith:Tommy Tyner, hope you're watching. How about this, turkey, ham? What's Thanksgiving Day protein? Well, I mean, what do you think? Hey, I'm flexible, man.
Keith:You really? Yeah, we're good.
Doug:I am not flexible.
Keith:Yeah, I am. We are going don't fire me over this. Don't think that I'm making too much money. We're going filet mignon this year.
Doug:I've heard of people doing that. I've heard of people like beef tenderloin stuff
Keith:Yeah. Like No,
Doug:you can't do that. I mean, gotta go turkey, and then you gotta go ham on Christmas.
Keith:So you're saying I'm praying to little plastic baby Jesus. Is that what you're saying?
Doug:Look, if you need to order Chinese later or pizza later, that's fine. But, yeah, you gotta go turkey on Thanksgiving.
Keith:All right. Next thing. Were the
Doug:pilgrims eating were they eating beef tenderloin?
Keith:I don't know. Where did that go?
Doug:They didn't have those hats on and stuff.
Keith:I don't know.
Doug:Did were eating turkey?
Keith:Did you guys ever make the turkey with your hand? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Y'all do that with your kids, your grandkids this Thanksgiving.
Keith:Here we go. One lesson your mom taught you.
Doug:Like for the holidays?
Keith:No. Listen, we're going just conversation here or anything.
Doug:Oh, the biggest lesson my mom taught me is you can break through. So your family might have a certain way of doing things you can change
Keith:it up. My mom taught me to have a positive mental attitude. She was intentional in teaching me that. And one thing your dad taught you.
Doug:My dad taught me to be frugal.
Keith:My dad taught me how to put a worm on a hook. He taught me a lot of things. They both taught me things, but all right, let's do this. Have you ever worked a sixty hour week? Yes.
Keith:All right.
Doug:Plenty of them.
Keith:All right. Any of them popped to mind for you?
Doug:Yeah. I mean, I was talking with Caroline about this last week. When we made our move from LPL to Fidelity, I worked two weeks back to back over eighty hours, and it almost killed me.
Keith:I worked sixty hour weeks the whole first year of my marriage, and it literally almost killed me. I went into depression at the end of it, but that was 50 of them in a row, and it was just not healthy. Yeah. How about this? What's the wildest job or most unpredictable job you've had?
Doug:Oh, man. I worked at Overhead Door, a factory in Hartford City, and factory life's a different animal.
Keith:I did moving and storage and was hired by the city of Evansville to move projects, move the people in the project stuff from point A to point B. That was a lot. It taught me a lot of a pain for the When have you eaten at a restaurant alone, and what was that like?
Doug:Goodness. Besides like a fast food? Yeah, like you had to sit down. Boy, I don't know, Keith. I'm sure I've done it.
Doug:I don't remember. Think Do that you have an experience?
Keith:I think that ties into another question I've got is when did you first become the really you, the current
Doug:I mean, I went and saw the Foo Fighters alone. That's pretty desperate.
Keith:Yeah. No. I I did it in Washington, D. C. At a high power restaurant, like a five star restaurant.
Keith:It was probably in the Before a cell phone. Yeah. Yeah. I I I was sitting at a table just trying to make like like, there I'm sure there were politicians all around me. You have a book?
Keith:Nope. I just sat there. Yeah. I can my kids know I can be stone faced awkward, and it didn't bother me a bit. I'm like I'm like, I'm gonna enjoy that.
Keith:You know, that's one where they drop the bread and a little something. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I would encourage you to do that.
Keith:Like like to to go out and do awkward things is really one of the most healthy things you can do because it lets you be more of you. All right. A place tied to your childhood that no longer exists.
Doug:There was this place called One Accord. My wife and I love this place. Mexican restaurant. You raise a little flag, they bring you sopapillas.
Keith:The hill was the place for me. Like we lived on a street called Lombard in Evansville, and if you went probably a couple 100 yards down in the backyard of one of the duplexes was a hill, and that's where we would go sledding and everything, and they'd brought in a the the the dirt moving equipment, and the hill is no longer a hill. It is a flat ground, but all the all the roughhouses, and we go rolling down the hill, throwing people down the hill, it does not exist.
