Transcript: MaYaND 008: CB 08: Nancy’s Mysterious Letter
Click here to listen to the audio of this episode!
[Sound cue: Eerie piano tune reminiscent of the Nancy Drew PC game soundtracks]
Colleen: Hello and welcome to Me and You and Nancy Drew, a podcast in which I, Colleen-
Meghan: -and I, Meghan-
Colleen: -are going through the Nancy Drewniverse one book or episode or game at a time. Today we read book eight in the classic 50s style, although I think now we're in the 60s.
Meghan: We are in the 60s.
Colleen: This one's called Nancy's Mysterious Letter and it was published in 1968.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: What did you think of this one?
Meghan: I did not like it as much as The Clue in the Diary.
Colleen: Yeah.
Meghan: But it's still, it's still a pretty decent one.
Colleen: The Clue in the Diary was just so good. Everyone was, like, perfectly themselves, of- Nancy and George and Bess and Ned and Hannah.
Meghan: Yeah.
Colleen: And I was like, this one's fine.
Meghan: This one's fine.
Colleen: But it's not as perfect as the last one. But that's okay.
Meghan: That's okay.
Colleen: Still lots to love about this one.
[Sound Cue: Drums and strings play underneath the spoken words “There Once Was A Limerick Recap”]
Meghan: We'll start with our limerick, our poem that we wrote this week about this book. I will go first with my limerick.
Colleen: All right, take it away.
Meghan: And as a reminder, our poem is supposed to summarize the novel as best we can.
Colleen: Yes, yes.
Meghan: But sometimes it doesn't.
Colleen: That's okay. We only have five lines.
Meghan: Yes. "There once was a bag of stolen mail. / Because of it, Nancy had quite a tale. / Another Nancy they found; / To marriage she was bound. / But they stopped the plot, so she got no veil."
Colleen: Excellent! Very good. Alright, here's mine.
Meghan: Oh boy, I'm excited.
Colleen: It's interesting. “Old Edgar had gone a bit funny, / So he promised each lady a honey. / There's a new Nancy Drew. / Leave Shakespearean clues. / And Old-Nancy returns all the money.”
Meghan: I loved that! Oh, that was great.
Colleen: Thank you.
Meghan: I loved it. I loved it.
Colleen: I had to pick whether I was gonna say “Old Edgar” or “Old Nixon,” because his name is Edgar Nixon.
Meghan: Edgar Nixon.
[Sound Cue: Clock ticks underneath the spoken words “Thirty-Second Recap”]
Meghan: And now we will attempt to give a thirty-second summary with slightly more detail than our poems. But maybe not.
Colleen: This is going to cover everything. I've got this.
Meghan: Yeah.
Colleen: No problem at all.
Meghan: Alright. So your thirty seconds starts now.
Colleen: [clock ticks underneath the book summary] Okay, so, um, the mail carrier is, like, six weeks away from retirement, and so he, um, almost passes out, and Nancy invites him in for cocoa, and then all the mail that he had gets stolen by his half-brother. And there was, uh, money in there for Mr. Drew, and there was also, uh, um, a letter for a Nancy Drew but it actually isn't for her. There's a British Nancy Drew who's got this inheritance, and so Nancy tries to track her down, but then Carson and Nancy get off the case because someone totally already found her, and this guy who stole all the money ran a lonely hearts club and did crimes. Bye! [ticking stops, clock bongs] [laughs]
Meghan: You got it!
Colleen: I don't feel that I needed to say “Goodbye,” but I did.
Meghan: But goodbye.
Colleen: Goodbye!
Meghan: That is how we indicate the end.
Colleen: Yes, of course. Okay. All right. Are you ready? Get what I missed.
Meghan: We'll see.
Colleen: Ready, set, go!
Meghan: [clock ticks underneath the book summary] So the mail gets stolen from Nancy's house, from the mail carrier, while he's drinking hot chocolate, by his half-brother. And there are lots of different monies all involved that he's been stealing and taking all this money. He's got Carson Drew's money, and now he's got this letter about a different Nancy Drew who's inheriting all this money. She's British. And they try and track her down, and also they go to Emerson College.
Colleen: Yeah!
Meghan: And at Emerson College, Nancy- Other Nancy Drew happens to be about to coach a Shakespearean play, but she never makes it, and she doesn't get married, and they meet her at the airport and stop it. [ticking stops, clock bongs]
Colleen: [laughs] Good job. Also, yeah, they did say she “coached” the play, like, a lot. That's not-
Meghan: Yeah.
Colleen: “Directed”? Did you mean “directed”?
Meghan: I think that's what they meant.
Colleen: I guess, like, an acting coach [is a phrase]. But they were like, “Without her, we can't do the play.”
Meghan: “Our coach isn't here.”
Colleen: Also, it was the day before the play that they were like, “Well, without the director, we can't do it.” I'm like, “The day before the play, you should be good.”
Meghan:. You should be good.
Colleen: You should already be fine without the director helping. Or the coach helping you.
Meghan: Yes. But instead they performed a different play.
Colleen: They just picked a different play! Which was a choice.
Meghan: Yeah. Yep.
Colleen: I wonder, was the guy saying it a sporty guy? Does he think all people in charge of a college event are coaches?
Meghan: Maybe.
Colleen: But maybe that's-
Meghan: Like when I had an interview, and a second interview, I called it a callback because-
Colleen: Incredible.
Meghan: The way we apply our-
Colleen: Yeah, you auditioned for a job and then you got a callback.
Meghan: You get a callback.
Colleen: Incredible. Is the cast list posted yet?
Meghan: “Is the cast list-”
Colleen: [laughs]
Meghan: There was a lot going on in this book and yet-
Colleen: Yeah. Too much.
Meghan: Not a lot happened. There was a lot of investigating.
Colleen: Yes, there's a lot of calling everyone on this list.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: Or visiting everyone on this list. But mostly calling. She even points out, “Wow, our phone bill is going to be really high. Anyway, time to call thirty more people.”
Meghan: Yep.
Colleen: “With the last name Wilson.” Something I did like overall about this book is, it reminded me of the games, where she's doing an errand for herself and finds a clue there.
Meghan: Yes!
Colleen: So her necklace is broken. She goes to the jeweler and she gets, like, two clues while she's there. And I'm like, “That is peak PC-Nancy-Drew.”
Meghan: Yes. I actually feel like there were a few different moments in this-
Colleen: Yeah!
Meghan: -where she was doing something completely different.
Colleen: Like, for herself.
Meghan: For herself, or going on a date with Ned at his fraternity.
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Meghan: And coincidentally, the mystery is also there.
Colleen: Mm-hmm, that's so weird!
Meghan: And they're- The people that she is looking for are also there.
Colleen: Mm-hmm, yeah. No one's been able- No one's seen the other Nancy Drew in years and years and years, and she's at Emerson College, where Ned goes.
Meghan: Yep. Just also happens-
Colleen: Also, scandalous: Nancy, Bess, and George stayed a weekend in the frat house?!
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: Excuse me?!
Meghan: In the girls’ room.
Colleen: Right, right, right, right, right. I saw “I gotta pack for the weekend for Emerson College.” I said, “Ooh, scandal,” and then I said, “Now, she's probably gonna stay in, like, a sorority house, or, like, a guest house or something.” No, it's in the frat house! [gasps] It's scandalous.
Meghan: I know! She must really like Ned.
Colleen: She must. This is his second book. Or third, if you count the one time he was accidentally mentioned in Shadow Ranch, where she starts knitting a sweater for her dad and then ends with, “I hope Ned doesn't need this sweater anytime soon.” And we're like, “Who?”
Meghan: She knew in the future.
Colleen: She knew.
Meghan: He was coming.
Colleen: She just got her dad's name wrong. She's like, “Dad,” “Ned.” “‘Dad’ is so hard to spell. I get distracted.”
[Sound cue: High-pitched whistle-like note descending in pitch underneath the stretched-out, also-descending-in-pitch spoken word “Cliffhangers!”]
Meghan: So what was your favorite cliffhanger this week?
Colleen: There were a lot of really good ones.
Meghan: There were.
Colleen: But I think my favorite is at the end of Chapter Four. Some random woman is at their door. They let her in for no reason and she goes, “‘You're Nancy Drew, ain't ya? You're the one I'm looking for.’ With that, her fist shot out and she tried to hit Nancy.”
Meghan: Yes, that was amazing.
Colleen: Simply don't open the door!
Meghan: Well they- And she just, like, pushed her way in. She's in the living room.
Colleen: Yeah, yup, like, they didn't actually invite her in. She just decided. She walks in. She's mad that Nancy Drew exists.
Meghan: Apparently!
Colleen: And then tries to punch her.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: And then Nancy dodges it swiftly and grabs her arm, and, like, I imagine she's putting her in, like, a lock, with the arm behind her back. It doesn't say that, but I'm imagining that.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: Because the stranger just walked in and tried to assault her in her house.
Meghan: Ridiculous. Ridiculous. But it did make me want to keep reading, because-
Colleen: Oh yeah! Like, “Excuse me?!” She got slapped in the last book. Now they're trying to punch her.
Meghan: I know! Okay. So my favorite cliffhanger was at the end of Chapter Fifteen, so nearer [to] the end. It's when they're at Emerson College.
Colleen: [gasp] Yes!
Meghan: So at this part, Ned is, I guess, a football player.
Colleen: Yeah, his toe is in the newspaper.
Meghan: His toe is in the newspaper.
Colleen: ‘Cause it's so good at kicking.
Meghan: So they're watching the game, which is very detailed. This is the most detailed part of the book, is how the football game goes.
Colleen: I got so bored.
Meghan: Same, though.
Colleen: They play-
Meghan: I'm just not a sports person. I'm sorry.
Colleen: No, well, it's just that I don't have any investment, because the team they're playing against is named “State U.”
Meghan: State U!
Colleen: If you don't want to specify what state we're in, then don't name the other team. You could even say “the other team” each time. Or “the opposing team.” Like there's-
Meghan: Yeah!
Colleen: You don't have to say “State U”!
Meghan: State U. So Ned gets, like, slammed into. Nancy says, “‘Oh dear, I hope nothing has happened to him,’ she said to Marian. ‘He was limping a little.’ Suddenly, Nancy's hand flew to her mouth as she stifled a shriek. ‘Oh no!’ Ned Nickerson had collapsed on the green turf.” [gasps]
Colleen: That was a good cliffhanger.
Meghan: I know! It's like-
Colleen: Now Ned's getting hurt. [I’m glad that] it's not for the mystery, because I would feel worse if he got dragged into the mystery and instantly got hurt.
Meghan: Of course.
Colleen: This is- This is his own business.
Meghan: This is his choice.
Colleen: Now, does he have CTE? We don't know. But he did- He was looking woozy. They're like, “It's fine, it's fine.” He gets back on the field, and then he just collapses. I'm like, “Ned! What the heck?!”
Meghan: Yep, and then afterwards he's like, “I'm totally fine. Let's go do this mystery. I just got the wind knocked out of me. I'm fine.”
Colleen: It's fine. He also does, like, the winning kick.
Meghan: Yes, he comes back.
Colleen: He argues with the coach, at the clutch moment of the game. They're about to lose. There's, like, a minute left or whatever. And you see him talk to his coach hurriedly, put on his helmet, go make a kick and they win! It's a miracle. They make a lot of weird onomatopoeia sounds, a weird string of vowels that I have never seen in a book.
Meghan: Yeah!
Colleen: It's “E-E-H, exclamation point! Y-E-E-H!” Yee!
Meghan: “Ayyy! Yee!”
Colleen: This is Marian.
Meghan: “Marian exclaimed, jumping up and down and waving her arms wildly.”
Colleen: I'm so happy for Marian.
Meghan: She's having a great time.
Colleen: She's got a lot going on. Yeah, I guess it's homecoming weekend. They never say homecoming, but it's, like, the big football game and there's a dance, so I'm assuming it's, like, homecoming.
Meghan: Must be. Must be.
Colleen: They also have church service on campus, and there's a special one for all the visitors that are there for homecoming.
Meghan: Which- I have experienced that.
Colleen: I have not. I have not.
Meghan: I've been there.
Colleen: I worked at a church in college but, like, it wasn't, “Ah, yes, everyone comes here.” Do you want to explain who Marian is?
Meghan: Sure. So there's this other Nancy Drew who's British, and she used to nanny for a rich family from New York City-
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Meghan: -called the Wilsons. And that is one of Nancy's leads to finding this other Nancy Drew, Nancy Smith Drew. And she calls the Wilsons and they're like, “Hmm, haven't heard from her in, like, eight years.”
Colleen: “Because our kid grew up.”
Meghan: And then she just happens to run into the girl that Nancy Smith Drew used to nanny for, at Emerson College.
Colleen: Mm-hmm. She's, like, girlfriends with Ned's friend Frank. Not Frank Hardy. Don't get excited, because I did briefly. His name is Frank Doolittle.
Meghan: Frank Doolittle.
Colleen: We'll probably not hear from him again, and that's okay.
Meghan: Nope, never. And we probably won't hear from Marian Wilson.
Colleen: Well no, she's only relevant to this story.
Meghan: Yes. She helps in the mystery because she can, like-
Colleen: She can ID her [Nancy Smith Drew].
