In My Footsteps: A Cape Cod and New England Podcast

Episode 90: The Tragic Obsession Murders of Lizzie Coleman & Sadie Hassard; The Jerky Boys & Prank Phone Calls; Worst Halloween Candy; Spooky Wethersfield CT(10-20-2022)

October 20, 2022 Christopher Setterlund Season 1 Episode 90
In My Footsteps: A Cape Cod and New England Podcast
Episode 90: The Tragic Obsession Murders of Lizzie Coleman & Sadie Hassard; The Jerky Boys & Prank Phone Calls; Worst Halloween Candy; Spooky Wethersfield CT(10-20-2022)
In My Footsteps: A Cape Cod & New England Podcast
Exclusive access to bonus episodes!
Starting at $5/month Subscribe
Show Notes Transcript

Episode 90 kicks off with a pair of tragic tales that are intertwined.  The quiet peninsula of Cape Cod was rocked by a pair of terrible murder-suicides involving young women being cut down by jealous men.  However this is not a tale from the present day, this goes all the way back to the 1890s.  In the span of less than a year, both Lizzie Coleman and Sadie Hassard were gunned down.  The unfortunate part is that both deaths could have been avoided.  Learn the full stories of both sad events.
When it comes to the Halloween spirit and Spooky Season the town of Salem, Massachusetts is typically the go-to as far as indulging in some terror.  However, this week's Road Trip takes a different turn.  Weathersfield, Connecticut is not only the oldest town in the state, but it also was home to its own witch trials dating back decades before Salem.  There is also another grizzly claim to fame this town has as well.
Long before the days of smartphones, there were landline telephones.  Long before Google and Caller ID there were the yellow pages and having to actually answer the phone to know who it was.  A side effect of those days was the practice of making prank phone calls.  Mostly immature and innocent they gave entertainment to some 80s and 90s kids.  The height of the prank phone call came with the creation of The Jerky Boys.  Several albums of prank calls and even a movie saw this comedy duo make it big in the 1990s.  We go way Back In the Day to find out what the craze was all about.
There are some candies that kids Trick or Treating couldn't wait to get in their sack.  This weeks Top 5 will not include those.  This is some of the worst Halloween candy ever, although that is quite subjective.  Find out if any of your real favorites are on this list.
There is also a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule looking back at an infamous hoax of the 19th century.

Helpful Links from this Episode(available through Buzzsprout)

Listen to Episode 89 here.

Support the show

Intro

Hello World, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund. Coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 90. We're deep into October's spooky season. This episode is going to kick off with a pair of sad but true stories from Cape Cod history, the tragic obsession murders of Lizzie Coleman and Sadie Hassard. We're going to take a road trip to one of the spookiest towns in New England Weathersfield Connecticut. We're gonna go way back in the day and have laughs at the Jerky Boys and prank phone calls. In general, there's going to be a brand new top five that are going to be my top five picks for the worst Halloween candies that you would get in your sack or pail. And there'll be a brand new this week in history and Time Capsule all coming up right now on episode 90 of the In My Footsteps podcast. The march to Halloween is on does everyone have their candy and decorations if you decorate your yard? Or do you have your costumes if you have parties and such to go to? I've gotten my pumpkin for the season, which is a smaller pie-sized pumpkin. So a little bit bigger than a softball. We'll see how long this one lasts. The last one that I got last year survived I believe until early April. Before we get started, I always want to thank everyone who has been tuning in. The month of October is going to end up being my best month for downloads ever. This month has already seen the best single day for downloads, which I accomplished twice, and the best week ever. And that comes down to you the people that listen. So I appreciate it. And I'm going to do my best to keep bringing you good content that will keep you coming back and make you want to share this with others. The sharing of the podcast is the biggest thing. But if you want to donate, you can go to buy me a coffee.com Find the In My Footsteps podcast. If you search New England and Cape Cod, you should be able to find it. Any donations will go toward advertising the podcast. So you know that whatever you spend, I just put back into the podcast, I'm getting close to the point that I'm thinking about adding sponsors slash advertisements, which is a good problem. That means that I've kind of gained a foothold enough that I think I could be able to bring in outside products etc. to earn some money off the podcast. I've had many sponsors, but they're all people I know. Because I love the idea of paying it forward. If I have this platform where I can spread the word about a friend's company, I'm definitely going to do it. Hopefully, you all are getting out to see the fall foliage, it's starting to get good. I mean down on the Cape, it's always behind by a few weeks but off the Cape heading towards Central New England it's peak, northern New England it's gonna get past the peak pretty quick. This is the time of year though, where it could be 70 degrees and sunny or it could be 30 degrees and Frost's like all within 12 hours. And that's part of why I like it you get all the seasons basically in the same period. Right now though, we are still knee-deep in spooky season. So I'm going to keep going with all the true crime and the unsolved mysteries, et cetera. This first story is not unsolved, and unfortunately with these, they sound like they could be ripped out of today's headlines. So let's jump into the story of the tragic obsession murders of Lizzie Coleman and Sadie Hassard. Right now on episode 90 of the In My Footsteps podcast.