Doug:If it's still called the hill.
Keith:No. It's they Oh, the flatlands I would imagine.
Doug:When they drive by. I
Keith:bet anybody my age would call it the hill. It doesn't exist. How about A Moment From Your Past Most People Wouldn't Know?
Doug:Man, you're asking really good questions. Well, was a pretty adventurous snow skier, and that adventure is no more because of the frugal thing. It costs a lot of money to go snow skiing, but I was at one time a very adventurous snow skier.
Keith:Yeah, a moment from my past. Sometime, you guys can go on the Internet and look it up. Was sitting in a history class. My desk shook, and it was a historical moment in Evansville. There was a guy named Ray Ryan who lived on the street I lived on, and the mafia blew him up.
Keith:And that was a moment in my past that nobody
Doug:It's one you don't forget.
Keith:Yeah. No. It left a mark. It was a it was a it taught me about stuff. I had to read about him and figure out what went on.
Keith:I'm like, wow. That happened here. But, like, anything that's ever happened in history happened somewhere. Right. So you you have it there.
Keith:So how about is there a is there like a a mystery or a secret in your family that your family's kept secret, like, amongst each other? I'll go first on this. There there was a piece of steak that was missing off of a plate, and nobody claimed to eat it. And and everybody blamed everybody. I still do.
Keith:I think if I bring this up tomorrow at the table, they'll argue over who ate the piece of steak.
Doug:Your, like, your your kids are
Keith:These are my kids.
Doug:Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Keith:I don't know if you have any of those, but they're kind of fun.
Doug:Oh, that's that's really great. If you don't know, I suppose you're the one. And so maybe there's a secret being told about me. All right.
Keith:So that one's a little hard question for you to throw out there too. Let me throw a couple others out here. How about a forgotten childhood trend that you used to do?
Doug:Give me an example, you go.
Keith:Well, when we were kids, we played Foursquare.
Doug:Okay.
Keith:That happened almost every day.
Doug:Yeah, that's a solid one. Man, we just rode bikes everywhere. Me and Gabe Green, we rode our bikes everywhere with no supervision. Think if we could,
Keith:maybe if we could, around the tables this holiday season, encourage the youngsters to do those things, whatever they are, because that's where you build some-
Doug:Gotta be careful though, they want e bikes, and
Keith:those are expensive. No e bikes. We're talking TPN people, how about that?
Doug:That's a good one.
Keith:That's a good one. How about an outdated rule your parents insisted on? Gosh. I'll tell you one. For me, it was no conduct marks on your report card.
Keith:And when I hear about schools, they say, the conduct's not that big a deal. In our day, conduct at school was a big deal.
Doug:Yeah. I imagine so. I mean, I've got all kinds of silly dad rules like, hey, turn off the lights type stuff.
Keith:Oh, yeah. That's classic. How about a story you can't believe happened in your lifetime? Like something you did that you can't believe that happened.
Doug:Man, Keith, you're asking a lot of really good questions. I like what you're doing here, but my brain's so slow.
Keith:All right. I'll go first. In 2009, I had a conference in Phoenix, and it was supposed to be like four or five days, and then I found out there was a father daughter dance, and it got short, cut and short to, like, either thirty six or forty eight hours. And there was a lot of things I needed to do out there. One was hang out with your friend Franz, and Mhmm.
Keith:And everything just got compacted real short. And and amazing things happened in those thirty six hours. I couldn't believe that happened. But I was sitting on a wall just thinking, man, I can't believe what all has happened in this, like, thirty six hours. And this crippled old man came walking probably less than 10 feet away from me.
Keith:And I looked up at him and thought, man, I wouldn't trade my life for your life or anything, and it was Muhammad Ali. That was the end of an amazing thirty six hours. And I'm like, wouldn't trade it.
Doug:Say that question again. That's a good one.
Keith:A story you can't believe happened.
Doug:A story you can't believe happened. Yeah. Man, I've I've I've got several of those. We've touched on one in one of these podcasts. But I I think a a twenty twenty five story I can't believe is happening is we are friends with Stan Weinstein.