Meghan: Yeah, she knows who Nancy Smith Drew is. And so she's like, “Oh, I could have sworn I saw her.”
Colleen: “Even though she said she quit coaching the play.”
Meghan: “I just saw her in the back of the auditorium. Let's go look for her.” So Marian is there in order to be the person who can actually identify correctly who Nancy Smith Drew is. And everyone-
Colleen: And she quit because Edgar Nixon, the half-brother of the mail carrier, tries to steal her away, because he knows (because he stole the mail) that this girl is going to inherit something. So he's marrying her, and then he will get the money from her.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: She does not know.
Meghan: She doesn't even know that she's set to inherit. He only knows because he stole the mail and found the mail.
Colleen: Now here's my thing, because they got taken off the case, because someone claimed that they found her, and they weren't sure if it was the real her. And Nancy's like, “Well, how could anyone know that?” I'm like, “‘Cause you told everyone!”
Meghan: Everybody!
Colleen: You told everyone this girl's business! Like, “I'm looking for Nancy Smith Drew. ‘Cause she's coming into a lot of money.” You told, like, eight people. Like, Nancy, what the heck?
Meghan: Why are you sharing all of the details?
Colleen: Uh-huh!
Meghan: And then being confused about why everybody knows all the details?
Colleen: [laughs] This is not-
Meghan: And I completely understand. I am also an oversharer.
Colleen: Sure. But you're not a private detective.
Meghan: I am not. That is our major difference.
Colleen: It's- And, this whole book, there's a lot of talk about the laws around privacy of mail.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: Which is very entertaining to me. But then, beyond that, Nancy's sharing this girl's business.
Meghan: Yeah! She has not even met this other Nancy Drew.
Colleen: She never even met her!
Meghan: But I know- I understand she is trying to be able to almost put out feelers so that she can find this Nancy Drew.
Colleen: Of like, “Hey, I'm looking for her for a good reason.”
Meghan: Good reason, exactly.
Colleen: Not like “We're trying to track her down.” But then-
Meghan: However.
Colleen: But then everyone's like, “Well, I could have some money perhaps. Thoughts?”
Meghan: Right, exactly.
Colleen: Nancy!
Meghan: Nancy, Nancy. And you- I don't know. What is this, book eight?
Colleen: This is book eight. She should know a little better about it by this point.
Meghan: She should know better by this point.
Colleen: Especially because there's a mistaken identity and stuff in another book.
Meghan: Yes. Where someone's dressed up as her.
Colleen: Someone's dressed up as her and using her charge plate and stuff.
Meghan: Yeah.
Colleen: And so she should understand, “Hey, this girl with my name-” Whatever. Whatever. It's fine. I'm not mad at her. I just think she should do better next time.
Meghan: Exactly. We all have to learn from our mistakes.
[Sound cue: Ocean waves crash underneath the spoken words “Ship of the Week”]
Meghan: This week for Ship of the Week, I have chosen to do an anti-ship.
Colleen: Ooo.
Meghan: Some people, I think, who are together, who should not be any longer.
Colleen: All right, enlighten me.
Meghan: This is Joe Skeets and his wife. Mrs. Skeets.
Colleen: I love that the wives don't get names. I think that's nice.
Meghan: Uh-huh. Sure. Yeah.
Colleen: Like when you're introduced- She talks about, later, like, “Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Nixon,” and I'm like, “That's- [angrily] mmm!” It makes me so mad when you don't [acknowledge the wives’ identity but instead just say the husband’s full name]. Okay. Anyway.
Meghan: Oh, I understand. Oh, I understand. So. Who are these people? Mrs. Skeets, we've already talked about. She is the one who shows up at the door and attempts to punch Nancy Drew in the face. The reason being, that Nancy's house is where the mail was stolen from, and she was waiting for a letter from her husband's sister that would have ten dollars in it, and how dare she [Nancy] allow the mailman to come in?
Colleen: Which is against mail law! And that was my other cliffhanger, is that the people are like, “You've committed a serious crime.”
Meghan: “You've committed a crime inviting the mail carrier into your home.”
Colleen: Literally!
Meghan: So M[r]s. Skeets is very angry, and she reminds me of a lot of people nowadays, because she comes in, like, screaming and yelling about how the young people don't respect the old folks anymore.
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Meghan: “And just wait till you're my age!” And just talks very condescendingly down to Nancy. And she's like, “Here's my address because I know you're going to come to my house with my ten dollars, because you owe me, specifically. Because you are the reason that my ten dollars is gone.”
Colleen: Mm-hmm!
Meghan: And Nancy tries to, like- Is like, “Okay, bye!”
Colleen: Mm-hmm!
Meghan: And shuts the door in her face. Then she decides to actually go to M[r]s. Skeets’ house. And I can't remember why.
Colleen: Because M[r]s. Skeets goes, “‘You're like every other Nancy Drew.’” And Nancy's like, “What do you mean?”
Meghan: There’s- She is looking for the second Nancy Drew. So she's like, “Wait, you know another one?”
Colleen: And she's like, “Don't worry about it.” I am worried!
Meghan: Turns out it's because they were once roommates.
Colleen: “Oh my god, they were roommates.”
Meghan: They were roommates. Like, a decade ago and that's how she knows.
Colleen: And she's like, “Every Nancy Drew is the same.” That can't be true. That can't be true. This one was British. That's, like, her main thing.
Meghan: And an actress!
Colleen: And an actress. You're right. And I was worried that that meant she was the villain, because I saw-
Meghan: I did too!
Colleen: It was like, “Oh, they can change their shape. Don't let the, the men know we can shapeshift.”
Meghan and Colleen: “They're going to tell the church!”
Colleen: And all actors, you can't trust them.
Meghan: Yep. All this to be said, when she goes to the Skeets’-
Colleen: I love Joe Skeets!
Meghan: And I do too, hence why this is an anti-ship. Joe Skeets is a former sailor living in the middle of- They're somewhere in the Midwest. He says that his wife made the move because he kept going to sea too many times.
Colleen: “So we moved to the middle of nowhere where there's no sea.”
Meghan: But their house is decorated, still, like they live on the beach.
Colleen: Oh yeah! There's, like, a dried starfish on the wall.
Meghan: Yes! A “broken, but polished, sextant.”
Colleen: Oh good.
Meghan: He still talks as if he is a sailor.
Colleen: Oh my god, he's the most sea dog guy I've ever met. I love him. …I haven't met him.
Meghan: He says, “‘I expect she just rode around to the chandler for some supplies and most likely she'll be back by six bells.’”
Colleen: You don't have to talk like that. You live in, probably, Illinois.
Meghan: Yeah. And he says, “‘Aye.’”
Colleen: “Aye.”
Meghan: “‘Aye, and so am I.’” So-
Colleen: “‘Heave your anchor, lass,’” instead of “sit down.” Also on the walls is Chekhov's “lethal-looking spear” that never came back, but I was certain [that it would].
Meghan: Nah.
Colleen: Nope.
Meghan: Nah, that's just the decorations. But anyway, why are you going to the house of the woman who came into your house to-
Colleen: And punched you!
Meghan: -punch you in the face and demand ten dollars?
Colleen: She gives her ten dollars! In exchange for, like, info on the other Nancy Drew. But Joe also has already told her a lot of info and she's like, “Why would you talk to her [Nancy]? I was selling this information. You stink.”
Meghan: Yeah. He seems like a really fun guy. And he's basically a pirate in the Midwest.
Colleen: It's so cute.
Meghan: And I don't think that M[r]s. Skeets deserves him.
Colleen: In fact, he roars that he's not gonna let her pay because it's not her fault that the money was gone, or was stolen.
Meghan: They just- They seem to have such different morals. They have such different interests. I just don't know if it's the best pairing.
Colleen: I agree. I marked how she introduces herself. Nancy's like, “Who are you?” Because she pushed her way into the house. She goes, “‘I am Mrs. Skeets, and now that you've heard it, you'll never forget it.’” Great. Thanks, ma'am.
Meghan: Yeah, oh, and she also says, “‘I don't approve of young girls having cars. There are too many accidents as it is.’”
Colleen: And if you saw that old movie that my dad taped for me of Nancy Drew just fully running into buildings, you would agree.
Meghan: [laughs]
Colleen: This Nancy, a lot of stuff happens to her cars, but it's not usually her fault.
Meghan: Not usually, yeah. So that's- That is my Ship of the Week.
Colleen: Your anti-ship. I agree. I agree. I am going to repeat, because I really like Ned and Nancy in this book.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: So we already saw Ned going along with Nancy's hobbies and interests and detective-ing. But now- We have not seen a whit of her interest in any sport, but she's having the time of her life at this game. She's worried when he gets hurt, but she's like, “This is so much fun.” And then when he does, like, the winning kick, it's like, “‘Ned did it!’ Nancy screamed, ‘He won the game!’” She is so excited for him. We have heard nothing about her liking any sport at all.
Meghan: Or any of the things she's gone to do with any of the guys!
Colleen: They've all been, like, artsy. They've all been, like, “We went to see a play.”
Meghan: Yeah. It's nice to see her interested.
Colleen: It was really cute.
Meghan: Like, you know, because she's so interested in Ned.
Colleen: Yes!
Meghan: She's interested in what he's doing.
Colleen: She, like, made some phone calls, but she was like, “But I can't be late for the game. This is really important to Ned. I'll put this aside and then I'll get back to it later.” Like, that was really cute. And then later, somebody was like, “Are you guys detectives?” And people were laughing, and Ned goes, “‘Well, I'm not, but Nancy Drew is the best girl detective in the whole world!’” It's very-
Meghan: He's only done one case with her.
Colleen: Yeah.
Meghan: Well, one and a half.
Colleen: Yeah, she's “‘the best [...] in the whole world.’”
Meghan: I agree.
Colleen: Yeah. The qualifier “girl” detective, eh [I wish he hadn’t qualified it in a way that could come off as demeaning], but it's also the 60s. With like- “She's the best of the whole world, and I love her, and she's doing so good.” I just love Ned and Nancy and I can't wait to see more of them.
Meghan: Ahh. Me too. That was my- That would have been my second choice.
Colleen: Yeah, but I think your anti-ship is so valid.
[Sound Cue: Kitchen tools clink underneath the spoken words “Cooking Corner”]
Colleen: My favorite meal for this one is, is at the very end. They're exhausted. They've, they’ve driven all the way back from Emerson College, which is a two-hour drive. It's later than they intended. So Bess and George go home with Nancy, just so that they don't have to go in the dark. Both Mr. Drew and Mrs. Gruen welcome in the extra girls. And Hannah had prepared “some tasty chicken and lettuce sandwiches, a large bowl of fresh cut-up fruit, and a whole chocolate cake.”
Meghan: Yes!
Colleen: Absolutely. That sounds delightful.
Meghan: Um, speaking of Hannah Gruen-
Colleen: I love her
Meghan: She killed it [in] this book.
Colleen: She did!
Meghan: Every meal! Because any of the times they talked about eating- Like, I'm sure they ate when they were at the fraternity house.
Colleen: Sure.
Meghan: Hopefully! They don't talk about it.
Colleen: Just Doritos, if it's like the fraternity houses I've been to.
Meghan: [laughs] This book took place over the course of at least a week. They go to church twice.
Colleen: They do; you're right.
Meghan: So two Sundays.
Colleen: What if they go to Wednesday church?
Meghan: They could! I did. I used to. At college. Over the course of a week, we hear all these things that Hannah's making from scratch.
Colleen: Yes!
Meghan: She's got the famous hot cocoa.
Colleen: mm!
Meghan: Hannah's famous hot cocoa.
Colleen: I always think of that for these things.
Meghan: And that's what I was-
Colleen: It was, like, the first page! She's like, “We're going to make some hot cocoa. It's really windy. You're an old mail carrier.” And it's perfect.
Meghan: And there's homemade cookies with the hot cocoa.
Colleen: Yes!
Meghan: But when the hot cocoa popped up, I remember when we were planning this podcast, you said-
Colleen: Yes!
Meghan: “We want to have Cooking Corner because Hannah's always making things like hot chocolate and cookies.”
Colleen: Yes!
Meghan: And here it was. Hot chocolate and homemade cookies.
Colleen: She's perfect.
Meghan: She made homemade stew.
Colleen: Yes.
Meghan: She made-
Colleen: Nancy's always taking stew in jars to people.
Meghan: Jars, yeah.
Colleen: Which, I mean, Tupperware were a thing, right? Or were they?
Meghan: I don't know.
Colleen: I don't know either. She's always taking soup in jars to people.
Meghan: Yeah, and actually-
Colleen: Which feels very weird.
Meghan: There's homemade stew and there's vegetable soup in a jar. We got a whole roast beef dinner, tomatoes and cottage cheese and steak.
Colleen: Yeah!
Meghan: Which, you know, a tomato-and-cottage-cheese-only salad-
Colleen: Oh, specifically, yeah! She was like, “‘A salad made of tomatoes and cottage cheese.’” I'm like-
Meghan: “That's it?”
Colleen: That's not- That's not salad, I don't think?
Meghan: I've put cottage cheese on my salad before.
Colleen: Sure. And tomatoes on my salad. Absolutely.
Meghan: And tomatoes.
