Searching For Stories, on the Other Side of Fear: An Afternoon with Stephen Skaggs.

Josh Alfaro
Mar 2
4 min read

Updated: Mar 4

Episode 7: 'Til The Moss Turns Pink (continued)

“‘Til The Moss Turns Pink”: Love, Alaska, and the Long Memory of a Life

On the seventh episode of Shirley You Can’t Be Serious, titled “’Til The Moss Turns Pink”, Josh and Amanda meet Stephen Skaggs. Amanda sits down with the man she once feared most: Shirley's infamous second husband, Steve.

What unfolds is not a reckoning. It’s something quieter. More human. A conversation about Alaska, mistakes, marriage, animals, faith, fear, and the strange grace of time.

This episode stretches between decades. Revisited through stories of all types. From wartime Alaska to flight simulators, from a broken-down Pinto to a wedding in 1982, from prison visitation rooms to a handshake in 2025. And at its core, it asks a simple question:

What do we do with the people who shaped us, even imperfectly? How do we hold place in our lives for those who nurtured us, and those who molded our psyche.

Alaska: Where It All Began

Long before Shirley and Steve met, Alaska had already shaped them both.

For Steve, Alaska wasn’t history. It was destiny.

While serving in the military, he worked on flight simulators, intense, immersive training environments where pilots rehearsed combat scenarios. He understood aircraft systems so deeply that he sometimes knew how a plane would respond better than the pilots flying it.

The rest is messy, funny, dark, deeply human history.

Marriage in 1982: Journals, Honeymoons, and Ketchup

Shirley kept journals. Detailed ones. Little documents that would become exhibits. Historical moments that still live today in FBI archives. Little books that with a certain context, can be chilling.

Her first entry about their wedding, November 6, 1982:

“The wedding was the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.”

Shortly after, they honeymooned in Hawaii, back when tourism meant $12 snorkeling trips and swap-meet T-shirts. She wrote about the zoo, the beach, the International Market. Paradise.

Back in Alaska, the journals chronicle ordinary chaos:

Lentil soup and toasted cheese sandwiches with ketchup (Steve: “Not impressed.”)
Electrical problems.
Steve's long stays at work
Report cards with too many F’s.
Ice-covered driveways.
Steves hunting trips and time alone
Dogs escaping.
Cats fighting.
Steve's flying to remote areas
Teenagers staying out past midnight.

One entry captures it perfectly:

“Steve said this place is a circus. Does this go on every night?”

It probably did.

Shirley was practical. Devoted. A little quirky. She used ketchup for everything, including, memorably, expired black ketchup on meatloaf.

Steve remembers her as deeply conscious of others’ needs. When she struggled to find work after they moved to Tucson, she cried, apologizing for “not helping.”

He told her she was fine. That they were fine.

Time would complicate that belief.

The Hard Years

The episode does not shy away from the fractures.

Eddie, Shirley’s son, struggled as a teenager, stolen truck parts, questionable friends, impulsive decisions. Steve faced impossible moral choices: whether to protect his stepson or report wrongdoing. He chose protection, and he still wrestles with it.

Eventually, Steve himself ended up incarcerated. He pleaded guilty and received a reduced sentence.

Shirley visited faithfully, even running Bible studies for other prison wives. But years wore on. In a visitation room in Tucson, she told him she was having a hard time. Later, she expressed divorce might be best.

At the time, he felt betrayed.

Later, he realized she was right.

“It was nothing I could contribute for her.”

Pain, in this episode, is not weaponized. It’s acknowledged. Held carefully. Examined decades later without the heat it once carried.

Animals and Allegiance

In between the heavier moments, the episode gives us something almost sacred: stories of the pets.

Chrissy the cat, whom Steve claimed to dislike but who loved him best.

Sugar, the oversized Samoyed mistaken for a polar bear after losing her tail to a car accident.

And Wolf.

Wolf, the protective dog who once sank his teeth into Steve’s calf, not out of aggression, but to defend the children. Steve recalls there was no fear in the moment. Just clarity. The dog was protecting his pack.

Years later, when Wolf developed cancer, Steve had to put him down while Shirley was away.

Even now, his voice softens when he speaks of it.

Sometimes love shows up with teeth.

Facing Fear in 2025

The episode builds toward a present-day meeting: February 15, 2025. Arizona.

Amanda describes standing face-to-face with “the guy that I’ve been so scared of my entire life.”

And then?

She shakes his hand.

That’s it. No thunderclap. No confrontation. Just two adults sitting down with photo albums and journals, revisiting a life that once felt overwhelming and distant.

At one point, Josh asks Steve to imagine walking back into that house in Alaska and seeing the two kids who lived there. The two young people in the photo of the wedding that he brought for Amanda as a gift.

What would he tell them? At first, he tries to deflect with a joke. "Those two kids?? WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY HOUSE!" He giggles. The nervous laughs in the room settle and he is once again faced with the vulnerable moment of having to face any emotion that could possibly reside in the moment.

“Appreciate each other,” he says. "Shirley didn't appreciate herself"

It’s a somewhat tender answer, although surrounded by ambiguity. An answer that in retrospect begs to question: how much did they?

“‘Til The Moss Turns Pink”

The title suggests endurance. Moss turning pink is slow, almost imperceptible change. Time working quietly.

This episode isn’t about rewriting history. It’s about sitting with it long enough that the sharp edges soften.

It’s about recognizing that people are rarely only one thing. Not villains. Not heroes. Just human.

Shirley emerges as the gravitational center, faithful, flawed, funny, resilient. Through journals and memory, she remains vividly alive.

And perhaps that’s the real gift of this episode.

We don’t get to redo our past.But sometimes, we get to sit across from it, ask questions, and discover that what once terrified us is simply part of the story.

And sometimes, just sometimes, we leave the table lighter than we arrived.