The Tragic Cases of Lizzie Coleman and Sadie Hassard

The act of murder-suicide is something that is far too prevalent in 21st-century society. Someone killing other people and then killing themselves is both selfish and cowardly as you ruin families and then don't face consequences yourself. The saddest part is that in many of these cases, there are warning signs, some that are quite blatant that go unnoticed or worse unreported. In the end, it leaves the families with the same question, could the tragedy have been prevented? nearly 130 years ago, the quiet rural peninsula of Cape Cod saw two unbelievably tragic cases within a span of fewer than two 12 months, both crimes shook the cake to its core. And only after the fact did it become clear that the lives could have been saved. If the warning signs had been heated. The stories of Osterville's Lizzie Coleman and Brewster's Sadie Hassard are similar but different. They could have literally been ripped from the headlines of today's newspapers. Both have the sad murder-suicide label, and both come down to jealousy. As stated above, unfortunately, there were warning signs that could have prevented both crimes. It began in Osterville at the end of 1894 When an infatuation was born. German laborer Henry Ledke, who had been working for a few years on SS Leonard's farm, spotted William and Lucy Coleman's daughter, Lizzie, for the first time. Ledke was a man well over 40 with a wife and three children back in Germany, Lizzie was 13 and not yet in high school. Ledke's obsession with Lizzie grew slowly, he began spending more and more time at the Coleman house on the corner of Main Street and West Barnstable Road, trying desperately to woo the affection of the girl nearly 30 years his junior. The Courtship included numerous gifts to Lizzie. During this time, Lizzie was seen in the company of Eben Harding, the literal Boy Next Door quite often, and the powder keg was soon lit. As time passed, and Ledke noticed Lizzy and Ethan's budding relationship he grew wild with jealous rage. It was in May 1895 That Ledke was told by Mr. Coleman to not come near his house or his daughter anymore, when his request that all of the gifts he had given Lizzie be returned, was denied. That was the last straw Ledke made threats against the entire Coleman family, brazenly admitting to Lizzie that he planned on killing her. Sadly, she initially did not tell her father of the danger. Initially, Ledke planned to kill both Lizzy and Eben after church on Sunday, June 9. He even suggested a shortcut home to the young couple, which would have led them deep into the Osterville woods, where he would have ambushed them. When they refused Ledke devised a blunter scheme that unfolded early the following day. At 8:30am On Monday, June 10, Lizzie was walking to school with her two brothers when Ledke struck in broad daylight on a public street he approached Lizzy brandishing a revolver. The first shot grazed her face, while two subsequent shots missed her brothers. The three turned and ran but Ledke pursued he fired a shot that struck Lizzy in the back of the head, killing her instantly. As Lizzie lay dead in the middle of the street, Ledke then turned the gun on himself. Both the murderer and victim lay mere feet from each other in the middle of the street. Incredibly, Mr. Coleman had been contemplating alerting the police about Ledke's threats on that Monday, but he never got the chance. The outbreak of grief and unimaginable sadness was immediate. Lizzie's funeral was held the day after at the Osterville Baptist Church on Main Street. Her friends from school sang hymns while surrounding her casket. The situation was made all the worse by the fact that Lizzie Coleman's murder likely could have been stopped if someone had contacted the authorities earlier. She was laid to rest at Hillside Cemetery on Old Mill Road in Osterville 342 days later, 20 miles away with the tragic murder of Lizzie Coleman still fresh in the minds of Cape Codders a similar story unfolded. The story of Sarah Sadie Hassard is like the other side of the same coin. The main difference between her story and Lizzie's is the belief reported at the time that Sadie and her killer were at some point romantically linked. Sadie and Frederick Alexander both lived in Brewster. She was a pretty and well-liked woman of 25. He was said to be a relatively average young man working odd jobs around town at spots like local