In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 114: America's Oldest Missing Teens Case; Cape Cod's Changing of the Guard; Snuffy the Talking Fire Engine; Weird NH Laws(10-04-2023)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 114

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Episode 114 sees the show back after a week off. That was done to finalize podcast subscriptions. Now you can support the show and become a subscriber either through Patreon or Buzzsprout! More info at the links below.
We kick off the Halloween season with the ongoing story of America's oldest missing teens case. Bonnie Bickwit and Mitchel Weiser packed up and headed for the iconic Summer Jam concert in Upstate New York in July 1973. The pair of high school sweethearts never made it. The case was mishandled from the start and sadly went cold. Now fifty years after they were last seen alive their story is back in the public eye thanks to a Rolling Stone article by Eric Greenberg.
Thirty years ago Cape Cod was a different place. There were many iconic businesses that had dotted the peninsula for decades. Strangely within a period of a few years many of them disappeared. What happened that caused this shift? We will look at Cape Cod's changing of the guard of the early to mid-1990s.
Public Service Announcement commercials and short films were a staple of growing up in the 1960s through the 1980s. They taught children some valuable lessons using fun and colorful characters. One such character was Snuffy the Talking Fire Engine. This week we go way Back In the Day to look at the snapshot of the 70s that was Snuffy's Fire Safety Brigade.
There's a brand new Top 5, continuing to look at New England states' weird laws. This week we travel to New Hampshire to see what head-scratching laws were enacted in the state's history. Cows wearing diapers anyone?
As always there will be a new This Week In History and Time Capsule centered around Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution.   

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Speaker 02:

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 114. We're into October, spooky season, Halloween season, and I'm going to be giving you some true crime stuff for this month. We're going to start off with the story of the oldest missing teens case in America, the disappearance of Bonnie Bickwit and Mitchell Weiser 50 years ago in 1973. We're going to take a look back at a strange coincidence and a sort of changing of the guard in Cape Cod business that occurred in the early 1990s where a lot of famous places went out of business. We're going to go way, way back in the day and look at the educational film Snuffy's Fire Brigade from 1977. This will be kind of a fever dream trip back for some of you. There's going to be a brand new top five that are the top five weird New Hampshire laws as we continue our look at the weird laws of all the New England states. And of course, there'll be a brand new this week and time capsule all coming up right now on episode 114 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Howdy, everybody. It is October. I'm back after a week off where I put together my subscriber-based content for both Buzzsprout and Patreon. So that's the big stuff to kick off the podcast this week, is you can now go and subscribe to the show. There are naturally links in the description of the podcast, and I'll be sharing it all over social media. But I needed a little time to make sure I did it right. Because the last thing I wanted to do is promote these subscriptions and then have to pull them down and fix them. Right now, the subscriptions get you access to a kind of members-only exclusive podcast that I've been talking about. The wild and wacky look back at a blog that I was writing 15 years ago and kind of my commentary from today's eyes looking back on it. I'm sure there's going to be more stuff that goes with these subscriptions, whether it's podcast merch, whether it's other podcast episodes I do, digital art. It's all new, so I'm starting with what I'm comfortable with, and that's a new podcast episode. But for those of you that are interested, you can subscribe. And if you do, let me know what you think of the new episode. I have to admit, it was neat to upload this new episode, but have this little lock problem. icon on it where it's just for subscribers. I thought that was pretty cool. For those of you in the Cape Cod area, the weekend after this goes live, October 7th, I will be doing a book signing at Read Books in Harwichport on Route 28. I believe I'm going to be signing copies of six of my nine books, so it's a pretty big signing from 12 to 3. Hopefully the weather's good, and if it's not good, they don't just stick me out on the sidewalk anyway, because I want to be outside with a table with all the books so that people passing by, there's a fall festival going on, so there should be a lot of foot traffic. Because I was off last week from the show, I wanted to thank everybody that came to my second event in two months at the Osterville Village Library. This was for my new photography book and the second edition of my Cape Cod travel guide. It's now available to watch on YouTube, so if you missed it or you weren't