Tate: Alright, who am I with?

Josh: uh I think you know who you’re with. I’m Josh. I’m your dad.

Tate: Yep. [chuckles] Do you have any favorite stories about your kids?

Josh: Oh, there’s probably a lot of stories but the one I think I would always go back to is…so I think we were you were a first-year peewee

Both: [laughter]

Tate: Oh, yeah

Josh: And I guess for those that were listening I was I coached the peewee A team when Tate was a first-year peewee and towards the end of the year we were we were headed down to regions for hockey, so this is pretty late in the school year. I think were you you might have been the only kid that was in elementary school. Going into middle school. So like  all the other kids, even the first years, have had health class and we were driving down someplace down south and Eddie and Gabe were in the car.  and they had a health class And somebody had made a comment that was um somewhat explicit, probably a little bit inappropriate, and I had responded that Tate doesn’t know what you’re talking about. He hasn’t had that class yet.

Tate-I had no idea

Josh- and Gabe and Eddie were like, well you’ve got to tell him , like everybody else knows and you’re gonna have to tell him. And I didn’t know if Tate would be embarrassed or not so I remember asking you if you wanted me to tell you what it was about and so you decided to have me tell you in front of these guys in the car. And um So I explained you know the birds and the bees and it hit you at some point and you were like.

Tate:yep, and then I asked the follow up question

Josh :You’re like, you and mom did that.  And then Gabe and Eddie you were laughing at it and I’m like, yeah it also means your parents did it too.

Tate: Wasn’t I the one that said that to them or was that you?

Josh: I can’t remember. I won’t get into the details, but part of the part of the deal I had with Gabe and Eddie was that if I told you the basics, then they had to tell me what else they knew. So after we went through the conversation they went into what they knew which I will not go into detail on.

Both: [chuckles]

Josh: but it was a lot more than I would have expected. I remember pulling into the rink after dropping you guys off and having to go talk to their parents and let them know how the conversation played out in the car.

Tate: So they actually know Gabe, because Gabe took the class the last year.

Josh: Okay

Tate:What was I like as a baby or like as a young child?

Josh: So as a baby baby, you were you were really easy actually. You slept a lot. Your Mom was like adamant about your sleep habits and that totally works. So you slept a lot as a baby. Which your supposed to. As you got a little older where it got more interesting was like once you learned to walk. You learned to walk kind of on schedule, but then you didn’t learn to talk until you were pretty old. For i don’t know when regular times are But as a kid you would a couple of things. You would always have toys in your hands even when you weren’t good at walking. Which was like I  was always waiting for you to fall with toys in your hands, which is not good. But primarily You would always walk around with Thomas the train or “cuckoos” is what you called them.

Tate: Those are trains right?

Josh: Little trains. Cuckoos

Tate: Yeah.

Josh: Yeah And you didn’t talk a lot. And so you would point and grunt when you wanted things. So there was a lot of grunting around the house and then trying to guess at what you wanted.

Tate: Could I actually not talk or did I just not want to?

Josh: Who knows. Like who really knows but you would you basically point at things and grunt. And that went on for a long time. You really liked music videos so every evening after you had had your bath you’d sit on my lap and we would watch music videos and you would zone out to the TV.

Tate: I did?

Josh: Yeah, it was kind of like you do now with your phone.

Tate: Did I have a favorite one?

Josh: uh You did. It’s a little out of fashion right now because of some things the guy did, but Chris Brown and Rihanna had a live performance together and there was a lot of lights and stuff in it. It was pretty cool um

Tate: You showed me this recently.

Josh: I did yeah. You really liked that one. That was probably your favorite. That was out in California by the way.

Tate: and That probably contributed to my and “Just Dance” later on you think or?

Josh: Probably. I should say you also really liked animals. We used to go to this little zoo out there and then there was another one when we moved to Minnesota that we went to a lot.

Tate: What was my favorite animal growing up because now I would say it’s probably one of those Arctic wolves and I feel like I’ve liked those for a while?

Josh: I don’t think you were that specific. You liked dogs and you liked to torture our little miniature pincher at the time. I mean she loved playing with you. It was always pretty funny.

Tate: Okay. Has being a parent changed anything about your relationship with your dad?

Josh: I think the answer that sits behind that question is probably something like I learned how hard it was and having patience, but I don’t think so. I was always really close with my dad and I knew when he had his own challenges and all that, so I think in a lot of ways, no. It was interesting when you guys were really little and he had a lot of health issues at that point .

Tate: Yeah

Josh: So it was hard for him to get around and visit and things like that. But I know as he got older and we started to stream games and stuff like that like he was a big fan.

Tate: Would you say the way he raised you was similar to how you raised me?