cranberry bugs. The pair became a couple with the thought being that they intended to get married at some point. It seemed like a perfect story of young love. Sometime early in 1896, there was a dissolution of the relationship. reports at the time said that although Sadie didn't have eyes for another, she had grown tired of Frederick, the young man grew very angry and jealous despite At not starting another relationship. The impact was immediate as Frederick began making threats against her and her family, which consisted of her parents and four sisters. The nature of the threats was not revealed at the time. However, in a sad parallel to Lizzie Coleman's case, the family refused to report the threat to the authorities for fear of unwanted notoriety. It was a costly mistake. On the morning of Sunday, May 17, 1896, Sadie and one of her younger sisters were at home on Lower Road in Brewster. She had been living with elderly Reverend Thomas Dawes for the previous two years and was likely his caretaker as he was 78 years old at the time. The morning church services were just beginning at the Unitarian church a few 100 yards away on Main Street also known as Route 6A. As Reverend Dawes gave his opening prayer tragedy was unfolding. Frederick Alexander went to Sadie's residence with malice on his mind and a revolver in his hand. He found the doors locked and attempted to enter through a window. Although he was not able to enter the house, he somehow managed to grab Sadie through the window and drag her out. She ran out of the yard through the front gate narrowly missing being shot by Frederick. The sound of the shot startled the churchgoers at the Unitarian Church. Sadie attempted to flee to her parents' house further down Lower Road. Three more shots followed as Frederick gave chase. Sadie fell after being hit, and before she could even move, Frederick caught up to her pressed the gun to her head, and fired the final shot. He immediately fled south as the church members approached finding young Sadie Hassard dead. After the initial shock of finding Sadie's body, the search for her killer was on chairman of selectmen of Brewster, John Clark, and Deputy Sheriff Alfred Crocker put together the search as it seemed to be apparent to those in the know that Frederick Alexander was the culprit. The search party headed south eventually crossing into what is present-day Sweetwater forest campground. Along the shore of Snows Pond, Frederick's hat was found. Inside it was the murder weapon, and 25 unused bullets. There was no sign of the killer along the water's edge, but a boat was sent for and the pond was searched. Several passes by the boat found nothing. The search though persisted, and eventually, the body of Frederick Alexander was found about 100 feet from shore and five feet of water. He had taken his own life. Once pulled to the shore, his person was searched, and a bottle of strychnine was found. Also in his pocket was a note evidently written earlier in the day. In the note, Frederick said he planned on killing Sadie and would not be taken alive. He ended with an ominous threat that if he was cornered, he would take others with him. This meant that if concerned churchgoers had arrived a few moments earlier, there could have been more losses of life. The outpouring of grief was immense in the quiet town of Brewster Sadie Hassard's funeral was held at the Baptist Church on Main Street on Wednesday, May 20, 1896. The church was overflowing with people from all over Cape Cod. Reverend Dawes was beside himself with sadness and gave a heartfelt prayer for Sadie's soul and the wounded hearts of her family and the town. Sadie Hassard was laid to rest at the Brewster cemetery on Lower Road, a few 100 yards east of the cemetery, where the Hassard family home stood, is now the Eddie Bay trail conservation area. The stone remains of the home's foundation still stand as a solemn link back to a sad and tragic event in Brewster's history that possibly could have been prevented if only the threats had been reported. Lizzie Coleman and Sadie Hassard both had long lives ahead of them. Both of these young ladies had their flame cruelly snuffed out by jealous men. It is important to remember that there were warning signs in both cases. If you or someone you know is in a similar situation to Lizzie and or Sadie before their untimely murders. Please reach out to the proper authorities before it is too late.