Colleen: I just think that, on their own, they're not a salad.
Meghan: Yeah, I get maybe we're going for something a little bit, like, Mediterranean, Italian.
Colleen: Yes. Similar to a Caprese salad.
Meghan: Yeah! Except cottage cheese instead of mozzarella.
Colleen: Yeah, which is so much worse.
Meghan: It was the 60s.
Colleen: Yeah. Apparently I used to eat cottage cheese by the handful. I could not do that [now]. Literally by the handful.
Meghan: I'm lactose intolerant now.
Colleen: So, no.
Meghan: So I can't do that either.
Colleen: By the way, [reading from the internet] “Chemist Earl Tupper invented lightweight non-breakable plastic containers inspired by the seal-type design of paint cans in 1946,” so they could have had Tupperware.
Meghan: They could have had Tupperware. But you know what?
Colleen: She's just bringing jars.
Meghan: She's trying to improve the, the environment.
Colleen: Yeah!
Meghan: We don't need that plastic. We don't need those microplastics in our soup.
Colleen: This is like a Bob-Evans-trying-to-be-bougie vibe of like, “We're doing it in mason jars.”
Meghan: Yes, exactly.
Colleen: Also Hannah Gruen is “vigorously whipping potatoes in a pot” while interrogating Nancy about her adventures. I love it. She did a great job [in] this book.
Meghan: And it was- It took place in November, so this was a lot of like-
Colleen: [gasp] Like, cozy, warm foods? Yes.
Meghan: Yeah! Cozy, warm foods!
Colleen: Oh, good catch. Because, yeah, the reason they invite the mailman in is there's this big November storm, and she's like, “I'll give you a ride.” And he's like, “I literally have to stop at every house.” She's like, “You know what? That's fair.”
Meghan: “I don't know if I want to join you visiting every single house in this snow storm. However, let's warm you up.”
Colleen: “Let's warm you up with an illegal invite into the house.” You're not allowed to invite them in while they're on duty. And she goes, “Well, it's fine. He didn't bring the mail in,” and he [the postal authority] goes, “That's worse! That's how it got stolen!” And she's like, “If you would look, he has passed out. He's six weeks from retirement.” I love that Nancy knows that about the local mail carrier.
Meghan: Right? Yeah.
Colleen: She's like, “I have the whole calendar [of upcoming retirements in my community].”
Meghan: “You're almost there! You can do it!”
Colleen: And then he passed out. It was a whole thing.
Meghan: What's his name? Ira Nixon?
Colleen: Ira Nixon.
[Sound Cue: European-style emergency vehicle siren sound plays underneath the spoken words “Fashion Police”]
Meghan: All right. The first thing I want to talk about for fashion police is Edgar Nixon's outfit.
Colleen: Yup.
Meghan: This is his identifier. And the first time we are introduced to what his outfit is, is in the words of Little Tommy.
Colleen: I love Little Tommy. He's doing so great. He's, like, a five-year-old.
Meghan: On a trike.
Colleen: Yes. When did you stop riding a trike? I feel like he's a little old for “trike.”
Meghan: I do feel like he's a little old for trike.
Colleen: But he's also, uh, a little young for the eloquence that he displays. So.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: It's hard to say what age he really is.
Meghan: Yes, exactly.
Colleen: This author's never met a child! And that's okay.
Meghan: But we are told that he [Edgar] is wearing a yellow coat and yellow hat, which- Immediately, of course, I thought: Curious George.
Colleen: Obviously, yes.
Meghan: That is the first connection.
Colleen: Did he poach a monkey on his way here that is actually an ape that [and] they never address this fact?
Meghan: Yes. Did he? No.
Colleen: A monkey was mentioned by Sailor Joe. A monkey was gifted by Sailor Joe to somebody.
Meghan: Oh!
Colleen: Did you notice this?
Meghan: No!
Colleen: He's like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, I brought back a monkey as a gift for somebody.” Absolutely just poaching.
Meghan: Oof.
Colleen: That's fine.
Meghan: Oof.
Colleen: But it wasn't The Man in the Yellow Hat [from Curious George].
Meghan: It wasn't The Man in the Yellow Hat or the Yellow Coat. And as we find out, when Nancy is like, “According to the little boy, there is a man in a yellow coat and a yellow hat with a yellow car. I trust this boy implicitly.”
Colleen: A lot of yellow.
Meghan: And that is when Ira faints.
Colleen: Ah, yes.
Meghan: He's like, “Oh no!” [imitating a faint] Pfft.
Colleen: “I'm afraid of the color yellow!”
Meghan: When he comes to, he's like, “No, no. Well, my brother- My half-brother, he's kind of a mess. He wears a camel coat and a camel hat.” And then it turns out that the car was not yellow, it was tan.
Colleen: Okay, so, this- This boy is a bad detective.
Meghan: Yeah, it's not yellow.
Colleen: He's not helpful.
Meghan: None of it is yellow.
Colleen: Although he did remember four characters of the license plate.
Meghan: And he made the connection because two of those letters were his name, T and J.
Colleen: [two tongue-clicks of approval]
Meghan: He says, “I’m T and J, and there's one and two and I know those numbers.”
Colleen: He's done it.
Meghan: So, while he was not correct with his color identification- It was not yellow. It was tan.
Colleen: Yellow's not tan.
Meghan: That inspired me to, of course, look up what a camel-hair coat looks like.
Colleen: Yeah, is it yellow?
Meghan: It is not yellow, it's tan.
Colleen: [laughs]
Meghan: It's the color of a camel.
Colleen: So Tommy's good on numbers and letters, needs to work on colors.
Meghan: Yes, yes.
Colleen: Not his strongest suit. But it was at least enough of an identifier that the mailman passed out about it. [looking at a picture Meghan shared] Yeah, that's not yellow.
Meghan: That is not yellow.
Colleen: It's yellowish.
Meghan: It's yellowish. It is- This is, like, a pure camel-hair vintage coat.
Colleen: Amazing.
Meghan: But they make a lot of coats this color now-
Colleen: Yes.
Meghan: -as well. They are called, like, “Camel coat.”
Colleen: Gotcha.
Meghan: So you can buy a camel coat.
Colleen: You're almost wearing that as a sweater.
Meghan: Yeah, actually. Yeah! This is a camel-colored cardigan I'm wearing.
Colleen: Which is not yellow!
Meghan: It is not yellow.
Colleen: It is brown.
Meghan: It is a light brown, also known as tan.
Colleen: Yes. We have words for this that aren't “yellow.” Well, he's only learned, like, the first three colors.
Meghan: And to be fair, sometimes we call people with this color hair, like, blonde-
Colleen: That's true.
Meghan: -like, “she has yellow hair.” Like, it's not yellow. You know? Maybe this is the education he's received, as well, of, like, hair colors. Or, you know, people with red hair often do not actually have red hair.
Colleen: Good point.
Meghan: It's-
Colleen: Orange-ish-brownish.
Meghan: Orange-ish-brownish. But we call that red. So I guess hair colors are tough, and this is a camel hair coat.
Colleen: That's true!
Meghan: So.
Colleen: Okay! So Tommy did earn his detective badge. He also later just gave her a random shoe he found, which turned out to not be... Did we ever get conclusion on- Yep, he just brought her just a, just a gross shoe that he found. He's like, “Do I get a detective badge now?”
Meghan: That sounds like being at recess, let's be for real.
Colleen: Yeah. “I found this, it's probably a clue.” They were digging for dinosaur bones at recess yesterday.
Meghan: Yeah, see?
Colleen: [sarcastically] There's so many in Ohio.
Meghan: I'm sure.
Colleen: Yup.
Meghan: Yup. So that was my main thing, because the camel coat-
Colleen: Yes.
Meghan: -and the camel hat comes up quite a lot, because that's our identifier of [Edgar].
Colleen: Yes.
Meghan: And actually, another man wearing a camel coat and a camel hat is mistaken for [Edgar].
Colleen: Because who else would be wearing that?
Meghan: Yeah, and he's like, “Wow, that's the second time I've been mistaken for this other man.”
Colleen: Now, I do like this, though, because it's a much better identifier than the “crinkly-eared man” from before. Of, like, this is something that is not like a weird insult about their personal appearance that they can't change.
Meghan: Yeah, but I was surprised that, because that [the camel coat] is his identifier, he didn't change it at all.
Colleen: Right. Nancy pointed out that maybe he couldn't afford it because winter coats are expensive.
Meghan: True.
Colleen: But also he has everybody's money. He's running this- Oh, I don't know if we talked about this outside of the limericks. He's running this lonely hearts scam. And so, like, people write in and mail him installments of twenty-five loose dollars. Like, we're- People are like- They still- People mail money still?! That's a bad idea! And even in the last book it was money orders and that still got stolen and was a problem.
Meghan: Don't send money.
Colleen: Don't send loose money!
Meghan: Don't send money through the mail, friends.
Colleen: Kind of ever? Kind of ever.
Meghan: Yeah.
Colleen: And then he never got anybody their, their husbands. “‘Or wives,’” Nancy said, generously.
Meghan: True.
Colleen: Meaning that men could apply to this, of course [rather than that women were writing in to Edgar in search of a wife]. I liked Nancy- When she went to the jewelry store for her own thing, she gets some clues, and then he's [the jeweler is] like, “Well, our Christmas jewelry is coming into stock.” She goes, “Oh yes, I saw this thing I'd like to buy for my father. Can you order these cufflinks for my dad?” And the clue is that a ring was bought for Nancy Drew. And he goes, “Well, how's that ring treatin' you?” And she goes, “I'mmmm…sorry?”
Meghan: And he thinks that he's spoiling a proposal.
Colleen: He's like, “Oh no.” Which- He could have looked at her hands and seen if there was an engagement ring there, but whatever. Maybe it's his first day on the job.
Meghan: Doesn't seem like it.
Colleen: But anyway, he's talking about [hpw] Mr. Nixon bought a pair of cufflinks that were kind of flashy, but “‘he [Edgar] seemed to like them.’” They were bright red and had a black star in the center, and they do become an identifier later. But out loud she goes, “I don't think I'd care for them myself.” It was, like, so unnecessary.
Meghan: Sometimes, Nancy, we can just say things in our heads.
Colleen: In our heads! And that is okay. Especially because this jeweler thinks you are this cufflink guy's fiancée. Oh, do you want to talk about her dress?
Meghan: Yes. [wistfully] Ohh. So the only other real description we get about fashion is her pale blue evening gown.
Colleen: Yeah!
Meghan: That she's wearing to the not-homecoming dance.
Colleen: Yeah.
Meghan: The unspecified dance following the football game.
Colleen: Following the important football game.
Meghan: The very important football game.
Colleen: It's not homecoming though.
Meghan: So it's too long, and while just wearing her nylons, she goes to try and answer the door, and trips, and almost falls down the stairs.
Colleen: Uh-huh!
Meghan: And rips the dress.
Colleen: But she doesn't get hurt.
Meghan: She does not get hurt.
Colleen: It was a close call. She ripped the dress, but she didn't rip herself, which is good.
Meghan: Yes. And Hannah has to narrow the dress and change where the seam is in order to hide the rip.
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Meghan: But she does wear the pale blue evening gown.
Colleen: Yeah!
Meghan: And we see it in some of the Picture Perfect illustrations.
Colleen: Yeah! It's really cute. Especially when the reason she goes to the jewelry store is [that] she needs the jewelry to match this- She calls it a “costume.” And I'm like, “Oh, is this dress-up?” I mean, I guess it is.
Meghan: It is!
Colleen: You're wearing a dress. Yeah.
Meghan: You're only gonna wear it once.
Colleen: Yeah.
Meghan: Probably. Ish.
Colleen: Oh, I can't believe you missed this really important Fashion [Police] Corner [moment]. So they pull up, and Burt and Dave, who I remember distinctly- And I love it because Dave is very theatrical and artsy, so he goes with Bess, and Burt is very sportsy, and so he goes with George. And I had always wanted it to be, like, Burt and Bess, and Nancy and Ned, and then George gets somebody with a [G], maybe another George. Like, they should all line up with letters, but that's okay. And so Dave gazes at Bess fondly. He goes, “‘You look stunning in that new suit. I like the fur collar. What is it? Squirrel?’” [laughs]
Meghan: That was a great part.
Colleen: George is like, “Yeah.” “‘She shot it on the way here.’” “Absolutely. [referencing improv comedy] Yes and.” Bess is like, “‘As a matter of fact-’”
Meghan and Colleen: “‘It's mink.’”
Colleen: “Withering her cousin with a look.” Great. Love this picture.
Meghan: Yes. Amazing.
Colleen: Is she wearing a suit-suit [meaning, an actual suit, or just something the text refers to as a “suit”]? I couldn't find [evidence either way].
Meghan: I don't think so?
Colleen: Like, does it just mean “outfit”? In the way that “costume” can mean “outfit”?
Meghan: Yeah that's what, at least how I took it.
Colleen: ‘Cause I don't think Bess is a suit girly.
Meghan: No.
Colleen: At all. Ever.
Meghan: George could,
Colleen: George could pull off a suit.
Meghan: Yes. In fact, they say she always wears tailored clothes.
Colleen: Yeah, interesting. Interesting.
Meghan: At the beginning of the chapter.
