Ep.6 - I Was Usually Pretty High
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After an interview with Judi, the daughter of another Silver Chain member, Paul receives a document that sends his investigation in an unexpected and revealing direction.
Episode 6 Transcript
COLD OPEN
Last time on Time Capsule
Nola : Somebody's daughter joined.
Kimmer: I'm almost certain that it was. It was Judy.
SFX: PHONE RINGING
Judi : Hello?
Paul : Hello? Is this Judi?
Judi : Yes, it is.
MUSIC
Part of this journey in meeting with both former members and the children of The Silver Chain is the fact that I’m asking people to go almost five decades back. To recall a part of their lives that for most was long forgotten.
And - in dredging up these memories - often one recollection leads to another, and in the course of an interview – usually at the end – I’m given a wild aside that suddenly sends me in a completely different direction.
The problem is oftentimes these asides can’t be verified. And memories aren’t always trustworthy. Many of these leads, these shifts in story, have led me to a dead end.
Paul: While you were living with Carol and George, did you participate in their group, The Silver Chain?
Judi: No, I did not.
Okay. So Judi never was a member of The Silver Chain after all. She’s not even sure the club was still operating in 1979. And I wonder how Kimmer and Nola thought this. But they were both at this point in their 20s, living their own lives away from home. So maybe the story got convoluted.
So this aside from Kimmer and Nola is another red herring. But this one I’m telling you about for a reason. Because this episode. It’s not actually about Judi at all. We will be covering her story in a bonus episode. This episode is about what happened when an envelope from Judi arrived at my door.
Paul : Dear Paul, I made copies of everything I had.
Inside the envelope is a stack of photos from Judi’s time living with Carol and George. Followed by photographs Judi’s taken of a few keepsakes from that time that she claims she forgot she had. Like Carol and George’s business card from their later years, posing before a massive turquoise and purple striped motorhome. On the right side of the card are their names and just below it the phrase “Gypsies Extraordinaire”.
I flip to the next photo. It’s of another keepsake, like Carol and George’s business card, but it’s a photo of something I’ve grown accustomed to seeing, examining, poring through. It’s a photo of the cover of a Silver Chain newsletter. But this isn’t just any cover. Because the date on this newsletter. It’s December 1983.
Paul: Oh, my God. Holy shit.
I’m Paul Ditty, and this is Time Capsule: The Silver Chain. Welcome to the Eighties.
INSERT CASIO KEYBOARD SILVER CHAIN THEME
ACT ONE
Let me just say it again: Holy Shit! The club was still in existence in December 1983. This means that the safe deposit box owner’s collection of the newsletters ended in June 1978 for a different reason.
But there’s one other important piece of information this single page of the newsletter holds. And it lies within the cover story itself.
READER: “This will be the last executive corner we will be responsible for. And we write this with many mixed emotions. Obviously it is with some relief that these responsibilities end. But at the same time, the habits of concern for the club will not leave easily. We can all be happy that the club will now continue, led by four enthusiastic couples who promise bigger and better things for The Silver Chain in future years.”
That’s right. the club’s remaining founders – despite their 1974 bylaw stating that they would fully dissolve the group if they were to ever leave it – agreed to transfer the duties to “four enthusiastic couples.” But who are these couples? And why are they so enthusiastic?
Tammy: I was absolutely shocked because no one ever has, in fact, I hadn't heard the word Silver Chain in forever.
And when you said that, Silver Chain, I thought oh my God.
It was just like my past came knocking on my door.
This is Tammy. I find her the way any good sleuth would… by reading obituaries. In this case, the obituary of a former Silver Chain member. I’m scrolling through posts on the memorial page when Tammy’s tribute catches my eye. Talking about all the good times, the parties and camping trips. Pretty normal memories, right? But post it on a Silver Chain member’s obituary, and I get suspicious. So I give Tammy a call.
Tammy reveals that she and her husband Henry were one of the couples who took over The Silver Chain in 1983. They both agree to meet with me and I hop on a plane to Minneapolis. You’ll be hearing me along with one of our show's producers, Marcel Malekebu in Tammy and Henry’s interviews. We set up shop in a HIlton Garden Inn conference room. Only a block away from where the Thunderbird motel once stood.
Marcel: For sound purposes, can you tell me so I can. Do the levels. What did you eat for breakfast today?
Henry: Nothing.
Paul: What did you eat for lunch? Okay.
Henry: What? I didn't have lunch either.
Henry, you’ll learn, is a man of few words. Fortunately, Tammy is more effusive, and tells us all about growing up in a big house on Lake Harriet, which at first sounds idyllic. Until Tammy shares that by the time she was 19, she had both two children and two dissolved marriages.