Josh: No, I think it’s really common to you go to extremes,Right.

Josh: He was very much like kinda cut from a cloth like an old German farming work all the time. And that’s all you do is work and just be glad you’re working. I think because of that so like that had a little bit to do with the question when you asked about raising you differently.um so I remember finishing up so I was working two jobs in the summer and I would finish up at like 4:30 on a Saturday at his place. As I was going to take a shower and to hang out with my friends, he would get upset that I was ending early at 4:30 on Saturday. And so I think giving you guys more time and more flexibility but kind of goes with the accountability.

I also learned really good time management and I think I learned to appreciate having time on my own and the work that went behind it.

Tate: How do you think my time management is?

Josh: I Think it’s improved a lot in the last six months.

Tate: Okay

Josh:  now you’re wading into where I have strong opinions of things. Do what you need to do before you do what you want to do type thing so. But it’s been pretty impressive the last few months on how you’ve managed your time.

Tate: Okay Has being a parent put more struggles on your job?

Josh: I don’t think any more than anyone else. I think that’s just a challenge with working and parenting for anyone. I thunk I’ve been fortunate in that most of the jobs I’ve had have allowed me to have the flexibility to grind when I needed to grind, but then still get out for your stuff, whether it was coaching you guys or just getting to your activities. So I’ve been fortunate in the amount of time we’ve been able to spend together and just being able to do those things.

Tate: What is your best moment from your childhood?

Josh: This is one where I want to have lots of time to reflect and come up with a good answer. But there’s a few of them in here. Best moment? So I kind of put this maybe as best moment / achievement was being selected the Minnesota hockey camp back when it was just like one thing, once a summer, for a week in we used to go to St. Cloud. That was that was a pretty big moment. And it ended up being really fun and back in those days like kids from up north didn’t really come down or see kids from the metro area all that much. I met a lot of good friends at that at that camp. Also, I think it was maybe a year after that our knowledge bowl team, also called nerd bowl, made it to the state tournament. Which was really fun. And thenProbably the biggest one was getting my nomination to the Air Force Academy. That was a big deal.

Tate: how old were you when you went to the St. Cloud hockey camp?

Josh: I think I was 15.

Tate: Was that the only year you went?

Josh: I think that was the only year. It wasn’t like it is today. I think the end of our second year of bantams was the only time they had it.

Tate: It was only one group?

Josh: It was one group and it was eight to ten kids from each district and they did that for a week.

Tate: Were there any kids that you remember being at that camp that played in the NHL? Or were any of them still that goodWas Kraft there was Cullen there?

Josh: Kraft was there. Cullen was early. Kraft was my year. Oh the Koeppl, the head coach for girls at Holy Family, was the goalie from Bloomington. Bloomington That year, they didn’t lose until their last game of the year in the bantam national tournament and so I think they sent like 10 kids off of that team to the camp. I liked some of them and I didn’t like some of them. We hung out with a couple kids from Edina it was just It was just a really interesting week.

Tate: Got it. Wait, so the girls coach from Hill Murray played…

Josh: I think their [Holy Family] coach is Randy Koeppl who was the goalie for Bloomington back in the day. I played poker with him one night and I won his like warm-up pants, which I still wish I had they were like blue with a big white stripe on the side and they said Jefferson or whatever

Tate: What happened to them?

Josh: I don’t know I was 15. You can’t remember where your clothes are from yesterday.

Tate: Oh, no, no. Okay. That was the team Was that the high school team where they just went like, didn’t lose like every year?

Josh: Yeah, it was the same group that came through.

Tate: Got it. Didn’t they win like three state championships or something?

Josh: I can’t remember

Tate: Got it. How would you describe a perfect day when you were younger?

Josh: Well number one, between working two jobs in the summer and just activities in the winter because for a long time I was in hockey and wrestling in the winter and band and whatever else so I was in a lot of stuff, swimming whatever.

Tate: What was everything you did? Just name all the stuff you did.

Josh: All the stuff I did. Well some of this wouldn’t have been all true into high school, but in junior high, which is middle school now, in the winter, I wrestled and played hockey and did swimming club. So it was like  sometimes three practices a day.

Tate: Yeah. Did they not overlap at all?

Josh: I think wrestling was in the morning and then swimming was right after school and then hockey was later at night. That was probably like only for a couple years it wasn’t like that and . I did band. I really liked jazz band which was before school and you had to be in regular band to be in jazz band

Tate: So you had to do both okay.

Josh: Yeah, you had to do both. In fact you had to be in the marching band too, which is the one that I did not like doing

Tate: Is that the one where you literally march with like the…

Josh: Yeah, that

Tate: Okay

Josh: Not my favorite. I was in knowledge bowl.