Colleen: Much to consider. Yeah, good outfits!
[Sound Cue: High-pitched sounds imitating a camera flashbulb play underneath the spoken words “Picture Perfect”]
Meghan: All right, we had some great choices for Picture Perfect this week, and we will definitely post some of them on our Patreon.
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Meghan: So my first one is, after the play, Marian is like, “Hey! That's Nancy Smith Drew over there!” And they're like, “Ahh! Better go get her!” And so the two of them go off backstage into, like, the back area.
Colleen: They're certainly not allowed, but okay.
Meghan: Yeah, definitely not allowed. They can't find her. They go back into a dark office-y area, and then suddenly all the lights go off.
Colleen: Because they're shutting down the building, because nobody's supposed to be back where they are!
Meghan: Well, but then they get locked in!
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Meghan: So it does feel [like someone is] purposefully trying to trap them, to me. But it could also be, “The play is over. We are shutting down the theater and locking the doors.”
Colleen: I think either are valid.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: Some of the times [where Nancy is in trouble in this book] are very clearly [times where] Nixon is trying to to get her, or to trap her, or to keep her away from them [him or Nancy Smith Drew]. This one, it could just be, “You're not supposed to be back here. We didn't check back here, because it's an office.”
Meghan: “You're not supposed to be here!”
Colleen: And it's, like, ten at night.
Meghan: And so the one doorway out, it has, like, a chicken wire covering over the glass.
Colleen: Yeah. Yeah, what?
Meghan: And why I chose this picture is because the the the artist here, in order to show us that the room is very dark, they have crosshatched every wall-
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Meghan: -that you can see, [and] every doorway, and they have crosshatched the door.
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Meghan: And so, because the door is covered in chicken wire, it now looks [because of the crosshatching] like it is an entire room made of chicken wire that they are trapped in, as Nancy bangs on the chicken wire door, in the chicken wire hallway, next to the chicken wire wall.
Colleen: [laughs]
Meghan: And it is captioned, “‘Let us out! We're trapped!’ Nancy cried,” in the chicken wire room.
Colleen: It does not say that!
Meghan: No, I added that part.
Colleen: This is a stylistic choice that I wouldn't choose. I wouldn't- Yeah. My favorite picture- They spend the entire first, like, five or six chapters talking about “Old Ira Nixon. He's so feeble. He's about to retire. He can't handle the wind.” Even Hannah Gruen, who's, like, not young, is like, “Oh, he's so feeble.” They keep saying “feeble” and “old.” In this picture, he's maybe fifty. The healthiest fifty. This is the normalest man you've ever met. The most able-bodied guy. And he's, like, always fainting, and he's, like, worried and people- This is the most fine guy. He's extremely okay. There's not even, like, a lot of stress lines. Like, his eyebrows are up because the mail got stolen, but he's not pale, I don't think.
Meghan: Yeah!
Colleen: The whole page is pale, but he doesn't look old or feeble. He looks so fine, so okay, so aggressively...average. And they're like, “This poor old man.”
Meghan: “Old, old, old.”
Colleen: “He's so old, please get him some cookies and some co-” Now, everyone deserves cookies and cocoa, absolutely! But, like, he's fine!
Meghan: And anyone could faint.
Colleen: Anyone could faint!
Meghan: But they do make a big deal about how old he is.
Colleen: Exactly. When I have passed out, the many times I've passed out, no one said, “Wow, [look] how old and feeble this eighteen-year-old juror with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder is.” They were just like, “This is annoying. We're trying to have court.”
Meghan: [laughs]
Colleen: But, like, it's fine. I don't know. I'm just saying.
Meghan: I did want to add one more picture.
Colleen: Yes, please!
Meghan: And that is near the end. It is at the dance.
Colleen: There's a bouncer at the dance, by the way.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: At the fraternity dance.
Meghan: She goes back to the theater. I think they’re- they must be in adjacent buildings, or, like, connected buildings, because someone at the dance calls her and is like, “Hey, there's, uh, some, like, detectives here to talk to a Miss Nancy Drew?”
Colleen: Specifically, somebody asked the bouncer to get her. [The] bouncer doesn't know her. He asked the band guy, the guy who's directing the live music, to call [for Nancy] and it says there's a drum roll. They start a drum roll and say, [imitating a drumroll] Drrrrrrrr. “Could Nancy Drew come to the front? The police want to see you.” What a weird thing to do!
Meghan: [in the tone of a class happily teasing a classmate who gets called to the office] Oooooooooo!!!!
Colleen: “Ooh, you're in trouble!”
Meghan: But she's like, “Where are they?” They're like, “Oh, over there.”
Colleen: Sure.
Meghan: And she's like, “All right.” And so she goes to the darkened theater, and as she gets onto the stage, she has a sixth-sense moment.
Colleen: Oh yeah.
Meghan: And jumps out of the way just as the curtain comes falling- Crashing! And so in this picture, [it] looks like, I would describe, a waterfall behind her.
Colleen: Yes.
Meghan: As she looks like a Barbie doll that is, like-
Colleen: She is! Her arms are exactly Barbie-ish.
Meghan: And she's just tilting off the stage.
Colleen: Not really jumping. It's kind of- It's more passive in this picture.
Meghan: It's not jumping! It does say “Nancy jumped forward just as the curtain crashed to the floor.”
Colleen: It says that with the words, but not with the picture.
Meghan: That said- Yeah, it says that with the words, but she looks more like she is just kind of fallin'. Just-
Colleen: Also, the stage lights are on in this picture, even though it's a darkened room. Do you see that? They have little light things [lines] coming out!
Meghan: Oh yeah!
Colleen: Someone didn't give the whole direction to the artist.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: Or the artist did not read the chapter, actually.
Meghan: But you can see Nancy's beautiful pale blue evening gown.
Colleen: You can! And the necklace.
Meghan: And the, the pearl necklace. She is quite fetching.
Colleen: Quite fetching! As she jumps-slash-falls out of the way, out of the waterfall-slash-curtain. This is another thing that is very like the games, 'cause stuff is always falling on her. There's so many, like- Every time Nancy dies, you can do, like, an instant second-chance button, which is great. You don't have to, like, start back over. But stuff's always falling on her! I will hear a sound that I don't recognize in the game, but I don't make her look up, because you can't usually look up. It's a point-and-click. And then something falls on my head and I die. I'm like, “Well, okay. That's not- That's not my fault.”
[Sound Cue: Synthesized harp plays descending notes under the spoken words “Blast from the Past”]
Meghan: One of the first things- I just wrote down the quote, “‘Isn't it unusual to send money through the mail nowadays?’” from Chapter Two, because I also feel like in modern times, it is also unusual to send money through the mail nowadays. It's not safe!
Colleen: It's so easy to steal. Even in the last book, the money orders got stolen, and I think checks can get stolen. [Note from Transcription-Colleen: What do you mean, “you think” they can get stolen??] That's easier to fake and do stuff with. But a twenty, you know, you just, you just, you just take that. There's no record of anything.
Meghan: Exactly.
Colleen: Most of my Blast from the Past [moments] for this book are just phrases that we don't use anymore. If- If this happened to me, I would feel so condescended to (and also misgendered, because it's not about me), but “Ned laughed. ‘That a girl,’ he said, patting Nancy's shoulder.” He's almost a boyfriend. He's at, at minimum, you know, a romantic interest. And he's patting my shoulder and calling me “thattagirl”?! This is not gonna work for me. But I think it's meant, and received, completely fine.
Meghan: Yeah, I don't- That would feel very condescending.
Colleen: They're also cheering “lustily” at the football game, which I think here is just with a lot of emotion.
Meghan: Yeah!
Colleen: With a lot of gusto.
Meghan: Yeah, because you'll see in, like, older stories, like, a baby crying “lustfully.”
Colleen: Yeah, and that's- And that's nothing. That doesn't mean the same thing now, but it just, it caught me off guard.
Meghan: Yes, yes.
Colleen: I'm like, “Okay, you're really excited about this football game. I don't tend to have these feelings at football games.”
Meghan: Also they use smelling salts.
Colleen: Oh yeah!
Meghan: It's just more [of] a story that we hear secondhand from Carson Drew-
Colleen: Oh yeah.
Meghan: -that one of his clients, M[r]s. Quigley-
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Meghan: She again sent money through the mail, even though he has repeatedly asked her to stop.
Colleen: She's, like, an older client too. Like, come on.
Meghan: Yes, and it gets stolen, and she faints, and he's like, “We had to go get the smelling salts.”
Colleen: [in a used-to-it tone of voice] “You know how it is. We keep them in the office.”
Meghan: Yes, and so I did look up smelling salts because I, like- I have never experienced smelling salts in my life.
Colleen: And that's okay!
Meghan: And I have fainted, actually, quite a lot, because I am afraid of needles, and there have been a lot of needle-related things that I have had to go through, and I faint.
Colleen: That's fair.
Meghan: They've never given me smelling salts.
Colleen: They never gave you [smelling salts]? Aww.
Meghan: Usually they just-
Colleen: Do you even keep them in your desk?
Meghan: Nope. No.
Colleen: You don't have smelling salts in the office?
Meghan: Nope.
Colleen: Okay.
Meghan: But there were first-aid kits that would come with smelling salts [Note from Transcription-Colleen, courtesy of Colleen’s retired-EMS father: There still are! And you crush them to activate them!], where- and the smelling-
Colleen: Really?
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: Where?
Meghan: Not anymore. [Note from Transcription-Colleen: False! But we didn’t know at time of recording.] In the past, they would have first-aid kits that would come with smelling salts.
Colleen: Amazing.
Meghan: And they have been used since ancient Roman times, because Pliny the Elder, who we've talked about-
Colleen: Oh! My favorite scientist.
Meghan: My favorite Pliny.
Colleen: Of all the Plinys, he is one of them.
Meghan: I had a picture of the smelling salts, also known as ammonia inhalants.
Colleen: I knew that. Yes.
Meghan: I did not. But you can see- And we can put this picture (screenshot from Wikipedia) on Patreon. But it's two capsules of smelling salts from a first-aid kit. A thin inner glass tube contains alcohol and ammonia. The outer layer is cotton and netting, and you crush the glass.
Colleen: Like a glow stick!
Meghan: Yeah, yeah! And it fills everything, and you put the ammonia under [the nose of the patient]. And then, of course, in the history section of this Wikipedia article, it stops at the Victorian era. Post-then, there's not a lot of use. However, the Victorian era is pre-Nancy-Drew-books. So up until, I guess, Nancy Drew, we're still using smelling salts, but it, it's, I don't know, breathing in pure ammonia.
Colleen: -is great and we love it! …don't do it.
Meghan: Yeah, it just does not sound safe.
Colleen: No.
Meghan: I would like to smell smelling salts at some point in my life because I would like- I don't know.
Colleen: That sounds like you.
Meghan: It does sound like me! I just want to know.
Colleen: “I just want to experience it.”
Meghan: I just want to experience it!
Colleen: “What's it like?”
Meghan: Yes! Oh, I want to faint and [have] somebody use smelling salts to, like, [snaps fingers] wake me up.
Colleen: To revive [you]? I imagine it's not fun.
Meghan: I, I, I would also imagine that, but I want to know.
Colleen: Incredible. Uh, back to Sailor Joe. I love almost everything about him, except for A) the poaching-
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: -but probably everybody was doing it. But I don't love it. But not only did he poach this monkey, he got it from quote, “a Portuguese down in Brazil,” unquote. A) We don't call people “a whatever-ethnicity-or-language.” B) It would- It would be “A Brazilian.”
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: “Down in Brazil,” if anything. They speak Portuguese. They are not- Nobody is “a Portuguese.” But okay, bud. He probably doesn't know better, but I was like, “What a weird sentence.” I think he bought it [the monkey] for Nancy Smith Drew.
Meghan: Oh really?
Colleen: Yes.
Meghan: Oh.
Colleen: And then she moved away and he gave the monkey to a man in exchange for a pair of boots. I can't believe you missed this. This was-
Meghan: Yeah, I don't know how I missed that, honestly
Colleen: -extremely jarring.
Meghan: I was reading too fast.
Colleen: “We don't have time for monkeys in boots!” [Note from Transcription-Colleen: What about monkeys named Boots?]
Meghan: Yeah, “Whatever. We gotta get to the mystery.”
Colleen: We gotta!
Meghan: But I do think, unfortunately, it was fairly normal back then to refer to people of different ethnicities-
Colleen: As “A whatever”?
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: Yeahhhh. Don't!
Meghan: Carson wanted to call overseas to England, because Nancy gets involved in this mystery because there is a letter for her that gets stolen that is from England. The mail carrier tells her when he runs into her on the street. He's like, “Oh, by the way, there's a note in here from England for you.” And she's like, “What? I don't know anyone in England.” So he remembers one word of who sent this letter.
Colleen: Oh yeah, she's like, “Please, could you remember anything about it?”Which is objectively not something I want my mail carrier to do.
Meghan: To be paying attention enough to my mail to know? But he does. It's a small town.
Colleen: She's like, “You only know one word? Okay.”
Meghan: So it's the- It's one of the names of this law firm.
Colleen: He's like, “It's coming from three different names.” She's like, “A law firm?”