Road Trip: Weathersfield, CT

For this week's road trip as we started to wind down the spooky season, I was looking to bring you all to a place that was Sunan amiss with Halloween. And of course, anyone from New England knows that Salem, Massachusetts is kind of the go-to, especially during Halloween, when tons of crowds go there, the Salem witch trials, et cetera. But I kind of wanted to go against the grain and find another town in New England. That was on the level of Salem that might have been a little lesser known, and luckily I found it. So this week, we are visiting Weathersfield Connecticut, and by the time this podcast goes live, you will still have a week and a half to go and visit this town during the Halloween season. Weathersfield is directly south of Hartford, Connecticut, and is 85 miles west of Providence, Rhode Island to kind of give you an idea of where it sits. And when doing my research to try to find another spooky town to share with you. I was shocked at Weathersfield's claim to fame. It's multiple things but the biggest one is the fact that they had their own witch trials long before the Salem witch trials which I had no idea of. The town itself was founded in 1633-34. It's the oldest town in Connecticut. As of 2020, it had a population of about 27,298. So it's mid-sized town. Before it's spooky claims to fame. Weathersfield was the onion capital of New England as far as trade went even garnering the nickname onion town from outsiders. So I don't know what's worse having your town have these spooky claims to fame that I'm going to name off or being known as onion town you decide. The witch trials in Weathersfield predate the Salem witch trials by more than 40 years. It began in 1648 with a confession of witchcraft by a woman named Mary Johnson. The sad thing was that she confessed under pressure from Reverend Samuel Stone. So there was no trial, and there were no documented accusations either. It's literally like someone said, You're a witch and then everyone gathered around and bullied her and she said, Okay, fine. I am, and then they're like, Good, we're going to kill you then, which is just so terrible. Between 1648 and 1668. There were a total of nine documented witchcraft accusations in Weathersfield alone and three of those resulted in execution. According to Weathersfield history.org, the vast majority of those accused in Weathersfield, and Connecticut in general, were always poor and sometimes transient people, which means that their stories are hard to piece together because they didn't have anything possessions to their name, so it's hard to study who they were. There are a few places in Weathersfield, where you can get a better sense of the history of witch trials and beyond the Webb Dean Stevens Museum at 211 Main Street, and Webb dash Dean dash stevens.org is a great place to start. They even have a witches and tombstones tour. When this podcast goes up, it is the 22nd of October Saturday, so you don't have much time. If you're hearing this go. There are six tours on that day. So you've got chances if you're close by. But there's another even more dubious even more disturbing event that Weathersfield is known for. They can claim to have the very first documented mass murder-suicide in American history. And this happened in 1782. The story centers around a man named William Beadle, who is a highly successful and wealthy Connecticut merchant. After the Boston Tea Party, the port was closed and Beadle donated money for relief to Boston. In exchange for the goods he was selling he still was accepting the continental currency, which was depreciating rapidly during the war. Rather than raise his prices to kind of save himself, he kept selling everything at the original price, which meant that he was losing money hand over fist. He went from being one of the wealthiest men in Connecticut being looked up to to being down amongst the poor and being looked down upon. Beadle crafted his own homemade ax and even began telling friends of his that it was probably time to die, which should have been a warning. When the continental currency was officially devalued to 1/40 of its face value that was kind of the end for him. He decided rather than suffer and live in poverty, it was for the best to end his life and that of his entire family. He murdered his wife and four children before killing himself with two pistols at his kitchen table. It was a truly horrific and gruesome scene back in 1782. The entire Beadle family is buried at the ancient burying ground on Marsh Street. So you can go and see the plots of the family that was part of the first mass murder-suicide. If you're planning to visit Weathersfield, and you don't want to spend the night sleeping in a cemetery to complete the spookiness, there are actual places to stay. They've got a comfort inn, a Motel Six, check Airbnb for some potential rooms and homes for rent for the night. And don't forget Hartford is right next door and they've got a lot of bigger hotels. As far as good food Weathersfield has got tons of that. Check out Lucky Lou's Bar and Grill. It's located at the corner of Maine and Marsh streets in the old Deming Standish house. They've got classic pub fare and an outdoor patio that's perfect for the warmer months. Italian fare, steaks, seafood, anything you could one visit lucky lose bar and grill.com They've got every bit of information you could need lunch and dinner menus, and pictures, and you don't have to go and visit Weathersfield just during the Halloween season. Its deep roots in American history are there back to its founding and 1633-34. If you like history as well, you're going to love Weathersfield is more than 150 historic homes. There's historic old Weathersfield you can check out on Main Street. They currently have a scarecrows on Main Street contest going on. Where people enter, they create their own scarecrows and they line Main Street which is going to be horrifying, especially at night. But like I said, you can go to Old Weathersfield is historic. So it's not just Halloween, they celebrate the holidays, and they celebrate the spring and summer. There are always unique events and displays there. It's an interesting dichotomy to go from the capital city, Hartford to go directly south and be in the oldest town in Connecticut that's just filled with history with some of it being quite creepy. Visit old weathersfield.com To get a better idea of the historic celebrations they do on Main Street. Or like I always say just get in your car and go and just discover. I can give you places to go see and go visit particularly the spooky ones for the Halloween season. But there are sure to be things that I missed. It's right on the Connecticut River. So there are beautiful riverfront views. There's Weathersfield Cove. So there's fishing and boating in addition to history, and there's plenty of open forest. So go for the spooky and creepy history. That is it whether it's field and stay for great food and great views. Home to the original witch trials to the very first mass murder suicide Weathersfield Connecticut has definitely everything you need for the spooky season. But that doesn't mean it's the only time you should go. It's only a short trip from most places in New England. And I'll be back with the next road trip after the spooky season has ended. But with another place that will be no less worth the visit for you.