Tammy: My family had kind of disowned me because Catholic girls don't get divorced and they're not single moms.
It’s about this same time that Henry is discharged from Vietnam. He’s attending the University of Minnesota when he and Tammy first meet.
Tammy: It would have been like 1972.
Henry: It was just a house party with some of my fraternity brothers.
Or maybe it wasn’t at a house party.
Tammy: I was at a bar and he was trying to pick me up. And I was trying to score some speed. And as a come on, he told me he could get it for me, but he he just made that up.
But do details like location really matter when you’ve met your soulmate?
Henry: Well, she was a little wild. You know, but we just I don't know, we just seem to click.
Tammy: What fascinated me to begin with when I very first met him was he was working construction, which is hard labor. We would party all night long and he would maybe sleep an hour. And then he would get up and t ake a Pepsi and a bag of Fritos or something like that, and off you would go to work, work all day, come home, maybe sleep for an hour and off. We'd party some more. He he never he never ate like normal people do. He never slept like normal people do. And that fascinated me. I loved that about him.
Paul: So when you met in 72, how long were you together before you got married?
Tammy: Hmm. Six years. We got married in 78.
Paul: Well, you'd already been married twice, so you're probably like.
Tammy: I'm not. I was never going to get married again. Ever. But. Yeah. I married him in 78.
He was good to my kids. He was good to me. And. He was the only father my kids ever knew.
Henry: Back in those days, we we were doing a little bit of the white crosses.
Paul: What’s the white crosses?
Henry: Speed.
Tammy: Oh, I think a lot of white crosses.
Henry: You know, sometimes now I wish I had some a little bit of that stuff that I knew back then that I trusted
Tammy: They were little. They looked like, they were smaller than aspirin. Real little white things. And they had a cross on them.
Henry: Actually, she had been using them and she introduced me to them.
Tammy: I was hooked on white crosses. And I swear to God, if they were available today, I'd buy them. I loved them. In the Seventies, they became a thing, because at that time you couldn’t get diet pills.
I can't tell you how much money I spent on white crosses. I mean, I bought thousands and thousands and thousands of them. I used to take 13. I remember. Why that number, but it was. 13 at one time. Swallow them all. And within 4 hours I had to take 13 more.
At first you feel so, so good, so high energy. Super confidence. Like you could conquer the world. You think you could anyway. And real positive. You feel positive about everything and you and you want to just do everything, and you got all this energy–
Henry: Oh, God, we have a lot of crazy memories and just, you know, fun things that we did, you know, going out. I mean,, we didn't start we really didn't start our nightlife until midnight.
Tammy: It gets to the point you have to take them to get out of bed. You can't. You can't do anything without it. You. You're actually paying money - later down the road - to feel the way that you used to feel before you ever took them.
I know what you’re thinking: all those damn White Crosses put these newlyweds on a course for disaster.
NANCY REAGAN: JUST SAY NO.
And to that I say “Calm down, Nancy Reagan.” Because the rupture in this relationship is actually caused by the world’s oldest, perhaps most alluring intoxicant.
Henry: Well, we've been together for a couple of years. And then I just, I don't know, just kind of got a little crazy
Tammy: He cheated on me so much. It was. Well, I said to him one time, Can I use any language?
Paul: Anything you want to say.
Tammy: I said he would fuck a snake if you held it still for him. And he took that as a compliment. He thought it was hilarious. And I was. It was a major put down as far as I know. He was proud of that.
He just had to fuck everything. I mean, he did. I mean. You know, I'm talking men. Women.
I married him in 78. So, yeah, I would have divorced him in 79.
But Tammy and Henry – they’re like Bo and Hope, Lyon and Cookie, or any other star-crossed soap couple. Despite all their human flaws – and the multitude of reasons they shouldn’t be together – they just can’t quit each other.
Henry: When we got a divorce, I didn't even know it. And she didn't want me to know. She didn't want me to know that we were divorced.
Paul: How is that possible?
Henry: Well. It was, you know, I mean, I knew she would file for that. And then I but we were started seeing again each other. Almost nonstop. And, you know. [01:17:12][12.3]
Marcel: You didn't have to go through like the court proceeding or something.
Henry: No. I got served with papers. And. I remember getting something in the mail and some something that said caught. Number of bah bah bah bah is finalized. What I call her and ask her. She says, I don't all know. She don't want me to at all that we were divorced. So that's how much, you know, we just kind of ran from the divorce and, you know, being right back together were where we were. And then I moved back in with her
Tammy: I know I might have gone on a couple of dates, but not really much. And he just continued the way he always did. Just screwed everything he found. And. But he didn't have another girlfriend. So. Yeah, we were always together.