Meghan: She gets a second letter being like, “We are looking for Nancy Smith Drew. We don't think she's you, but you're the only Nancy Drew we can find contact info for. Please help us find Nancy- the real Nancy Drew.”
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Meghan: Well, the real Nancy Drew in this case that we are looking for. And so Carson goes to call overseas and he's like, “Ah. They told me that the Atlantic lines would be tied up for the rest of the day.” And it's just interesting that- You know, now you wouldn't even need to use a phone to contact-
Colleen: -people overseas.
Meghan: -people in England. Even if you wanted to speak to them voice-to-voice, you don't need the phone lines anymore.
Colleen: You don't.
Meghan: You can just use the- You can video call at this point.
Colleen: “You're [Nancy] gonna be able to solve the whole mystery before I [Carson] can even get on the phone with this guy because it's gonna take so long to call England.” 'Cause- And I understand why, because it is very far away. Like, that's normal.
Meghan: It's always mind-boggling to me how fast technology has increased over just the last century, because my parents were born before this book was published. And you're having issues calling England. But, you know, I lived in England. It's crazy. Even just the technology, how much it changed from when I lived in London and had to get, like, a phone card to be able to call my friends back home.
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Meghan: But it didn't matter how many other people were calling to and from across the Atlantic.
Colleen: Well from then to, I went to England and Italy and Germany for our honeymoon, and [we] just used our regular cell phones. I called my dad and it was, like, not a problem, and there was no wait time and there was no extra ex[pense]- I mean, there was [technically a bit of an extra expense but it wasn’t exorbitant]. We got a different phone plan temporarily for, like, a month. And it was normal.
Meghan: Yeah, because it's only been, like, fifty- Fifty years since-
Colleen: Since this book was published?
Meghan: The amount that technology, and just being able to contact people from so far away, has changed is mind-boggling.
Colleen: Right. I have two more Blasts from the Past and one's... not great. It's from the discussion with Sailor Joe laughing uproariously. He was talking about how he used to love pearl diving, but he says, “‘Where I was brought up, us sailors meant “washing dishes” when we said “pearl diving.”’” So someone just, like, kidnaps him to go pearl diving and dunks him in the water. And apparently he's never been able to swim. Which I'm like, “If your main thing is you're a sailor-” Whatever. None of my business. It is not my Brazilian forest. It is not my monkeys but-
Meghan: Clearly you've never watched One Piece.
Colleen: I have not. I have not watched One Piece. But the way he describes being kidnapped- Did you note the word he used?
Meghan: I did not.
Colleen: He had been “shanghaied.”
Meghan: [gasps]
Colleen: Thoughts? Have you heard this before?
Meghan: I've heard the word. I’ve heard-
Colleen: I've heard it in a Nancy Drew game, actually. Danger on Deception Island. There's, like, secret tunnels in this cafe. The, the indigenous woman who runs the cafe is like, “Yeah, people got shanghaied all the time.” I [when I first played the game] was like,“I've never heard this.” And it means kidnapped and pressed into service. And you guessed it: It's racist!
Meghan: I was gonna guess it was racist.
Colleen: It's racist.
Meghan: I've heard the phrase. I was gonna say, “I've heard the phrase in, like, pirate books.”
Colleen: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yep.
Meghan: I feel like I can't guarantee-
Colleen: And it comes from- You might get pressed into service and pirated or kidnapped or spirited away or whatever (not affiliated with Studio Ghibli) to, for example, Shanghai, China. And guess what?
Meghan: What?
Colleen: We don't [shouldn’t] use that [term] anymore.
Meghan: That does explain a lot.
Colleen: Yes. And I just noticed it. I was like, “Now that I see it as an adult, I'm wondering if maybe we should have used any other word for the Nancy Drew game as well.”
Meghan: There are many other words.
Colleen: Because the game came out not in the 60s. Oh well. Not “Oh well,” but, like, “Do better in future,” I guess.
Meghan: Yep.
Colleen: Yeah.
Meghan: We're always learning and growing.
Colleen: Exactly. My other Blast from the Past is like- Earlier I was giving Nancy some guff. I was giving her some crap, because she was telling everybody Nancy Smith Drew's business. Sidebar: Love that they're like, “We need a different name. [thoughtfully] …Smith.”
Meghan: Smith.
Colleen: Yes. Got it. Yes. But then she's also getting everybody's business. She's calling, like, a Cape-Cod-type place to get the names and addresses of people that stayed there. Now, he's not able to access it, because it's locked up for [the season] and it's not online.
Meghan: And he's just the winter caretaker.
Colleen: He's just the winter caretaker and all the books are locked up. He would give it to her, but he can't. And it's not digitized records, of course. And she's callin', um, the airport to figure out if this person bought a ticket. That's not your business! She's calling so many people and just getting- And the businesses are like, “Yeah, absolutely. Let me help you out with this.”
Meghan: Yeah.
Colleen: And Nancy's doing it for a good reason. So it's fine that she has all this personal information, I guess. But A) Weird that they're freely giving this out. B) Love that the airline either has so few customers or whatever that this is so easy to check, because, again, not digitized. They're not going to search up the last name with [by] typing it in. So they have to, like, look at all their records, but I don't think a lot of people are there. C) My favorite part is, she's driving to every gas station in River Heights to see if they recognize the picture that she took from Ira Nixon of his half-brother Edgar Nixon. Like, “Did you see him in his car?” And every gas station is like, “He must have filled up somewhere else.” Implying, “I would absolutely remember every customer I had at this gas station and he wasn't one of them.”
Meghan: This is what we mean by “It's a very investigative book.”
Colleen: It is.
Meghan: They did a lot of-
Colleen: She is driving everywhere. She is calling everyone.
Meghan: Yeah.
Colleen: There's not a lot of action. There's a lot of research, which is not the most interesting to read about, honestly.
Meghan: Yeah.
[Sound Cue: The spoken words “Wound Watch” are followed by a low voice exclaiming as if punched in the stomach]
Meghan: This week on Wound Watch, we actually have some things to talk about.
Colleen: Yeah!
Meghan: I feel like we've had some pretty light Wound Watch segments the last few stories.
Colleen: I agree. But don't worry, Nancy does not remain unharmed for long.
Meghan: [laughs]
Colleen: She gets almost run over by a sledding child.
Meghan: She does get hit by a sled.
Colleen: And she's all bruised up about it.
Meghan: Mm-hmm.
Colleen: It's not good.
Meghan: And she does say mostly her pride is hurt.
Colleen: I think her feelings are hurt, actually, which is hilarious.
Meghan: But she is also actually injured and has bruising from this.
Colleen: Mm-hmm. Ned collapses, obviously. I don't put that in the Wound Watch necessarily, but I'm just worried about him.
Meghan: Yeah.
Colleen: I want him to go to a neurologist soon.
Meghan: Yeah. [sighs] Playing football is dangerous.
Colleen: It is! And they didn't know about CTE [in the 60s] so they're just like, “Okay!”
Meghan: Was he even wearing a helmet?
Colleen: He was. They said- Oh, I don't know about at the time. He put on, put on a helmet for the final kick, but that's after he gets knocked down, so I don't know.
Meghan: He probably had a helmet on.
Colleen: Yeah. Yeah, he's a good boy, our Ned.
Meghan: I don't know how good those helmets were though.
Colleen: Nahhh, it's hard to say.
Meghan: We also have- Is it our first? It can't be our first.
Colleen: It might be. It is!
Meghan: [vocally mimics a distant, yet triumphant, trumpeting horn] Our first Nancy Drew knockout!
Colleen: Ohhh, I thought you meant drugging. It's not our first knockout.
Meghan: Ohhh.
Colleen: It's her fourth knockout.
Meghan: [laughs] It's her fourth knockout?!
Colleen: It's her fourth knockout. It's her first getting drugged.
Meghan: [vocally mimics a much closer, and still triumphant for some reason, trumpeting horn]
Colleen: Which felt really serious and happened nine pages before the end of the book! I'm like, “We're tracking everything down, dah dah dah.”
Meghan: Yes, I was like, “This is almost over.”
Colleen: And then we get a brief POV of Bess and George, like, “Where's Nancy?” And she was drugged and left under an abandoned airport nursery crib. What the heck?
Meghan: Yeah.
Colleen: Felt extremely serious, really, all of a sudden. Like, we had pretty much got[ten] everything taken care of.
Meghan: Yeah! Everything else had been pretty chill.
Colleen: Final chapter.
Meghan: But, to be fair, she had been avoiding a lot of these moments.
Colleen: Mm-hmm. There were a lot of attempts.
Meghan: Yes. And so it's almost inevitable that one of them was going to be successful.
Colleen: It was really serious. She got drugged and basically left for dead under a crib. Also, why is there an airport nursery? Do we have airport nurseries now where you just leave the babies?
Meghan: No.
Colleen: Like, there's nursing rooms.
Meghan: Yeah. I don't think they want you to bring your crib with you anymore.
Colleen: No, no, no. Well, no, the cribs are there.
Meghan: Oh,
Colleen: And then you just leave the baby there.
Meghan: Of course.
Colleen: ...while you fly? What is-
Meghan: It's probably when you have a really long, when you're in the airport for a few hours. You're like, “Here, let me put the baby here so I don't have to carry [it the whole time].”
Colleen: You know what? I like that. Because I was assuming we were just like, “Oh man, he's so loud. I'll put him over here.” Yeah. This is our fourth knockout of Nancy Drew, but the first drugging, which felt pretty serious. Total, our running total- We have four knockouts, three kidnaps.
[Sound Cue: Klaxon horn (commonly known as the “Ahooga horn” or “old-timey car horn”) blares, followed by the spoken words “Crash Course,” followed by another instance of the Ahooga horn]
Colleen: Welcome to our new segment: Crash Course! And since it is new and we've already done eight books, I took some time, literally immediately before you got here- You were driving here, and I was writing down how Nancy was bad at driving, so that was good. Um, and so I had to figure out what to count and what not to count, right?
Meghan: Of course.
Colleen: So going back through, I'm discounting close calls because there are a lot of “I almost got run off the road” or “I almost ran over a child or a cult escapee.” Um, I'm only counting Nancy's vehicle. So the time when the bad guys drove off a cliff and their car spontaneously combusted does not count for this.
Meghan: Okay.
Colleen: This is- Yes, so, only Nancy's vehicle that she is driving or in. But I think almost always driving or piloting or I- What do you call steering a boat? Boating.
Meghan: Boating.
Colleen: Yeah, so I have columns here. I have “Total Car Issues” and “Total Other Vehicles.” Currently just boats, but I'm leaving room for there to be, like, a helicopter accident or something. So here's what I've got. This will the longest version [of this segment] because we're catching up.
Meghan: Of course.
Colleen: So we have Secret of the Old Clock. Her convertible top gets stuck down during the rain, and she has a flat tire that she has to fix, and the boat motor conks out while she's in the middle of the lake, so she has to fix that. So we got two car issues, one boat issue. Book two, Hidden Staircase, nothing!
Meghan: [gasps]
Colleen: This is where she and Carson almost get run over, and they have to jump in the river about it.
Meghan: Of course.
Colleen: And she loses a shoe, I think.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: But nothing actually happens to their vehicle. So we're still at two car, one boat. Or one “other-but-currently-just-boat.” We have The Bungalow Mystery. They crash into a log in the boat in, like, the first chapter. Then the tree almost hits the car in a storm, but it does block the road, so they have to, like, move the tree out of the way, and it's a whole thing, so I counted that as a car issue. Then, also, the distributor was uncapped, and their rotor was stolen. So that's two car issues added plus one boat issue.Total of four car, two boats. Lilac Inn, rough time. We got a canoe rammed and capsized. This is by the, uh, submarine, I believe?
Meghan: Yes, yes.
Colleen: Yes. Car forced into a ditch. The car was stolen.
Meghan: Just stolen!
Colleen: Just stolen.
Meghan: Straight up.
Colleen: Uh, the bad guy's boat that they're in strikes a log, starts sinking, and there's a fire in the engine. I counted that as all one issue. And also a rock was thrown at her car and didn't- It missed her, but it did dent the car. So we are now at a total of seven car issues, four boat issues. Real rough time in Lilac Inn.
Meghan: I am loving this new segment.
Colleen: It's great. It's fantastic. So now we're on Shadow Ranch. There was a lot of horsing around. I did not count the horse as a vehicle because they went- They went almost everywhere on a horse, but they still managed to have two car problems. They traveled almost everywhere by horse, except for when they were walking, but they still had a radiator overheat, and they got stuck in a sandstorm and had to pull over and there was sand everywhere. So now we're up to nine car issues, four boat issues. We're only on book five. Book six, pretty fine. They just get stuck in the mud in a ditch. That's fine.
Meghan: That's fine.
Colleen: Ten car, four boat total. Book seven. Car got hit by accident. This is our last one, Clue in the Diary.
Meghan: Oh yes, yes.
Colleen: We thought the car was getting stolen by Ned.
Meghan: It wasn't.