there live on Zoom, you can still see it. It was also a lot of fun to get to meet someone who was a fan of the podcast and listen to the show. And this is the first new episode since I met him, so Dick, I hope you enjoy this show as well. You never know what you're going to get, right? For those longtime listeners of the show, you do know what you're going to get when it comes to October. It's spooky season. I like to put in a lot of true crime this month. I sprinkle it in throughout the year, but especially in October. So let's not waste any more time. Let's get right into the beginning of the spooky season, true crime season. As we discuss the oldest missing teens case in America, the disappearance of Bonnie Bickwit and Mitchell Weiser. coming up right now on episode 114 of the In My Footsteps podcast. For those of you that have listened to the podcast for a long time, you know of my connection to the Lady of the Dunes murder case on Cape Cod. The book that I worked on searching for the Lady of the Dunes that went hand in hand with Frank Durant's Lady of the Dunes documentary. For nearly 50 years it was an unsolved cold case with seemingly no end in sight. But thanks to the documentary and to a very small extent the book, a fire was lit under authorities. And on Halloween Day 2022, the Lady of the Dunes was identified as Ruth Marie Terry from Whitwell, Tennessee. And just several weeks ago, the case was officially closed with her husband Guy Muldovan being identified as her killer. I'm positive there were accomplices, but I think the authorities are wiping their hands of the Maybe not all the people involved, but it's good enough. In my work on the Searching for the Lady of the Dunes book, I was privy to a series of letters sent to Frank by convicted serial killer Haddon Clark. He's currently serving life in prison in Maryland for two known murders. But Haddon Clark, he was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. He's also someone that constantly, desperately clings to relevance. in whatever sick fame he has. This means that he has claimed to murder other people, including at times saying the Lady of the Dunes. I transcribed all of his correspondence with Frank into the Searching for the Lady of the Dunes book, and it's mostly rinse and repeat rambling weirdness where some of the letters have the same exact verbiage in them. but it was the last letter and the last paragraph really of that letter that really caught my attention and is really relevant today. In this last paragraph, Haddon Clark, unprompted, brought up the fact that he used to work at a place called Camp Wellmet in a town, Narrowsburg, New York, in the early 1970s. It was at this Camp Wellmet that he claims to have known a young girl named Bonnie Bickwit And Haddon Clark mentions that he thinks he may have been one of the last people to see Bonnie alive before she and her boyfriend Mitchell Weiser disappeared in 1973. This immediately raised my antenna and I reached out to Frank and told him about it. He had totally glossed over it because he was burned out from the Lady of the Dunes documentary and he was moving on to his next project. For me, I reached out to the Sullivan County Sheriff's Department in New York with this information from Haddon Clark. And I also reached out to a man named Stuart Carton who runs the MitchellandBonnie.com website. He was a friend of Mitchell's. And he and the family of both of them have been running this website to try to solve the case and to try to keep their memories alive. Because this is the longest... missing teens case in America. Stewart got right back to me as far as Haddon Clark went. The Sullivan County Sheriff's Department has never responded to me, which due to recent events makes more sense now. Mitchell and Bonnie, they disappeared on July 27th, 1973. They were high school sweethearts with Bonnie, yes, working at Camp Wellmet in Narrowsburg. Mitchell was a photographer's assistant in Brooklyn and the couple planned to hitchhike to the concert festival known as Summer Jam. It was headlined by the Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead in Watkins Glen, New York. The concert is believed to be the largest ever attended with more than 600,000 people showing up. Mitchell met Bonnie at Camp Wellmet and they set off for the concert which was 156 miles from Narrowsburg to Watkins Glen. It was believed at the time that the couple had about $25 in between them. They had backpacks, sleeping bags, and a cardboard sign that read Watkins Glen. They were last seen hitchhiking along State Route 97, and they've never been seen since. For me, after the beginning of last year, 2022, my involvement in this went cold. I told Stewart that I didn't know much more about Haddon Clark besides what he had written in that letter. And obviously the sheriff's department never got back to me. Time went by. We flash forward to August of this year. I'm making plans for the true crime segments for the podcast for October. And I said, I want to talk about Mitchell and Bonnie because it's the 50th anniversary and they've never been seen again. I type their names into a Google search, and up pops an article from Rolling Stone magazine from August 2023, something brand new. I will link