We were never separated. Separated. He had an apartment. He stayed at my house most of the time. Finally, he gave up his apartment, moved back into my house, and then he'd been living in my house a few years. And then we just got married again.
MUSIC
Tammy: When I married him the second time, I thought I'd rather have it right up front. He was always like: if it feels good, do it.
Live, have fun. Try everything.
So when I married him the second time, I kind of came around to his way of thinking.
He wanted to go and try the swinging lifestyle.
MIDROLL 1
ACT TWO
Henry: I saw an ad. Uh. Oh, God, that was the name of that.
Tammy: Something like City Pages or something. They would have ads and I didn't like that idea at all.
How he got in touch with this one couple I don't really know.
Henry: Boy. I must have talked to somebody.
See what I mean? Tammy and Henry – they complete one another. Or maybe – in the case of talking about events that occurred four decades ago – I should say Tammy completes Henry. Tammy has a sharp recollection of details, dates, names.
And in 1982, Tammy is reluctant to just meet up with another couple for sex. But she agrees to a first meeting at a restaurant to suss each other out.
Tammy: When we met them, it was a week before the second time we got married.
Originally he wanted to meet them as a potential swinging couple. And then they talked about the club and that they would sponsor us.
So I agreed to go to the first dance.
Henry: You know that. Go check it out. you don't have to stay if you don't like it, you know?
So Tammy and Henry first get remarried because priorities. Then they are sponsored by this couple to attend one of The Silver Chain’s Saturday night dances. Held at, where else, but The Thunderbird Motel.
Paul: What were the dances like?
Henry: Music and a dance floor.
Let’s try Tammy.
Tammy: My impression before ever went was I thought it was just going to be a bunch of creepy people and having sex all over the place and you know. So yeah, the whole idea is just kind of icky to me but that isn't the way that it was at all. I mean, it was a dance. And people were dressed like semi-formal. And it was just fun.
I just remember there was – I don't know – at least 100 people at the dance. And they were all ages, sizes, economic levels. It was just a big variety of people.
I found them to be probably more accepting than any people I'd ever known before They just accepted you at face value. And that was that. And I liked it a lot.
After the dance, Tammy and Henry are both on board, and become Silver Chain members with the help of their sponsor couple and the approval of The Executive Committee.
Tammy: It was just Arnie and Dorothea. And Cheryl and Jerry. And Arnie and Dorothea weren't even around very much. At that. I met them a couple of times, but I never knew them. It was Cheryl and Jerry.
They had their very strict rules.
No drugs. That was the biggest one. No drugs. If they heard that somebody had gone in the bathroom, like, say, at the Thunderbird and was smoking pot, you were out. That was it. They were really strict about that.
The whole idea was police would look the other way if they just knew it was a swinging club. But if you combine sex and drugs, it's going to be a big story.
Tammy: I think it was the third dance we went to I got in trouble from Cheryl.
She was very much in charge. She's a little short lady. She was just, you know. And she got really upset with me because I was talking to the band members. I didn't know there was rules about that and you weren't supposed to fraternize with the band. I suppose, because they were afraid you'd tell the band what the deal was. But she took me aside after and told me no more of that. You know, you, you fraternize with the people in the group. And you leave the band alone. I thought you're not going to tell me what to do.
For a swinger, she was very narrow minded.
Jarring interactions with The Little General aside, Tammy and Henry fit right in, forming a close bond with one couple in particular.
Tammy: Rich and Sharon. And Rich and I became extremely close and we smoked dope together all the time and laughed. That's what we did most of the time was laugh.
And we just started going to all these things. And we ended up going to. Things that involved my kids. And all these family things.
Henry: We went tubing about the river and then we had we pulled a big pig roaster down there. And, yeah, that was a lot of fun.
We ended up getting a camper, and a bunch of the people in the club had campers, and we would go to different campsites and just stay for three day weekends and stuff. And their kids would be there And my kids. And. It was just fun. And yeah, it was so much more than swinging.
Tammy: The first year that we were in the club, we spent Thanksgiving with Rich and Sharon. They had us to their house for Thanksgiving dinner.
Tammy: You were never required to anything. And there were some. Women in the group. I don't know if they ever did. I don't I never saw that they did. I wasn't active with that many people. I had to have a personal connection. And Rich and I, we laughed together. That's about all I can say. We laughed. I mean, I laughed so hard with him that it would make my face hurt.
So primarily Tammy is in the club to socialize and party. And the time is right because – and I don’t think I’ve emphasized this nearly enough: it’s like, totally the 80s.