Tate: Yeah, talk about that a little bit more, the knowledge bowl stuff. When you went to state for that.

Josh: It was like my favorite kids. So the way that it worked, is you which I think they still have it, but you had you play against other schools. I think there was three schools at a time that would play. You had this green strip that they would put down on the table and you put your hand on it. There were four of you on the team and anybody could buzz in so there are 12 kids in total. I was kind of the extra, so they would give me things to go study that they weren’t already really good at. Like we had one kid that was really good at history and another kid that was really good at math. They were like you go study mythology or whatever just had to go learn some other stuff .

Tate: Right. Okay. Were you good at it?

Josh: Yeah, I was pretty good. I mean we had two kids that were awesome at it. I just think all that stuff. Like the types of kids that you’re hanging out with when you’re playing hockey or football are different from the kids that are in band and they might be different from the kids that you’re doing knowledge bowl with. So i just i liked a lot of different personalities, so that was fun.

Tate: All right. Well, what was the perfect day? Sorry, I got us a little off topic.

Josh: Yeah, so with all of that stuff going, which I liked all of it, but having a day where there’s a little bit of downtime was awesome and then you know probably summer days where we got a break. Especially when I was younger,younger  before eighth grade and before I started working a lot like, getting up doing some stuff that I had to get done…jumping on my bike, because it was GenX and we rode our bikes everywhere, and we would go there was a  community pool where all the kids went in the summer and you’d just hang out there for like three hours, go get a donut at the grocery store for a quarter, go back to the pool – days like that were pretty awesome

Tate: What about your favorite place to go eat at?

Josh: Red Pepper?

Tate: Yeah, or Taco John’s

Josh: Taco Johns was pretty good too, but Red Pepper was my go-to.

Tate: How much was a taco again from Taco John’s?

Josh: both of them…

Tate: Yeah, or Red Pepper was cheap, too?

Josh: So red pepper had Taco Tuesday and Taco Thursday and it was two tacos for a dollar – two for one’s and basically all the money I made in the summer either went to gas for my car – I paid for my car and my gas – or went to food because I ate a ton of food. We could leave for lunch when we were in junior high and I would go to the Red Pepper and eat eight tacos and go back to school.

Tate: Is that the same time when you were lifting every morning at school?

Josh: No, that was high school I think  I started lifting in the little weight room that was at the rink when I was in eighth grade and my freshman year, which we were still at the junior high. And lifting I started lifting in the mornings my sophomore year, but especially my junior and senior year. I’d meet one specific kid, Sean Kvernan, and I used to go every morning and lift and then go eat caramel rolls in the  breakfast at the school, do homework and then go to class.

Tate: Who is bigger out of you and your buddy?

Josh: Who was stronger?

Tate: Who was bigger and who was stronger? I want both.

Josh: Sean was bigger. He was a pretty big kid. Then strength would probably depend a little bit on the exercise, but that was probably me.

Tate: Okay

Josh: I did come in second in the first bench contest they had up in that area. It was like in Thief River Falls. And the kid that beat me was the kid that won for all weight classes. He was uh Mike Jopp. A kid that moved in from, oh, where was it? It was a small nine-man football town. He was smaller than me, but he could bench like a madman. He took first for the while tournament

Tate: So, you’re saying he moved in and then beat you and you just let that happen and

Josh: Yeah, I did.

Tate: And you didn’t fight him after? I don’t know if we should talk about all that, but you didn’t fight him afterwards?

Josh: Mike was a good friend. He’s still a good friend. I’ve seen him at the state tournament a few times.

Tate: Oh, does he still live around here

Josh: He lives down here. Yeah.

Tate: Oh, okay.

Tate: That’s funny. Did you stop going to Taco John’s and stuff when you were in high school or that stopped then?

Josh: No, that never stopped.

Tate: Oh, so you’re still eating it.

Josh: Taco John’s was great on Sundays, but the Red Pepper was really was the go to. You go out there, you got to eat red pepper.

Tate: I know you love it. What was growing up for you like?

Josh: That’s the end of the question?. Not a lot of color with that one.

Tate: Oh, sorry.

Josh: What was it like? So, I mean, we’ve touched on some of this stuff already, but I grew up, up north, East Grand Forks, pretty small, like 7,000 people, I think in the town. Graduating class of like 120, I think. So a bit smaller than Minnetonka and living in the cities.

Tate: That’s funny.

Josh: We had a really large extended family, so my mom had six brothers and sisters and they all had kids around the same time, so I had a ton of cousins and it was like having an extended… it was like having a lot of brothers and sisters especially on the weekends and holidays. I don’t know if you remember going to Grandma Jeffrey’s for the holidays?