This Week In History

This Week in history, we're going back 153 years ago to October 16 1869, and the hoax of the giant of Cardiff. This story is one of the craziest and one of the oldest hoaxes in the history of America. On this date, when a well was being dug on the property of William Newell in Cardiff, New York, they struck something underground. What they dug up seemed to be the petrified remains of a giant prehistoric man. When it was fully excavated, it was nearly 10 feet tall and nearly 3000 pounds. And naturally, this story spread across the country. It was unbelievable that they found a 10-foot man on someone's property. At first, it seemed like it could be real, as Cardiff was known for having fossil deposits, boards spread people left work to go and see it from all across New York. It didn't take long though, for questions to arise about the Giant Man. Early examinations seemed to show that it was a man but it was a Syracuse-based science lecturer that first put the idea out there that it was a statue. He said it could have been carved by the front and centuries earlier, little did he know it was carved two years earlier. William Newell decided to sell the man for research, but the plan quickly fell apart. A man named George Hall was behind the hoax that wasn't yet known. He had carved the statue out of a 5000-pound piece of gypsum two years earlier. He had said it was going to be a statue of the late Abraham Lincoln, but that was not the case it was meant to be a cash-in. And when a businessman offered $30,000 to haul and Newell for the Cardiff giant, they decided to cash in. Within a month though the Giant's new owners who were parading this new find around the country quickly had holes poked in their story. They knew that the body was at least encased in gypsum, and a mining engineer said that gypsum would have deteriorated too quickly to be preserved like that. So that meant that this was not a centuries-old giant. The final blow came when Yale paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh, took one look at the giant quote unquote, and said Nope, it's fake. And that was the end. PT Barnum tried to buy it. But by 1870, it was more of the subject of ridicule with George Hall, the man who had carved the statue of the Cardiff giant even bragging about having done it and pulled off the hoax. Hall ended up clearing about $20,000 with his giant of Cardiff hoax and decided to live a life as a con man even trying the same thing and Colorado in 1877, but that was quickly passed off as a hoax. And the unbelievable original hoax of the giant of Cardiff began 153 years ago this week in history. And now it's time for a brand new time capsule. We're going back 49 years ago this week to October 18 1973. Let's see what was going on in the world of pop culture back then. The number one song was Angie by The Rolling Stones. This song was a lead single off of the Rolling Stones album Goat's Head Soup. There's an urban legend about this song that it was written about David Bowie's wife at the time Angie. And if you want to look up the whole story behind that you can, but Keith Richards who is credited with writing most of the lyrics said he wrote it about his baby daughter and picked the name at random, but you can decide which story you think is true and which one you think is not. The number one movie was a double bill. It was the cheerleaders and Fritz the Cat. The Cheerleaders movie is about a group of high school cheerleaders that decide to help their football team out by all sleeping with the opponent football team to make them too tired to play in the game. The movie made $2.5 million on a budget of 150,000. Fritz the Cat was an independent adult animated cartoon about a college-aged cat swinging through some stereotypical times in the late 60s and early 70s. So even though they weren't porn, per se, both of these movies were adult and they both were number one. The number one TV show was all in the family. This is the classic Norman Lear show the sitcom with the exploits of Archie Bunker his wife Edith, his daughter, Gloria, and her husband Mike Meathead Stivic it covered so many taboo topics political race, The show ran for nine seasons and a total of 205 episodes between 1971 and 79. And then was spun off into Archie Bunker's place that was seen as a continuation of all in the family just with a different name. And that ran for four more seasons and 97 episodes. It's one of the most decorated and one of the most influential TV Shows of All Time, for sure. And if you were a kid back then, October 18 1973, getting ready for Halloween. Or if you were just into sports and football in general, you could get yourself a four-piece NFL uniform set from Rawlings, with all of your favorite teams from the day. Maybe not the New England Patriots, because they weren't that good in the early 70s. But you could get helmet shoulder pads, jersey, and pants in the JC Penney catalog for a total of $11.49 or about $76.64 when adjusted for today. So you could go play football trick or treat as a football player and just have all kinds of fun. And that's going to wrap up another this week in history and another time capsule. Now it's time to cause Controversy as we get close to Halloween, as I give you my top five worst Halloween candies, at least in my opinion. So let's see how many of these you disagree with coming up right now.