SOUND CLIP: WALL STREET GREED IS GOOD
SOUND CLIP: OPENING TO DYNASTY THEME
Tammy: Some of these people had pretty extravagant homes
Very, very, very nice houses. There were some very wealthy people in this club.
We had judges, dentists, doctors. A car dealership owner. \
Tammy: He had a great big, really big boat and he took us and another couple on his boat down the St Croix.
And then we went into Stillwater And he paid for us all to stay at the Lowell inn for the weekend.
One year, Neil Diamond was here in concert and a bunch of us wanted to go so he took us all by limousine.
He was a generous guy. A lot of fun.
He was always so good to me and to everybody that I knew.
The car dealer takes such a liking to Tammy that he gives her the deal of a lifetime on what becomes her very first sports car.
MUSIC: DANGER ZONE OPENING OR SOMETHING SIMILAR
Tammy: A Firebird. Trans Am.
It was a beautiful car. It was a white car. It had the big orange thing on it and the big fin in the back.
He said just take it, drive it, see what you think. So I took it home and of course I loved it. And then he was really busy. I would call and he was out of town or whatever. It was like six months. I was driving with dealer's plates. The auction was handling the insurance. I mean, it cost me nothing to drive that car.
We reached out to the car dealer for comment, but he couldn’t make any guarantees that he was once a Silver Chain member.
Opulence aside, this is still the club we know in so many ways. It’s a community of friends, relationships that go beyond swinging, rule following, rule breaking, marriages getting stronger, and marriages on the rocks. The Silver Chain even continues to hold regular rap sessions for its members, hosted by Cheryl and Jerry, and Arnie and Dorothea.
Tammy: On Friday night before the dance, there was a, I don't remember what they called it, but it was a meeting where anyone was allowed to come but very few people ever did. But it was to discuss any concerns.
Paul: Was it called New Horizons?
Tammy: Mm. That doesn't sound familiar to me. It was just. Just like a bitch session.
It might have been at one of those Friday night things before the dance that might have been how the word came out. Because I definitely remember we Were at some function where.
They had a meeting and said that they were going to close the club down.
Tammy: And it was a shock. And then it just kind of snowballed like, boom.
Henry: I think they were just. Getting a little tired of that. You know, they've been doing it for a long time.
They were looking for people volunteer to do it. All right. I'm sure you know, we were enjoying it. We're having a good time with it.
Tammy: If you talk to some people, I'm sure that they would say that when we took it over, it really went to shit.
MIDROLL 2
ACT THREE
Tammy: The club changed a little bit when we took it over. There was no more Cheryl.
No more Cheryl. Okay, cool, so now Tammy can talk to the band without receiving a lecture. But now that Cheryl’s let go of the reins, there’s still all that admin. So who is the new Cheryl?
Henry: Well, I kind of, you know, did the bookings for calling around and now lining up the places to dance. Yeah. I guess I was probably doing more running than anybody.
Tammy: He agreed to handle the books. And that scared the hell out of me because he's no thief, but he is no money manager.
Paul: Did you receive the newsletters?
Henry: Oh, geez. I suppose it probably did. I would imagine it did, but I just don't even remember it.
I’m relieved to hear from Tammy that the newsletters continued, even featuring Tammy as Personality of the Month on a couple occasions. the newsletter at this point is operated by Dan, of Dan and Kathy, a Silver Chain member who contributed to the newsletter back in the 1970s, and received Carol’s mimeograph before she hit the road for Colorado in 1982.
Tammy: It was a different a different era, a different group of leaders. It got to be much more lax. We didn't have so many rules.
There weren't drugs at the dances, but the drugs became much more… at the parties and stuff.
Henry: You know, ecstasy is.
Paul: Yes.
Henry: Okay. Yes. There is a little bit of that floating around back down.
Paul: This is a real party.
Marcel: Yes. Yes. We know that you're a wild guy.
Henry is –indeed – a wild guy. He’s the only person I interviewed who requested a beer the minute he sat down. Which to be honest, I love. It is exactly the energy I’ve been expecting from The Silver Chain’s members all along.
Henry: There was that there was a a couple and the wife was a nurse and she was the one that cannot give it a try and all. And we just had a lot of fun with that. they had a lot of parties on the weekend.
CBS EVENING NEWS 1985 CLIP
Tammy: I saw a lot of ecstasy at the parties. Yeah. Yeah. We. We bought a lot of ecstasy.
We had a judge in the club. I dated him a little a bit.
We got him to take one Ecstasy pill. And I think was the first time in his life that he ever felt free.
Okay, so The Silver Chain’s members are escaping their humdrum lives as mid-life professionals by partaking in the newest and best drugs available. And it isn’t long before two men in The Silver Chain take a business-like approach to this increased interest and demand.