Doug:Yeah. I can't believe that happened.
Keith:I think, like, if you're gonna talk with family around the table this holiday
Doug:season That's a great question.
Keith:Yeah. You should encourage them to make those kind of things happen. Like, we interviewed a Thunderbird pilot a couple weeks ago. Mhmm. Like, who can do that?
Keith:Think you can do anything you want with just a little bit of encouragement, right? Yeah. All right, here you go. This one, who in the past do you wish you'd ask more questions?
Doug:Well, I think my mom's dad, I wish I would have asked him some more questions. He was a little intimidating. He was a World War II vet, little intimidating, and one of my sons just thinks the world of him, which I think is so cool. And one of my sons, who's never met him, grandpa died when I was 14 or 15, but one of my sons asks great questions about his great grandpa. So my mom can answer some of these, but I wish I would've done some of that.
Keith:My answer would be the same. It'd be my mom's dad. Well, he may be my grandmother both, I don't know who was the instigator, but they put a grocery store in the food desert in the inner city of Evansville, think in the late 1940s, when racism was something that nobody tell you really If you're my age, you understand what it probably was, but for him to do that was just revolutionary. And he never really got any publicity about it, but it was a big deal. It was a big deal.
Keith:I'd say let's throw a couple more out there. This one, don't even know. I haven't thought about it. Just wrote the question down. A smell that instantly takes you someplace or to someone else.
Doug:That's good. What comes to mind for you?
Keith:I'd say Christmas cookies. It takes me back to 1970s Christmas. My mom was all about part of mom's community thing was she would make, I don't think I'm exaggerating, 30 different kinds of cookies. Yeah. And then package them, and then we would go deliver them to people during the holidays.
Keith:So when I smell Christmas cookies or any cookies, it brings me back to mom, and they're just rolling dough and doing her thing.
Doug:Man, that is really cool. For me, a smell or a sound, it's probably the starting of a boat. When I hear a start of a boat, it really makes me think early on in my marriage with Caroline and my father-in-law, and just a lot of good memories.
Keith:And just about that gasoline smell, it sends me to Barkley Lake down in Kentucky just thinking about it. So final question, and I think we're going try to maybe have these on the show notes. So if you guys want to have some conversations with people. The questions? Yeah.
Keith:Yeah, I think that'd be a good thing for you guys.
Doug:That's good.
Keith:Nice job. What object of the past do you think you'll keep? I come from a long line of hoarders, and so I try to get rid of stuff as much as I can personally. So I'm constantly getting rid of stuff. And in the case my daughter had been watching this, when she moved into her house a couple weekends ago, I kept taking random objects and putting it in her stuff so it shows up.
Keith:And then Caitlin's boyfriend, David, he doesn't know me that well. I said, hey. Go throw this in the in the moving van. It was a bag full of leaves.
Doug:That's hilarious. That's a keeper. It's funny. I really am not addicted to things. Yeah.
Doug:So I can't think of anything that I'd really want to keep.
Keith:You know what I
Doug:can I have a really great picture of Caroline? It's probably my favorite thing Yeah. That I
Keith:keep a lot of letters that people send me. I was looking through some of them yesterday, and then I have to let them go, but that's like a piece of the past. Those letters are kind of fun to read and look at. And what I've found, Ellen, just- I do
Doug:keep client Christmas cards for some reason.
Keith:You do?
Doug:I do. And I look through them
Keith:and- Yeah. Yeah. I use those things as a prayer list to pray for those people, so I Well, use this has been fun, Doug. It's a little different animal than we've done.
Doug:Tell me why you did this.
Keith:I can't think of anything I enjoy more than our dinner table. Like when I sit down at my dinner table and I don't have to bring the questions, that thing will go, and literally, I suspect people, until their butts get tired, will sit a couple hours and talk. And I just don't know of any I think intimacy is a gift of life. And the more intimacy you have with people, I just think life that's invaluable even compared to the wealth we help you with.
Doug:Yeah. Good gifts. Yeah. Well, happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.
Keith:We'll see you guys soon.