Top 5: Worst Halloween Candies

Oh boy, so this could end up being my most controversial top five. These lists, a lot of them are subjective. And this could be the one that tops them all. If I asked you to name your favorite candy, and your least favorite candy, I am guessing the vast majority of you would have different answers than me and different answers from each other. So what we're going to do right now is the top five worst Halloween candy. At least in my opinion. This is the stuff that when I got home and I found this in my pillowcase or in my little plastic pail, I would just immediately throw away or try to pawn off on other people. And the actual top five only includes real candy, because we're going to save non-candy stuff for the honorable mentions. And like I say it's all in no particular order. We'll see how many of my top five you actually enjoy and disagree with my list. But as always, there are some honorable mentions and this week's honorable mentions go to all of the non-candy things that you would get in your trick-or-treat bag basket, whatever you bring. So this included pennies, you can like a few pennies or a handful of pennies, dental stuff like toothpaste or dental floss, maybe a disposable toothbrush, and religious pamphlets, which were always fun to get. And obviously, the worst honorable mention would be anything that had razor blades in it. Did any of you actually get razor blades in your candy like apples or anything like that? Growing up on Cape Cod, I'd never got any sort of razor blade stuff, but I know it's true stories. Those were the honorable mentions. But now let's dive into the actual top five worst Halloween candy. Starting with number one, candy corn. This is something that is more universally disliked than a lot of these other candies. They're yellow, orange, and white little triangle shapes. They've got kind of a waxy texture, and it's based around the Fall Harvest of corn. It's very divisive. I mean, it's very hated. But then some love it. It's been around since the 1880s and was originally known as chicken feed. And if it's been around for 140 years, I don't think they've changed the flavor and everything since it came out. Number two is Necco Wafers. These are different flavors of chalky little antacid-sized candies. They were first produced in 1847. They were a product of the New England confectionery company, which is where the Neko came from near Boston. So they're local. That's even worse. It's just chalky. They dry your mouth out. It's like you'd need to wash it down with soda right after high in sugar. Ironically, they were discontinued recently and then brought back again they're like a zombie you can't get rid of them. Number three is circus peanuts. These are big fluffy, orange marshmallowy peanut-looking things. There is another one the first three in this list, they all date back to the 1800s and this was another one of the original Penny candies. Perhaps the only good that circus peanuts have done in their time is that they led directly to the creation of Lucky Charms cereal, when a General Mills employee chopped up some circus peanuts and threw it into a bowl of Cheerios, thus giving the idea for Lucky Charms which is a great serial. Number four is Smarties. These are like the smaller cousins to the Necco Wafers wrapped in the little cellophane, different colors but all chalky where you chew them and it would just get wedged in your teeth. Smarties first came out in 1949 and according to their website, they are America's favorite candy roll. I don't know how many other candy rolls there are. I may not like them, but they say that the company produces about 1 billion rolls of Smarties per year. And I think the majority of those are used on Halloween to throw in kids' bags. And finally, number five on the list of top five worst Halloween candies to get are raisins and yes it's a real thing. They make those little tiny Sun Maid Raisings boxes that many ones that you probably get in your lunchbox if your parents wanted you to eat raisins. Raisins in general aren't bad. But when you're going out on Halloween looking for candy and you get fruit, it's not exactly a fair trade that stuff would probably end up in the trash unless your parents forced you to use it in your lunchbox. Like I said, I debated putting just fruit in general as number five, but I where I grew up, I didn't get apples, oranges, or bananas in my bag. It was always just raisins. Did you out there get any weird fruits in your bag or other weird things that they passed off as candy? Because this top five is based just on my experience. So you may have gotten other weird stuff. Like I said at the top Did you get any razor blades or any other weird non-candy type things? I have gotten toothpaste. But that'll wrap up this week's top five. I'll be back with the next top five that will be just as random and maybe controversial as the worst Halloween candies were.


