On Christmas Eve, 1990, while the rest of America was holding its collective breath about the Arab Gulf standoff, Scott was driving home from school with his roommate after being trapped in Iowa for four days because of the coldest winter since 1952. Finally able to start her car, they rushed home in 25 degree below zero weather. As they rolled into Lawrence, they could smell the distinct smell of thick, heavy smoke hanging in the arctic air. One block east of the street that would take them to Scott's parent's house, there was a massive fire engulfing half of the 800 block of Vermont street, the street on which Alley Cat Records was letting Ron and Pat practice in back of their store while Scott was at school. Scott and his friend pulled around and parked only to find what was an extensive winter-wonderland; an ice castle formed by five fire trucks hosing down the entire block in sub-zero weather for what would eventually be two full days. The adjacent buildings acquired a two-foot-thick coating of ice, and the street and sidewalk were mounded like a glacier. Ron's and Pat's equipment did not survive. Their spirits were destroyed by the loss, and Ron stole Pat's insurance money so Pat has hated him ever since.
Ironically, Scott would be victim of a similar but more disasterous fate only five months later. Home for the summer from college, he had stored all of his and his roommate's belongings in a rented basement back in Mt. Vernon. They came home with only enough clothes to get them through the summer, and left all of their other household items stored away. Mid-summer, Scott received the phone call that would drag them back up north only to find everything they owned covered in an entire town's shit. There had been a huge flood, and the sewers in town had backed up, and the govenment was quarantining and disposing everything that was exposed because of disease concerns. They lost everything, and their spirits were destroyed as well. They received no insurance money, and have hated Pat ever since for no apparent reason.