Tammy: Hal and Terry decided they were going to make a lot of money and they were going to manufacture Ecstasy. Hal had the money. Terry had the brains.
Harold : I would say it's a business venture that was ill advised.
Terry and my dad were business partners on this. And I was an employee.
That’s Hal’s son Bill, who you may recall assisting his mother Janet with her interview in our second episode.
Harold : There was an absence of, of good judgment on the part of my dad.
Tammy: Ecstasy was not a Schedule one narcotic at that time. It was kind of new so they were going to make it, sell it in a one time deal or something and make all kinds of money.
The site of manufacturing is a machine shop in the basement of Hal and Janet’s apartment building.
Harold : In the back and the back of the building. Where are we now? Where they had all the machinery turn it into a drug lab to make MDMA.
Tammy:While they were in the process of this, it became a schedule one narcotic. So they've invested all this money. So Terry and Hal hook up with who they think is someone from Aruba that is going to buy this whole, their whole manufacturing deal for a flat price.
With Terry’s help, Hal and Bill set up a second, remote lab in a Richfield hotel, where they agree to meet the prospective buyer.
Tammy: The guy from Aruba wanted him to do an a demonstration of how you made the ecstasy. And it was narcotics agents. It was just a sting operation. They busted him. Then he went out to Hal's beautiful Wayzata penthouse, busted down the doors.
Terry. He was pretty easygoing guy. The night that he got arrested I was so upset. I mean, they were really close friends of ours and it was one of those Friday Night before the dance meetings, and he called us at the meeting and I got on the phone. And I remember he said, I'll be fine. He said I suppose a blowjob would be out of the question right now. That's what he said. Remember that he was just so oh, this is. It's all right.
Harold : We all went to jail over it. Not for a long time. Fortunately, you know, we had pretty good legal representation and it was before the, before the, the… There was a bill that passed Congress in like 87 or 88, that had a mandatory minimum sentences. That would have been much worse off had it happen a couple of years later. My dad, that's six months. I did. Three months
For a few years, things were pretty disrupted.
Despite the disruptions, the overall feeling of community amongst The Silver Chain’s members endures – camping trips and sporting events continue. The member-organized house parties carry on like clockwork. As do the monthly dances, Including one held in December 1985 that Tammy still fondly recalls.
Tammy: The best one we had would have been our Christmas dance. We had Jim make a Frosty the Snowman costume out of glue and paper and
Gus, who had a great big white beard was Santa Claus. And then all these different guys, Henry included, they were Rudolph and the reindeers. They dressed me up like a doll.
I had this red velvet dress and it had little suspenders on it. Little patent leather shoes was a goofy thing, and they had a big bow in my hair.
And I sang this song called Are My Ears on Straight?
FADE IN: MUSIC
Tammy: And these reindeer came out in costumes and they were doing this boom, boom, boom. It took a thing. And all this we put on this big show. And I think half of us were really high.
Paul: It sounds like that was the last Christmas dance.
Tammy: Yeah, it was. It was.
Paul: But you didn't know then?
Tammy: No. No. We thought it would go on forever.
MUSIC
Henry: And then you know things, things happened where things started falling apart.
Paul: So effectively. You're the person that ended the silver chain?
Henry: Yes.
I’m Paul Ditty and this is Time Capsule: The Silver Chain.
Time Capsule is hosted and written by me, Paul Ditty
AND is a production of Diversity Hire Ltd and CYSA Productions, in collaboration with Feelings & Co.
Our Executive Producers are Jennifer Goyne Blake, April Shih and Jack Huston.
Our Producers are Marcel Malekebu and Nora Mcinerny
Jordan Turgeon and Eli Makovetsky are our co-producers AND
Our Engineer is Eric Romani
Time Capsule Theme Music is composed by Louis Stephens
Want to read the Founding Executive Committee’s farewell to The Silver Chain’s members? Visit us at timecapsule.substack.com for newsletter excerpts, listener discussions, bonus episodes and more.
This show is inspired by a GQ article titled “The 70s Swingers Club and the Secret Archive it Left Behind” from writer Jack El-Hai.
Special thanks to Lori Williamson and The Minnesota Historical Society for access to The Silver Chain’s newsletters.
Segments from this episode were recorded at Podcast Place Studio in Long Beach, California.
Next Time on Time Capsule: The Silver Chain:
MAN’S VOICE: Dear Members and Friends, We on the Management Committee are canceling the annual summer campout and suspending all further club activities.
Tammy: Everything happened at once. it was like all these activities that we had been in. Every day, every day, every day. Boom!