Colleen: But he was just moving it, so that does not count. They were tailgated on a rickety bridge, but it- Nothing happened, so I didn't count that. They were- This is when they were like, “Um, he's coming up behind us and the bridge can't hold both of us, so we're just gonna speed over here.” And Bess's teeth are actively chattering, but it's fine. Now, they did- They had to stop in the middle of the road because there was a herd of cattle crossing the highway, as you do. So that one was a big traffic issue. I count that as a problem. So we're up to twelve car problems. Still only four boat problems, so we're good. And finally in this book, uh, though she did get a lecture about young girls driving from Mrs. Skeets-
Meghan: Mm-hmm.
Colleen: I thought she was one singular Skeet. She is multiple Skeets. She's [Nancy’s] mostly fine. The only problem is a bridge cracked and broke as she was driving on it. So we are at a total of thirteen car issues, four boat issues. We are only on book eight. I'm real worried. This is only Nancy's vehicle!
Meghan: I know!
Colleen: There's been so many others where, like, a car in front of her gets in a crash, or a car, again, drives off a cliff and then spontaneously combusts. That's not counted. We're not counting all the near-misses. We're not counting, like- There's, there's so many things that could go in this category. I'm trying to be as strict with this as possible. It's just so much.
Meghan: It's so much.
Colleen: And that's the danger of women driving. [laughs]
Meghan: Clearly the lesson to learn from this.
Colleen: She's in boats all the time too!
Meghan: She is!
Colleen: She's canoeing. There was, like, a boat with a motor. That's not a canoe. I don't know. It was just, like, a boat. There's the submarine. There's the-
Meghan: Motorboat?
Colleen: I guess you would call a boat with a motor a “motorboat.” If only I could have put that together, but I didn't! Just a rough time vehicular-wise. So this has been Crash Course. Stay tuned for book nine.
[Sound Cue: The spoken words “Drew’s Clues” are followed by the sound of the dog from Blue’s Clues barking four times in a recognizable pattern]
Meghan: So we've got a few things we've learned about Nancy from this novel. This is two things kind of tied together. I thought Nancy had self-control in Chapter One when the mail carrier, Ira, is drinking his hot chocolate. Nancy is very excited about this letter from England that she has not- She's like, “Oh my goodness.” She's, like, bouncing up and down in the chair, but not actually. But she decides, “Nope, I can be patient and let him finish his drink and it will come up organically.” And then it does. But she has her patience. And then, kind of connected to that, Carson makes a comment [about] how Nancy could never wait for anything as a kid, and I was just like, “Aw, she's grown.”
Colleen: Yeah!
Meghan: And she is, she's being patient.
Colleen: She was! She was tactful for once in her life. Actually a couple times I think she was tactful in this book. She wanted the picture that Ira had of Edgar so she could, like, show it to people, like, “Oh, hey, have you seen this man?” And he goes, “Oh, you think he's handsome?” First of all, this guy won't stop talking about how handsome his half-brother is. Weird. She's like, “Yes, that is definitely what it is, and not 'cause I think he's a criminal.”
Meghan: “Yep, definitely that!”
Colleen: She keeps that thought inside her brain and I'm proud of her. I really liked how good she is with kids.
Meghan: That is literally the next thing I have on my list, too!
Colleen: Tommy the little neighbor kid, who we have never heard of- Like, we've heard of her being about to go help with the children's home-
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: -play and different stuff, but we've never seen her with kids, I don't think. Well, yeah, we've seen her a couple times.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: With, like, the two random girls that she's helped.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: Honey and the girl from the first book.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: But this is just a lot of interaction with just Tommy, and not like his whole family and helping them as a whole.
Meghan: Mm-hmm.
Colleen: And Tommy's like, “‘I was playing 'tective like you!’” Which means that, like, she must talk to him a lot, because he knows not only “She's my neighbor and she's a girl,” but, like, “She's a detective. She solves crimes. And I found some clues for you!” And then she's, like, “All right. Absolutely. This is great work and I'm really proud of you and I- If you can find more clues, I'll give you a detective's badge,” that she had, like, got as a gag gift from one of her friends and she saved. And she pinned it on him and she's like, “Wow!” He found one clue that was so good- Oh, his friend had helped him.
Meghan: Mm-hmm.
Colleen: And so she- He said, “Well, I promised him candy if he would help me. So if you got any candy I could give him that would be great.” And she's like, “You know what?”
Meghan: Of course.
Colleen: “I got two jars of candy. I think you deserve one jar and he gets one jar.” And he goes “A whole jar?! Okay! Let's go!” It was really cute. She, like, goes to her, like, random-stuff-closet, which- I definitely have one.
Meghan: Of course! Of course.
Colleen: Or I have a random-stuff-bucket. And she's like, “Here's your detective badge. Here's two jars of candy. Absolutely. Go for it.”
Meghan: The other- The last thing that I want to add for Drew's Clues-
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Meghan: -because normally we do see Nancy being really polite and being very personable, and one of the moments I really enjoyed was her and the, like, postal inspector.
Colleen: Yup!
Meghan: The postal inspector is just being super rude.
Colleen: He brings up, like, “Even if you didn't know this was the law, you still broke it and you're a criminal.”
Meghan: Yes. And we kind of referenced that before, but here's the part that I really like. So first he's like, “There's no excuse for what you've done.” She's like, “Well, I guess I'll have to talk to my father,” and he's like, “What does that matter?” And she's like, “My dad's a lawyer,” and he's like, “Oh. Yeah. Ummmm. I guess you probably...should.”
Colleen: [laughs]
Meghan: And then she [it] says, “Nancy did not comment on this. She knew that the postal inspector was a very reasonable man. Surely he would understand that the case of Ira Nixon was indeed an exception.”
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Meghan: And then she says, like, “Do you know that he, like, passed out and fainted and he's in the hospital right now? He's like, “Yeah, I heard that! Does- That doesn't excuse him.” And then she just goes, “‘Now, if you'll excuse me.’” And closes the door in his face.
Colleen: Yeah!!!
Meghan: When she realizes he is not in fact being a reasonable man!
Colleen: He's not!
Meghan: She's like, “It's okay, I'm just gonna literally close the door in your face.”
Colleen: And she should have done this with Mrs. Skeets.
Meghan: She should have.
Colleen: But she just forced her way in. And then later, Mr. Drew is, like, cracking up. He's like, “‘My congratulations to you on telling him you would turn the case over to your lawyer.’” Great work. Absolutely no notes.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: We love Mr. Drew. She goes to the movies with Hannah. Did you see that?
Meghan: Yes! She does.
Colleen: It's so cute! We haven't seen them, like, hanging out, I don't think. Like, they've done cooking together. They've done, like, dress stuff or fashion stuff together, but they're just like, “Hey, let's go to the movies. Get your mind off stuff.”
Meghan: Yeah!
Colleen: Also Hannah gets a little salty, too. She has a little smack-talking after she meets Mrs. Skeets. So she goes- And this is Hannah! “‘Imagine having to live with such a person. I don't blame Sailor Joe for taking long voyages to get away from her.’”
Meghan: Right?
Colleen: [gasps] Sassy!
Meghan: That is probably accurate.
Colleen: But sassy!
Meghan: And that, honestly, is probably how their relationship has lasted so long.
Colleen: Probably. [fake-sad] “Oh no, we're long distance. It's so sad.” Um, I also just really like her [Nancy] and Carson in this book. She's like- When they find the real letter- “Oh my gosh, there's an inheritance for Nancy Drew.” She goes, “‘How I wish I was the right Nancy Drew.’” And “her father's eyes twinkled,” and he goes, “‘Then you wouldn't have the fun of a mystery to solve.’” And she's like, “You're right; that's way better.”
Meghan: Yeah, “Yes, I'm the better Nancy Drew. You're right.”
Colleen: It's great, so cute. Oh! We also meet Aunt Eloise! She's in the first game, the only one you've played. [Note from Transcription-Colleen: Meghan has actually also played Shadows at the Water’s Edge, and did so before we even recorded a single episode of the podcast; Recording-Colleen just forgot this fact.]
Meghan: Ohhh!
Colleen: We're in her house. She's not in it. We're in her house.
Meghan: Ohhhh yes, the one- She has, like, the VHS player.
Colleen: Yes, yes. She is a teacher. She lives in New York. And that is- We have met her. Or we have been introduced to her. And she's a phone contact in this book. And here she is!
Meghan: Ah, yes!
Colleen: And she is a schoolteacher here. In the game- Her name is Eloise Drew, which anagrams to “O wise elder,” and that is her password [in the game], which is fantastic.
Meghan: Amazing!
Colleen: Yay, Eloise! I hope we get more of her.
Meghan: There were a lot of good callbacks to some previous things.
Colleen: Yeah!
Meghan: Like, Ned's there, obviously, so, from a previous book. But they were, like, visiting Red Gate Farm at the beginning.
Colleen: Yeah!
Meghan: The very first page! They were on their way back from Red Gate Farm.
Colleen: You are right. And that's two books ago. This isn't even like, “Ooh, in her last mystery,” or whatever.
Meghan: Yeah, so I really like that she doesn't just- Because sometimes it does feel like she just kind of leaves the mysteries behind.
Colleen: Mm-hmm. We never see, like, the girls from the first book, but-
Meghan: Yeah, but she does, does seem like she keeps up with her connections.
Colleen: That's awesome! I didn't even catch that.
Meghan: That's why there's two of us. Hopefully we'll catch everything between the two of us.
Colleen: I love it.
[Sound Cue: Simple piano tune underneath the spoken words “Sleuthing Skills”]
Meghan: We have some new Sleuthing Skills for you to add to your sleuth toolbox so that you too can be a sleuthing star like Nancy Drew.
Colleen: What have you got for us?
Meghan: The first thing that you need is jars of candy in case you need to bribe-
Colleen: Check! I always- I have a candy drawer in my bedroom.
Meghan: You always need a candy stash to be able to bribe the children into giving you clues.
Colleen: And also just loose dirty shoes that they find that are not related.
Meghan: Yes, you also have to be accepting of all sorts of clues, whether they are related to the case or not.
Colleen: You also need to be great at self-defense. And when people just walk into your living room and try to punch you, you have to not only dodge the blow, but also grab the stranger's arm and interrogate her.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: So those are very important.
Meghan: Kind of related, you need that sixth sense-
Colleen: Yes.
Meghan: -of when something is about to come crashing down from above so that you can leap-slash-tip-and-fall out of the way.
Colleen: You're so right. Um, it's super important, before you even start your first mystery, that you can tell time like a sailor.
Meghan: Yes! Yes.
Colleen: Did you know what "six bells" meant?
Meghan: I don't! And I feel like I should, 'cause my father was in the Navy.
Colleen: You probably should, actually. My father was not in the Navy, so I don't know. I know about, like, five-alarm chili. He was a firefighter. No. So six bells, uh, each bell is a half-hour past the start of the watch.
Meghan: Ahhh.
Colleen: Like, and- So watches are, [they] come in, usually, four-hour segments. So, yes, "six bells" can mean several different times of the day, but you estimate based on where the sun is. Like, “Oh it's, you know, it's before noon, so this must be the eight-to-noon watch. So ‘six bells’ means six half-hours have passed, so it's eleven o'clock.”
Meghan: Of course.
Colleen: So there's a lot of, like, not only just counting of half-hours, but also just kind of like knowing how the sun works.
Meghan: No, yes.
Colleen: And how the watches work. And you do need to know that- You may not be on a boat in this mystery, but you do need to be able to interpret the salty old sailor telling you his wife's going to be back at eleven, but not doing it like a normal person.
Meghan: Exactly.
Colleen: Yeah. You also do need to be able to read and interpret, uh, quote “coded messages,” which I would argue are not, due to [the fact that] it's just some quotes from Shakespeare that, like, have meaning, but they're not a code. Like, to me a code is either a word-for-word or a letter-for-letter substitution. Is that not-?
Meghan: I guess. I guess. I don't know.
Colleen: I guess there’s [exceptions to the rule I just laid down].
Meghan: I never thought too hard about what [a code has to include].
Colleen: Like, there's another message behind what she has written, behind what- Nancy Smith Drew leaves a note for, like, the B&B housekeeper, and that's how Nancy-regular-Drew tracks down Nancy Smith Drew. Does Nancy have a middle name? Why don't I know that?
Meghan: I'm sure she does.
Colleen: But anyway, she reads these Shakespeare quotes because she's [Nancy Smith Drew] an actor, or an acting coach, and also an actor, I think.
Meghan: Yes, she is.
Colleen: That's right, because she's suspicious. And she leaves all these Shakespeare quotes and Mrs. Roderick, who owns the place where she was staying, is like, “‘If that was meant to be a message, I can't make head or tail of it.’” And Nancy's like, “Absolutely, I've got it. She's going to the airport. She's got this new love interest, but she's not sure if that's, uh, what she wants. But she thinks it's nice to take a chance, but just in case, if you could show up, that'd be great.” I'm like, “Oh! Okay.”
Meghan: Yeah, and it's just- You gotta be able to have- You [should] have a deep understanding of Shakespeare and iambic pentameter.
Colleen: Mm-hmm, and the context of each quote from each play.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: Probably helps you interpret it.
Meghan: Exactly.
Colleen: You also have to be a great parker.
Meghan: Of course.
Colleen: Ned is absolutely certain she's not gonna be able to park and, uh, “after several skillful twists of the wheel, Nancy” maneuvers “the car into the vacant spot” and “Ned admitted he could not have done a finer job,” which, from most men, is a huge compliment.