Tate: I do.

Josh: By that time there was like 50 people that would be at holiday events and everybody was pretty close, so it was growing up with a big extended family that’s how holidays and everything were. Spent a lot of time with friends hanging out. A lot of what you see so it’s funny with all the gen x stuff that’s that’s floating around like the 80s and Stranger Things. Some of the stuff going around regarding what it was like living in the 80s.

Tate: Yeah I have

Josh: So you had corded phones. You had to make plans ahead of time.

Tate: Would you say the Goldberg’s was a pretty good description of the show we watched all the time?

Josh: Yeah so it was like  shows like that. Right, if you wanted to hang out with people you either had to arrange it ahead of time or, we had a lot of kids that lived in my neighborhood, so you just zipped down to somebody’s house to see if they were around. You had to remember people’s phone numbers because you didn’t have them like in your phone.

Tate: Yeah, so you write them down, I assume.

Josh: So it was a lot of riding bikes, hanging out, junior high, sneaking out, not to really do anything other than run around at night, go to the pool, hang out more. That was all pretty normal and, then as we talked about before, I think my first summer job I got when I was in eighth grade and then really full-time stuff starting my freshman year. So it was a lot of working. We didn’t have a lot of money and it was tight, noticeably tight at certain times, but, I don’t think that really took away from much. And that was pretty common up there. It’s a little different than living in the West Metro in terms of what your expectations are. I had one friend like as an example his car that he drove to school was an old old car. It was a Gremlin which is a piece of crap.

Tate: No idea

Josh: He was backing up and he ripped the door off the side and  instead of going in to get it fixed he just held the door up and took a two by four and screwed the door back on of the car.

Both[laugter]

Josh:He couldn’t open it anymore and he drove it for another two years and it wasn’t a big deal and nobody cared. Yeah, I think it was pretty typical of small town 1980s.

Tate: So would you say it’s pretty much a lot different than like me growing up? Like some things are similar obviously, but like the majority would you say it’s pretty different

Josh: I think there’s A lot of things…You’ve got to quit playing with your change. You can probably hear it on the video… I think things are quite a bit different for kids. I know there’s a lot out there. Is it better or worse? I don’t think it’s better necessarily, I think you guys have had some unique opportunities living down here. Being able to do things like Chinese immersion is different. I think there’s a lot more resources down here. At the same time, there’s more pressure on kids in certain ways than there was back in the day and everything is like real time where you didn’t have to worry as much about that stuff back in the day.

Tate: Would you say a lot of those issues are coming from our cell phones?

Josh: Yeah I don’t think. Oh, that would be another thing that I would differently, and I think we did some of this, like we had the Circle on to limit times, which you eventually started figuring out how to unplug or work around.

Tate[chuckles]

Josh:Time limits on phones, I think even, you know, we still talk about that.

Tate: Yep.

Josh: I don’t think any of that stuff is good for anyone, whether they’re adults or kids, but you guys grew up with it. So I think you’re going to have more adjustments to make in terms of having to limit yourself with things and how it impacts your concentration and things like that going forward.

Tate: Well, how did you balance being so busy with work, school, sports and also having a social life? Like how, how’d you balance all 4 of those things?

Josh: I think it’s uh You got to sacrifice somewhere, right? So number one, it’s time management. You got to be really good at using your time effectively. And what goes into that is like prioritizing, right? So everything is what’s more important, long term, short term, like what is…where do you want to spend your time so you make sure you get everything done and having goals. For me, I wanted to go to school, I wanted to make more money than my parents did. I didn’t want to have crappy jobs, which is what I had in high school. So, making sure that my grades were where they needed to be first. And then the activities I did because I wanted to do them, but that takes away time from just hanging out, but that was more of my social scene was simply the things I was doing with the friends. I think there was probably a period of time been earlier in high school or maybe late junior high where your friends would pull on you a little bit to try to get you to come hang out and skip things, but as I got older, everybody just understood better that, you know, people were busy with different things, so it was less of an issue. And we didn’t have social media where everybody felt like they needed to be in touch with everybody all the time. Like there just wasn’t any of that expectation.

Tate: So would you say you doing such a good job with time management growing up has helped you become so successful now?

Josh: It was by far. It was definitely one of the top skills that translated from growing up into . At the Air Force Academy it’s all-time management so it translated well there. Later in life, it’s one of the biggest skills that you can you can have.

Tate: Would you say being in the military helped your time management or do you think it was already good to the point where it didn’t really make a difference for you? You were just used to it?

Josh: I think it made it better. It was constantly reinforced. A lot of the Especially your first couple years at the Academies, it’s almost the thing they’re testing the most. Making you really good with your with your time.