The Jerky Boys and Prank Phone Calls

There are so many things that kids of today just will never know the fun of experiencing just in my time in the 1980s into the 90s. One such thing that we kids did to amuse ourselves back then was the idea of prank phone calls. Long before the days of caller ID and star 69. You could pick names and numbers out of a phone book and call them and pretend to be someone else. Call restaurants and other businesses and pretend to place orders. harmless fun. At least that's the way that me and my friends did it. It was all harmless. We never threatened anyone's lives. Although we had dabbled with prank phone calls before we had this, the idea of prank phone calls for a lot I'm sure came from the debut of the Jerky Boys. For those of you too young to remember, you're probably saying What or Who the hell are the Jerky Boys? Well, they were a pair of guys from Queens, New York, who in the early 90s, created at first a mixtape of them pranking all these different people in businesses in New York. And that's the way that I heard of them. My friend Tim actually had their bootleg long before their first official album came out. And it was so funny because they had different characters that would call up. But it was also inspirational. It gave me ideas because I was one that I could do a whole lot of different voices. And it seemed like it would be a great idea to use these voices to disguise my voice and call people I knew to pretend to be someone else. The Jerky Boys duo were Johnny Brennan and Kamal Ahmed, and the pair of friends had been making prank phone calls for years before and then they decided to kind of make it into a comedy act, where it was unsuspecting people in New York or answering classified ads. They made the bootlegs of their original prank phone calls. And it actually got the attention of Howard Stern, who started playing them on his show. And he thought they were great. And that's kind of where it all started. 1993 saw the release of the original Jerky Boys CD, which had a lot of the stuff that was on their bootleg, but then some new stuff. The album actually went to number one, and I was a freshman in high school when it came out. And although I had kind of heard of them a little through my friend Tim, it was different getting the CD and getting inspiration. And they had some incredibly funny prank phone calls like the guy that called up and said he blew off his hand with firecrackers or one that had a pet Cobra that was poisonous and bit him and he was dying from the bite. And there was Sol Rosenberg that Saul was always getting in trouble. He had horrible stuff happening to him. And a lot of these characters were very stereotypical. I'm sure a lot of it wouldn't fly today, but at the time, it was so funny, and as far as I know, it was all harmless. A year later, they released the Jerky Boys 2, which had all the same characters and similar ideas. This was nominated for a Grammy for Best Comedy Album though. An interesting little side note is that the band Radiohead their first album, Pablo Honey, is named for one of the bootleg tracks that the Jerky Boys did where someone called someone's house and just kept the guy obviously must have been named Pablo. Just said Pablo, honey, please come to Florida, and the guy's obviously freaking out like who the hell is this? But anyway, Radiohead, they must have heard it on the bootleg and they named their first album after it. I spent so many hours playing those CDs trying to mimic the voices so I could do my own performance of them for my friends. They eventually released Jerky Boys 3 in 1996. And this is where they started putting classified ads in so they would get people calling them. But they had all those classic characters Saul Rosenberg, Frank Rizzo, kissel Jack Torre, if you've never heard the Jerky Boys just go on YouTube and just start listening to clips of some of their calls. It was definitely a different time. You can't get away with that now with caller ID and nor am I recommending you go and make prank phone calls. But still, it's so funny. And like I said, I had dabbled in prank phone calls. Being 1415 years old mine were not as sophisticated as the Jerky Boys were if you want to call them sophisticated. There was one that we did me and my buddy John, we call this other kid up. I pretended to have been some random salesman who had just found his name, even though he would have been a high school kid. And I called asking about haircare products. And we tried to record it. But we ended up putting the microphone next to my mouth instead of the earpiece on the phone. So instead of hearing his responses to me, you just hear me talking and silence. And then to really give away what we were doing. Then John called the same kid saying that he had been harassed by the salesman. I don't know what we were thinking that he wasn't going to know that it was us that some random salesman that had haircare products was calling high school students from Yarmouth could we didn't even ask for his dad. Several of our prank phone calls involved calling teachers and either just yelling into the phone and hanging up or just calling and asking for the teacher and then hanging up before they got on the phone. Like we were afraid they would know it was us. We'd go through the Yellow Pages and call up random businesses similar to the Jerky Boys. And just ask them stupid questions until they hung up. I'm sure if we had practiced and really applied ourselves, we could have been as big as the Jerky Boys. But sadly, it was not to be. Like I said caller ID came out. We got caller ID at my house and 93 or 94. And sure you could get your phone number blocked or restricted so that people couldn't see it. But then they could star 69 you, which would call the number right back. So by the time I was a sophomore in high school, it wasn't worth the risk. Maybe you could call someone that didn't have caller ID and you'd have a funny prank phone call. Or they would have caller ID and call you right back and like I knew it was you. Did any of you out there make prank phone calls that you call people you knew or random businesses or teachers? I know that we never called and made threats we never called super late at night. Because we wanted to be able to sleep at night knowing that we didn't cause someone actual torment. Like even the Jerky Boys would make calls and threaten to come down there and beat up whoever they were talking to. The Jerky Boys released six albums, and have sold more than 8 million copies since they came out in 1993. They even had a movie the Jerky Boys movie that came out in 1995. It had a budget of $8 million. And it only made back 7.6 million so it lost money. It's a whopping 9% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and it was universally panned. I've never seen it because even when it came out and I was a junior in high school, I said how can you make a full-length movie based around prank phone calls? It doesn't make sense. And then later on there was the TV show Crank Yankers which was kind of a TV version of the Jerky Boys with puppets that were the characters. It was created by Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel. So you've got some creative people behind it when it started in 2002. And there have been 110 episodes so far. But still nothing will top those original, two Jerky Boys CDs, what it was all fresh and new. And I was able to mimic them with my friends at least a little bit. It's amazing to look back it's almost 30 years ago, and how different things were then with landline phones that didn't have caller ID and using the Yellow Pages in the phone book. Think about how antiquated that sentence is right there. Kamal Ahmed eventually left the Jerky Boys duo as he and Johnny Brennan couldn't get along anymore. This was in 2000 2001. So anything Jerky Boys has basically been on hiatus since Then, and I don't think in the 2020s prank phone call comedy team really works. At least not in the reality sense. I'm sure you could fake it and do the characters. But as far as the real reactions of real people, I don't think you can do that anymore. And as for me, I'm in my 40s. And there is no way to really call anyone without caller ID and I think I've grown up enough to not do prank phone calls anymore. That kind of died with high school. But do any of you out there do you remember the Jerky Boys? Do you remember them fondly? Or did you hate them? Did you make any prank phone calls yourself? Again, it's another throwback way back in the day. It doesn't seem that long ago, but it was. So I think I'm gonna go throw on some Jerky Boys and laugh and remember the good old days of the early 90s.