Meghan: Yes, agreed.
Colleen: My final Sleuthing Skill [is] extremely vital. This has come up in several books, but I don't think I've brought it up as a Sleuthing Skill. I might have. When you see someone's eyes, you have to know: Are they a good guy or a bad guy?
Meghan: It's true!
Colleen: Last book we saw Ned's eyes. They were whimsical. They were warm. This is a good guy. Even though we thought he was stealing Nancy's car. She has now seen a photograph of Edgar. His eyes are as “cold as steel.” She “instantly felt he was not a person who could be trusted.” Girl, this is a photograph. People photograph badly. It happens.
Meghan: It's true.
Colleen: But you have to just know.
Meghan: Keep collecting these skills and one day you, too, will be a sleuth.
[Sound Cue: Four distinct drum beats that mimic the opening of the song “Accidentally in Love” by Counting Crows, followed by the sung words “Accidentally Gay”]
Colleen: In this segment, we will discuss the perhaps-not-written-to-be-queer-but-sure-comes-off-as-queer segments of this book. I really liked that when they find what objectively seem like culty letters that have been written to Edgar Nixon, they [the letters] say things like, “‘Dear Guide, I am so thrilled. It won't be long until I'm in the arms of the man fate has sent me. I'm counting the hours, Martha.’” They only read these letters because they've been broken open by the sled that also bruised Nancy.
Meghan: Mm-hmm.
Colleen: And they're noticing that Edgar has got these letters from different women excited about meeting their husband.
Meghan: Mm-hmm.
Colleen: And they have not put together yet that he's running this scam related to being a lonely hearts club, or pretending to be a lonely hearts club, and Bess goes, “‘What is your suspicion, Nancy? That Edgar Nixon is a bigamist or even a trigamist?’” “He's not doing a crime–he's polyamorous,” says Bess! “Please, you are so suspicious of this man. He just has a lot of girls that like him and you are givin him crap for no reason!” Also [I’ve] just never heard the word “trigamist.”
Meghan: I hadn't either!
Colleen: Trigamist. I've heard “bigamist” and “polygamist.” I've not-
Meghan: Trigamist.
Colleen: We don't need- Trigamist. Quadrigamist. We don't need a [separate] word for everyone [every new partner someone acquires]. I promise we're good.
Meghan: I noticed there was [were] a few of our, like, “They gaily cried” and “They gaily shouted.”
Colleen: Oh yes. I gaily shout every day of my life.
Meghan: Yes. But I love that George is always wearing tailored clothes
Colleen: Mm-hmm, and a boyish haircut.
Meghan: A boyish haircut.
Colleen: Wink!
Meghan: And tailored clothes definitely gives us, uh, modern readers just some implications.
Colleen: Oh yes. She's a lesbian. That's the implication.
Meghan: That is the implication.
Colleen: Um, continuing this line of thought, in keeping with every butch I've ever met, they are trying to call the doctor that's up the street, because Ira passed out, and George is like, “I'm just gonna run and get him. It's not hard. Goodbye.” And just leaves.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: “I can do it. You're welcome.”
Meghan: “This is taking too long. I'll take it into my own hands. Goodbye.”
Colleen: Literally so good. Do you have any more?
Meghan: That's it for me.
Colleen: I have a few more.
Meghan: Go for it.
Colleen: Ira Nixon, in talking about how attractive his half-brother is- Again, so weird. He's like, “Yeah, the girls always liked him and he liked them, but he never got married. Anyway.”
Meghan: [laughs]
Colleen: Is he a confirmed bachelor? Maybe. I like that Nancy describes wearing a dress as a “costume,” and I know that that just means “outfit,” but that's also how I feel whenever I wear, like, like, clothes intended for women, because I was raised female, and I use they/them pronouns. I am non-binary. And just [wearing a] dress does feel like cross-dressing to me, even though it's not really meant to be [because I was assigned female at birth, so the stereotypical notion of “cross-dressing” would seemingly exclude an AFAB person wearing a dress].
Meghan: Yeah!
Colleen: But I like it. Like, “Yeah, this is a costume.”
Meghan: “This is a costume.”
Colleen: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And finally, Dave Evans. He's the star of the new play that they put on instead of the play that they've been working on. He's like, “This play was for the spring, but we're going to do this. It's more ready than the one we were working on for this week.” Like, what's going on with that?
Meghan: What kind of theatre people are you?
Colleen: Weird choices. But, um, he's extremely funny, and he plays, uh, a girl and her twin brother. And he's good at both parts. And it's fantastic. And he is, I assume, great in drag. And so we love that for Dave.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: I also am wondering… Is this just Twelfth Night?
Meghan: That's what I was wondering.
Colleen: They were going to do a Shakespeare play. They weren't ready, so they instead did a comedy where a girl gets mixed up with her twin brother. Not Shakespeare though!
Meghan: But it's not Shakespeare.
Colleen: Or many other- It doesn't have to be Twelfth Night. There's many of those, I feel like.
Meghan: Obviously, As You Like It with Rosalind.
Colleen: Obviously.
Meghan: But she's not mistaken for her twin brother.
Colleen: No, no, no.
Meghan: Just a boy.
Colleen: Just a boy in general.
Meghan: Yep.
Colleen: I just love that for Dave. Good job, Dave.
[Sound Cue: Scribbling as of a pencil on paper underneath the spoken words “Miscellaneous Mysteries”]
Meghan: In this segment, we discuss any lingering questions or leftover mysteries. What have you got for us, Colleen?
Colleen: The clerk at the town hall completely breaking the fourth wall! Nancy's describing what's going on. He goes, “Sounds like a mystery thriller.” Nancy did not comment and leaves the building.
Meghan: Just walks out!
Colleen: “Goodbye.” What have you got?
Meghan: A lot of my Miscellaneous Mysteries, I kind of already covered in other segments, so, talking about how, you know, we're still talking about Red Gate Farm in Chapter One.
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Meghan: Why does Nancy share so many details of her mysteries?
Colleen: Seriously!
Meghan: And then get confused about why- “How could anyone know this information that I've told twenty people?”
Colleen: “It's so hard to be me!”
Meghan: It is. It is.
Colleen: One of my other lingering mysteries is, “Why does Mrs. Roderick (who owns the, like, B&B thing)- Why doesn't she know what notes are?” “‘Oh yes,’ the woman said, ‘but it didn’t say anything,’ ‘in fact, it really wasn’t a note. Just a lot of words scribbled on a piece of paper.’” That's a note. That's what a note is, honey. What do you- Do you want a bank note? What do you want? I do need to issue a correction. I had said, I think in the last episode, or maybe in Red Gate Farm, I was like, “Wow, we've never had not-looking-over-Nancy's-shoulder perspective.” That's not true. I was flipping back through for the car stuff. I'm like, “Oh, here's a whole chapter where they're like, ‘Nancy's gone.’” Anyway, I was so wrong.
Meghan: That's okay.
Colleen: Yeah, it's not often, but it does, it does happen. Bess comments, “‘Miss Drew,’” talking about Miss Smith Drew, “‘I'm sure is too nice a person to be tied to a dishonest husband.’” Bess, are there some people that are not? Are there some people that you're fine with getting married to a dishonest husband? What's the category? What's the like-
Meghan: Some people get to, but not-
Colleen: Not Miss Smith Drew.
Meghan: -Miss Smith Drew.
Colleen: She's great. And then we end- My other question is, “Why do we end on Nancy Smith Drew just quoting Shakespeare?” Not like, “And then we'd see Nancy in the next mystery.” It's, like, Nancy Smith Drew says, “‘You dear girls, I can never thank you enough.’” Then she began to quote from Shakespeare: “‘But love is blind and lovers cannot see / The pretty follies that themselves commit.’” Weird choice! None of the other ones end on a quote. Also, they have done it so weird[ly]. Those are two lines [initially]. They have made it into four lines, not for lack of space.
Meghan: Nope!
Colleen: They centered it! “‘But love is blind and lovers / Cannot see / The pretty follies that themselves / Commit.’” There was room for that to be the regular way!
Meghan: I just feel like there are so many better Shakespeare quotes.
Colleen: Mm-hmm!
Meghan: Especially to end something.
Colleen: Yeah, this is a really weird one. I guess this is about her. She's like, “Aw, I didn't realize that I was seeing a guy who's not good,” or something.
Meghan: Yeah.
[Sound Cue: Upbeat synthesizer chords reminiscent of a game show introduction play underneath the spoken words “Gumshoe Game Show!”]
Colleen: Welcome to the Gumshoe Game Show!
Meghan: [vocally imitating the sound of a studio audience, but it mostly just sounds like static]
Colleen: What are you playing for? Because Nancy did not get a gift in this.
Meghan: Oh goodness. I, uh, I would like to try to win- Gosh.
Colleen: Looking for a camel-hair coat? Does that suit your fancy?
Meghan: I do, I do like-
Colleen: Do you really? I don't think it's that good [of] a prize.
Meghan: No, I don't either, though.
Colleen: A jar of candy perhaps?
Meghan: Ooh, a jar of candy, or a letter.
Colleen: A letter that's been run over by a sled? That's for somebody with your name, that's not you, from England?
Meghan: Yes! That sounds amazing.
Colleen: Perfect!
Meghan: Goodness. Yeah, there weren't a lot of great, like, good-
Colleen: You could win a whole chicken wire room just for yourself. A loose curtain that's not attached to anything for some reason.
Meghan: Um, goodness.
Colleen: There weren't a lot of items in this.
Meghan: No.
Colleen: Like, a little detective badge, but I don't know. I think you can do better.
Meghan: I think I could do better, too.
Colleen: Hmm. Hmmmmmm.
Meghan: Honestly, let's just get some- I just want some Shakespeare quotes.
Colleen: Okay. You can get a book of Shakespeare?
Meghan: Yeah, I want a Shakespeare- I want a paper that doesn't have any notes on it. Just Shakespeare words.
Colleen: It's not a note, it's just words on a paper.
Meghan: It's just words on a paper-
Colleen: I want a note.
Meghan: -that happen to be Shakespeare.
Colleen: Incredible. Shakespeare note, got it. Beautiful. Well, along those lines-
Meghan: Oh?
Colleen: This is a Shakespeare-themed quiz.
Meghan: Oh gosh. Either I'm going to do super well or I'm going to be so disappointed in myself.
Colleen: Do you want to tell the audience your history with Shakespeare real quick?
Meghan: Okay, so I have been a huge Shakespeare fan since about eighth grade.
Colleen: Nerd.
Meghan: Yep.
Colleen: Nerd.
Meghan: I've, at this point, read most, but not all, of Shakespeare, like, [the] complete works of Shakespeare.
Colleen: Really?
Meghan: Yes, not all of them. I never read, like, Measure for Measure.
Colleen: I was going to wonder if the histories were ones you would skip out on, but you love histories in general.
Meghan: Not all the histories. I haven't read Pericles or, like- It's basically his lesser-known-and-just in-general-aren't-as-good plays. I know the summaries.
Colleen: That's why they're lesser-known.
Meghan: Yeah, exactly. I have been to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, um, six times in my life, [and] seen six different plays [there].
Colleen: How many times did you burn it down?
Meghan: Zero.
Colleen: That's what she says.
Meghan: So far.
Colleen: What plays did you see there?
Meghan: What?
Colleen: I only know about two of them.
Meghan: Oh, I'm gonna try and remember them in order. Othello.
Colleen: Great.
Meghan: A Midsummer Night's Dream. Romeo and Juliet.
Colleen: Excellent.
Meghan: Macbeth.
Colleen: Nice.
Meghan: As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, and Titus Andronicus. So actually I've been seven times.
Colleen: All right!
Meghan: Or- Two of those were seen in one trip. So I saw Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It during the same, like, week-long visit to England.
Colleen: Gotcha.
Meghan: I was the president of the Shakespeare Club at my college [during] my senior year of college. And I participated in many of our plays in a variety of different capacities. And I have taught a one-week Shakespeare course for fifth, sixth, and seventh graders.
Colleen: And they love it.
Meghan: I love, I love me some Shakespeare.
Colleen: [inaudible] Shakespeare.
Meghan: So I hope I'm able to answer these questions.
Colleen: Some of them might be too easy for you, in fact, but I thought it would be rude to leave these questions out.
Meghan: Yeah, and also, I'm sometimes, you know, it could be, like, a random gap in my knowledge.
Colleen: That's fair.
Meghan: Or my brain broke. We'll see.
Colleen: That is also fair. [clears throat loudly, for show] Question One: The first two lines of Nancy Smith Drew's “coded message” (I have put in heavy quotes ‘cause I don't believe it's a code) state, “My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr’d / And I myself see not the bottom of it.” What play is this from?
Meghan: Oh, see, I didn't ever-
Colleen: I was hoping you had not looked it up. I'll give you options.
Meghan: I didn't. I didn't.
Colleen: We have A) Hamlet, B) Troilus and Cressida, C) The Scottish play [Macbeth], or D) The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Meghan: Can you repeat the quote?
Colleen: Absolutely. “My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr’d / And I myself see not the bottom of it.” What would you say this quote means?
Meghan: I mean, it mostly just means, like, your brain's all, all, all crazy and-
Colleen: You need some Claritin Clear.
Meghan: Yeah, you need something to help you see more clearly.
Colleen: That does not narrow it down, I feel like.
Meghan: Uh, it does not. It does not.
Colleen: I feel like that happens to most people in most of these.
Meghan: Yes, um, okay. I feel like, while it fits Hamlet, I don't think it is Hamlet.
Colleen: Okay.
Meghan: Because I feel like there are better quotes from Hamlet, and I feel like I know Hamlet fairly well. I worked on Merry Wives of Windsor.
Colleen: I know nothing about Merry Wives.
Meghan: As a sound designer.
Colleen: I've never read that.
Meghan: And I don't remember, but this is a line that could go in anything.
Colleen: Right?
Meghan: I've never read Troilus and Cressida.
Colleen: Okay. I haven't either.
Meghan: I'm going to go with The Scottish play. I'm going to go with Mackers.
Colleen: I am so sorry. It is Troilus and Cressida.
Meghan: Ah. See? And it's the one I have I have no experience with. Troilus and Cressida.
Colleen: I don't even know. I could not tell you the plot.
Meghan: Yep. It's a tragedy. That's all I really know. But that's one of the lesser known ones that I don't know as well. Oof. Off to a rough start.
Colleen: It's okay. Question Two: The fourth line of her coded message is, “We that are true lovers, run into strange capers.” What show is that from?
Meghan: No, this is all gonna be-
Colleen: No, I have bonuses, though.
Meghan: Okay.
Colleen: Is this from A) Romeo and Juliet, B) Taming of the Shrew, C) [The] Winter's Tale, or D) As You Like It?
Meghan: And I should know… Okay, Taming of the Shrew is the one I have the least experience with. I've only seen it performed once. Oh, it's my least favorite of the ones.
Colleen: Oh, really? I like the way I've seen it done. [But] it can be done in a really weird anti-feminist way.
Meghan: It tends to fall that way, unfortunately. Okay. Remind- Oh, can I see the code again? “We that are…”
Colleen: You can see it but you can't read it ‘cause I wrote it [and my handwriting was bad]. “We that are true lovers, run into strange capers.”
Meghan: I think it's As You Like It.
Colleen: That is correct.
Meghan: I bet it's Touchstone who says that. That sounds right.
Colleen: Probably. I don't know As You Like It. I also was the president of the Shakespeare Club in college, but it was, like, four people and the professor, and he was delightful. My favorite thing about the professor joining us has got to be him pointing out that in Macbeth they, I’m, he's like, “They reference, actually, two ice cream stores in one line here. They say ‘Toad, that under cold stone / Days and nights have [hast] thirty-one,’ ‘thirty-one’ being Baskin-Robbins. Just need to make sure you get that.” I'm like, “Sir, you can't say this to me [as if it’s a real Shakespeare fact]!” As a bonus: We talked about “strange capers.” Where do capers (the food) come from? Would you like choices?
Meghan: Yes. Is this Question Three or is this just-
Colleen: This is a bonus to [Question Two, about] the strange capers. A) They are part of a pig, B) They grow on a bush, C) They grow on a tree known as the Flanders tree, or D) They grow on a plant known as the Flinders rose?
Meghan: I think they grow on trees.
Colleen: I'm so sorry.
Meghan: Are they a rose?
Colleen: They grow on a bush. They're on a bush known as the Flinders rose. So B or D. I'm so sorry. No bonus point.
Meghan: [inaudible]
Colleen: Question Three: The fifth line [of Nancy Smith Drew’s note is] “Prosperity’s the very bond of love.” What show is that from? A) Othello, B) Romeo and Juliet, C) The Winter's Tale, or D) The Taming of the Shrew?
Meghan: [sighs] “Prosperity's the very bond of love.”
Colleen: They're all so vague.
Meghan: I know! That's why I didn't recognize them, and I didn't have time to look any of them up. What's the first word?
Colleen: Prosperity.
Meghan: Prosperity's the very bond of…
Colleen: Walk me through your thought process.
Meghan: It sounds familiar.
Colleen: [snort-laughs]
Meghan: Which-
Colleen: Which would rule out Taming.
Meghan: Taming of the Shrew for me. Um, of those three, I have worked on Winter's Tale the most.
Colleen: You have.
Meghan: Because I-
Colleen: Does that sound familiar?
Meghan: It does sound familiar, but I don't know if it's The Winter's Tale.
Colleen: Okay.
Meghan: And I feel like if I get it wrong, I'll disappoint all my Winter's Tale cast and crewmates.
Colleen: And they're definitely listening.
Meghan: They will be listening, probably.
Colleen: I don't think they'll be disappointed. As it has been a decade since we were in college.
Meghan: It's been almost exactly a decade since I did The Winter's Tale.
Colleen: Oh my god.
Meghan: It's been a long time.
Colleen: Go with your gut.
Meghan: I'm gonna say The Winter's Tale.
Colleen: Correct.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: Bonus.
Meghan: Oh, thank goodness.
Colleen: Who says it? A- That's why I was covering it, because that would give it away. Is it Perdita [pronounced “per-DEE-tuh”]? Is it Pongo? Is it Camillo? Or Florizell? I don't know how-
Meghan: Florizell. Okay, Pongo's not a character, so it's not B.
Colleen: Well, Pongo and Perdita go together.
Meghan: And it's Perdida [pronounced PER-did-uh]? I know.
Colleen: [dramatically] Oh my god! I'm so sorry.
Meghan: No, I had an argument with our director about how to pronounce it.
Colleen: [gasps] Ooo.
Meghan: I thought it should be Perdita [pronounced “per-DEE-tuh”].
Colleen: Like 101 Dalmations?
Meghan: Well, and it's- They're Italian.
Colleen: Oh yeah.
Meghan: It all takes place in Italy, in Sicily, and that's how you would pronounce it Italy.
Colleen: Oh.
Meghan: And they were like, “No, Perdita [pronounced PER-did-uh] is what works with the iambic pentameter, so it has to be Perdita [pronounced PER-did-uh].” And I was like, “Well, okay, fine.”
Colleen: “You're right, yeah.”
Meghan: “I will go with the Shakespeare expert here.”
Colleen: “Okay, fine.”
Meghan: “Prosperity’s the very bond of love.” I'm trying to remember which of… Okay, I don't think it's Perdita. It's Camillo or Florizell. I think.
Colleen: What- What are they like? What are Camillo- I don't know what these people are [like].
Meghan: Well, I'm mostly just thinking it was either Will who said it or it was John who said it. I'm gonna go [with] Florizell.
Colleen: It was Camillo.
Meghan: [disappointed] Yes.
Colleen: I'm so sorry.
Meghan: Sorry, [inaudible].
Colleen: Right now you've got two points, though. You're doing well. Alright, number four. Line eight in the quote- In the coded message-
Meghan: Aaa!
Colleen: “Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.” Is that from A) The Merry Wives of Windsor, B) Richard II, C) Richard III, or D) Twelfth Night?
Meghan: Okay, I'm gonna guess it's one of the Richards.
Colleen: “Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.” As I was looking these up to see what they were from, it [the website] was like, “And what this means is, you know, it's, it's better to do things early, and, and not do them late.”
Meghan: Oh! Oh will it?
Colleen: Thank you!
Meghan: Umm, I'm gonna go with Richard III.
Colleen: It's Merry Wives, I'm so sorry.
Meghan: Oh shoot!
Colleen: As a bonus question, speaking of hours and minutes, what year did Daylight Savings start in the US? Is it A) 1900, B) 1918, C) 1950, or D) 2022?
Meghan: I'm gonna go with... 1918.
Colleen: Correct. Very good.
Meghan: I was gonna say, ‘cause I think it was during World War I.
Colleen: Yes, and it started in 1916 in Germany, actually. Apparently.
Meghan: So how many points do I have?
Colleen: You have three points, and there's a final question and a bonus.
Meghan: Okay.
Colleen: And also a bonus-bonus.
Meghan: Okay, okay.
Colleen: So you can get up to six total if you need to. If you can. I don't know. I'm just saying stuff. Question Five, the final bit of the note. “It is the stars / The stars above us,” that “govern our conditions.” [Note from Transcription-Colleen: Close iambic readers will note that the original quote does not (and should not, for meter’s sake) have a “that” in it. Unclear why I kept adding it. It’s not in the Nancy Drew book either.] Would that be from A) Julius Caesar, B) King Lear, C) Antony and Cleopatra, or D) Romeo and Juliet?
Meghan: I think this is Julius Caesar. …it's not?
Colleen: It's not. Tell me why you're thinking of it. I know.
Meghan: It's so close! I thought that maybe it was one of the other quartos! But it's because “The fault, dear Brutus,” is in the, is not in ourselves, but in our stars. [Note from Transcription-Colleen: The quote is technically the other way around, reading “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves,” but it had been a very long recording day.]
Colleen: And tell me why you know that, and then you will have answered the bonus-bonus question.
Meghan: John Green's The Fault in Our Stars.
Colleen: Correct, yes. Okay, so you got the point for that. That was the bonus-bonus. And that's why I threw Julius Caesar in there, and I'm so sorry. It's actually from King Lear.
Meghan: Oh shoot.
Colleen: From King Lear, can you extrapolate what that is about?
Meghan: So it's...
Colleen: “It is the stars / The stars above us,” that “govern our conditions.”
Meghan: It's been a while-
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Meghan: -since I've worked on King Lear.
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Meghan: That was probably 2011.
Colleen: Great.
Meghan: Last time I've interacted with King Lear, so, oof, long time ago. Um, but I'm going to guess that it is one of the times that King Lear is making many more excuses as to why all of the things that have gone wrong couldn't possibly be his own fault. It's just bad, you know, bad fate.
Colleen: Bad stars.
Meghan: Destiny. Bad stars.
Colleen: Stars. Not good. Not today. No good. [Note from Transcription-Colleen: I was attempting to quote The Road to El Dorado, specifically “Stars. Can’t do it. Not today!” You’ll note that I did not, in fact, quote that.]
Meghan: Not today!
Colleen: I will give it to you. Specifically, it's also about why his daughters are so different.
Meghan: Well, yeah.
Colleen: “They're, like, born under different stars. It's not because I treat them so different[ly] from each other.”
Meghan: “Couldn't be.”
Colleen: Very good. Very good. You have got five out of five. You have won the Shakespeare quote note.
Meghan: Wheee! Yay!
Colleen: I'm very proud of you. That's going in our Drewseum.
Meghan: Yes.
Colleen: Yay. Sorry, that was a little trickier than I thought.
Meghan: No, that's-
Colleen: I wasn't sure, like, “She's either gonna know every single one without me even saying it-”
Meghan: I know, and it-
Colleen: “-or it's,” because- But they're so vague. It's like, “Wow, love is hard”?
Meghan: That's the thing!
Colleen: “I don't care, I don't know about fate”?
Meghan: Yeah.
Colleen: I don't know. That could be literally any play.
Meghan: Most- Exactly. And there are, of course, always, like, standout ones. And I know those. But I feel like I know, like, the most popular ones at this point.
Colleen: Right!
Meghan: I need to brush up on my Shakespeare.
Colleen: Thank you for joining us this week. Next book is The Sign of the Twisted Candles? Is that right?
Meghan: Yes, yes, Sign of the Twisted Candles.
Colleen: All I remember about that [book] is: A) twisted candles on the front, B) old man on the front.
Meghan: Yeah, it's like a creepy-looking cover.
Colleen: Kind of a creepy cover!
Meghan: From the original, the original run. All right!
[Sound cue: Same eerie piano tune reminiscent of the Nancy Drew PC game soundtracks that played at the top of the episode, now extended to play underneath the rest of the episode.]
Meghan: Thank you so much for joining us on Me and You and Nancy Drew.
Colleen: This podcast is lovingly dedicated to the memory of my wonderful mother, Char, World's Best Mum, and the woman who got me hooked on sassy female detective stories. I also want to thank my brother, Ben, for creating most of our sound and music cues for this podcast. Thanks, Ben.
Meghan: You can check out our website, meandyouandnancydrew.com, for show transcripts, links to our social media, and our Patreon, where we'll post any images that we described during the podcast. Those will be visible to anyone without a paywall, so that we're not describing nebulous images that you can't see at home. Um, but if you'd like to become a patron, there are various perks there, including outtakes or things that got cut for time, stickers and cross-stitch patterns to create your own Drewseum at home, and more!
Colleen: Thank you, Meghan, for editing the podcast, doing a lot of research about podcast creation, and adding a few additional sound cues as needed.
Meghan: Thank you, Colleen, for also editing the podcast, for transcribing it, and for helping create our logo.
Colleen: Thank you to our partners for all the support and love, and especially for lending us their microphones that they bought for a completely different purpose but said we could borrow once in a while.
Meghan: Thank you to libraries everywhere for giving access to Nancy Drew books, and all the other books that we mentioned today, and just media of all kinds, to people everywhere for free.
Colleen: And finally, thank you, of course, to Carolyn Keene, for independently writing each of the Nancy Drew books from 1930 to modern day. We couldn’t do this without you and your 613 individual novels.
Meghan: And don’t forget the moral of this episode: “‘I'm certainly not going to get my hopes up of being a millionaire.’”