Closing

 And that will wrap up episode 90 of the In My Footsteps podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you all for listening. If this is your first episode, all the rest of these are basically evergreen. You can go back and start Episode One and work your way all the way through. For those of you that have been here the whole time. Thank you so much. I appreciate you making me part of your week. I tried to give you the best content on here and then through all the other content avenues the In My Footsteps podcast blog. I recently shared an article about the strange death of Thomas Powers from Cape Cod in 1898. There's my YouTube channel, which I have a lot of in my footsteps for K travel videos. Coming up soon will be the strange remains of an old mansion on Scarborough Beach in Narragansett Rhode Island. And as always, I'm on Twitter and Instagram. Easy to find. Sometimes I'm on TikTok. Sometimes I'm not. So hope you find all that stuff and just listen, watch, and share all that because the content creation and this podcast, videos, blogs, my books, that's all the stuff that I'm really into that I really want to do. I love being a personal trainer, corrective exercise specialist, et cetera. But even as good as that is, I still refer to it as my day job. With this being my passion. And whatever your passions are, follow them you're never too old to follow your passions. That'll lead you to Kiwis Kustoms at etsy.com. Speaking of passions, Kaleigh Marks Etsy shop is filled with homemade handcrafted gifts, balaclavas, fairy hats, baby fairy hats, dog and cat sweaters, and jewelry. The link is in the description of the podcast and it cost nothing to look. She also takes requests. If you see something there that looks like something you might want, you can always reach out and ask. It's similar to when I asked you if there are subjects you want to hear about on the podcast that I may not have thought of. Maybe there's something that Kaley hasn't thought of as far as her Etsy shop and you give her the idea. Who knows. So I hope you'll at least go look and give it a chance Kiwis Kustoms at etsy.com. As for this podcast, next week is the special monthly bonus episode of the podcast episode 91. I've already got the title, it's the darker side of a vacation destination. Basically, it's all of these true crime, paranormal, supernatural, creepy stories of Cape Cod and how they shaped and changed my view of a place where I grew up. It's not a hit piece on Cape Cod by any means. It's more or less. When I was growing up. I thought Cape Cod was boring and plain. And then the older I got the more I realized, wow, there's a lot here. The story at the top of the podcast about Lizzie Coleman and Sadie Hassard. I hadn't even heard of that story until a few months ago. So there are always new things I'm discovering a lot of them come in handy during the October spooky season. But there's also a lot of great stuff. So it's sort of a love letter to Cape Cod, but it's also showing those that maybe are living here now the thing gets boring that all there's a lot that you don't know. So that'll be coming up next week on episode 91 of the In My Footsteps podcast. And we're getting closer and closer to the second anniversary of the podcast, which is November 5, and episode 100 in general. I guess that I'm going to be doing some sort of a supersized episode for 100 Probably a lot of greatest hits for those that might be tuning in for the first time. So let me know if you've listened to these episodes and what you've liked the best and I'll share some clips. And I think the second anniversary one I don't think there'll be anything special for that because I want to kind of save it for episode 100 And as we get on through fall, the leaves change The sunset gets earlier the weather is going to start cooling down some, you may find it harder to get outside and enjoy the weather, get the vitamin D. So make sure you focus on your mental health, lean into the things that make you happy. If they're not hurting anyone else, then who cares? Good mental health is more important than pretty much anything else. And for me, it comes in waves, I'll have great days and weeks, and then I'll dip down into this valley where things just seem to be spiraling out of control. And I have to step back and refocus and recenter. And remember that nobody is owed your love, your trust, your time, your respect, all of that stuff is earned. If they earn it, you give it and that's great. If you've given it and they lose it, you can take it away. But nobody is owed that. No matter what their relation is to you. You are allowed to separate yourself from toxic people and relationships that are not helping you move forward without any excuse. Because that's good for your mental health ridding yourself of toxic people. And as always, remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps, create your own path, and leave the biggest footprint you can, because you never know what happens tomorrow. Thank you again so much to everybody who's been tuning in and sharing this podcast. I really appreciate all of you. And until next week, this has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I have been Christopher Setterlund And I'll talk to you all again soon.