to the article in the description of the podcast, but to sum it up, a man named Eric Greenberg wrote an article about the case of Mitchell Weiser and Bonnie Bickwit in conjunction with the Summer Jam concert and the 50th anniversary. Eric Greenberg is only a few degrees of separation from the case, as Mitchell Weiser would have been in his high school class. So he has a connection to this. There was the initial article about Summer Jam and about Bonnie and Mitchell and what happened to them. Then there was a follow-up article that said the New York governor ordered the police to look into the missing teens cold case after the first Rolling Stone article. So I was blown away by this, and I reached out to Stuart again with my same information, but saying that I read the article. And doing my due diligence, I reached out to the Sullivan County Sheriff's Department again as well. Stuart forwarded my information to Eric Greenberg, and suddenly there I was, sitting in the parking lot of the bike trail near where I work, chatting with this Rolling Stone magazine reporter. What I found is the case of Bonnie and Mitchell, though not the same, gives me Lady of the Dunes vibes. And not just because Haddon Clark is kind of a through line. He was considered a suspect in 2000, but his big thing was he wanted to be let out of jail to help the police find where Mitchell and Bonnie were. And that ended up not happening. But in speaking with Eric Greenberg... I found him to remind me of Frank Durant so much, and I mean that as a huge compliment to both of them, because both of these men just want resolution to the case for the people involved. What I found in talking with Eric and Frank, it's the topic of malfeasance, which basically means that the authorities involved, they messed up, but not intentionally. It was more incompetence. In the case of Mitchell and Bonney, The authorities told the families that, oh, they're probably just hippie runaways. We're not going to go look for them. Amazingly, there was an online petition after the first Rolling Stone article to make the authorities reopen this case and put more effort into it. In speaking with Eric, he doesn't think Haddon Clark was involved. I don't think he was either. I think he's someone that's looking to cling on to whatever weird fame he has. But I did find it interesting that he unprompted mentioned Bonnie Bickwit in a letter to Frank about the Lady of the Dunes, which it's just weird. It's sad because so much time was lost in even starting an investigation for where Mitchell and Bonnie were. At the time, the NYPD assured... Mitchell's father that it would alert police agencies across the state about his son's disappearance, and they never did. So Sullivan County, they never even started an investigation. And when Mitchell's father complained about this, he was treated poorly by the police. And this left the families on their own. Missing persons cases in the early 1970s were far different than they are now. The families had to do all the legwork, distributing thousands of flyers and placing ads, hiring their own private detectives, visiting and contacting hippie communes, even cult groups to see if Mitchell and Bonnie had been indoctrinated like that. And eventually the case just faded away. And it's really so sad because it's 50 years. There are still family and friends that hold out hope, at least for some kind of resolution. It is highly unlikely that Bonnie and Mitchell are still alive, that they ran away for 50 years and never contacted any of their family and friends. The Rolling Stone article talks about an orange Volkswagen bus with Pennsylvania license plates, with an eyewitness claiming that he saw two teens get swept away in the Susquehanna River. But this eyewitness never made a call about the incident, thinking that the driver of this Volkswagen bus would make the call. The big problem with this potential part of the story of Bonnie and Mitchell being swept away in the river is that no bodies have ever been found. And I'm glossing over a lot of this because the articles that Eric Greenberg wrote are really in-depth and really do more justice to this case than I'm able to. But there's momentum now. In speaking with Eric, he's got that same drive and desire that Frank had for the Lady of the Dunes case, and we know how that ended up. And who knows, maybe by some weird coincidence, Bonnie and Mitchell are still alive. They'd only be 66 and 65, respectively. But these two teenagers hiked out on their way to one of the biggest concerts ever, and they never made it. And authorities thought of them as just hippie runaways and never even started an investigation, leaving everything up to the family and friends of these two. It is now the longest missing teens case in America. And even if Haddon Clark had nothing to do with it, it has still drawn me into this case and my interest into this case. So I will link to... both of the Rolling Stone articles in the description of the podcast. I will also link to MitchellAndBonnie.com. Please check out all of those links. If you have any information, I'd reach out to MitchellAndBonnie.com. Stuart is amazing at getting back to you. The authorities, Sullivan County, I've reached out to them several times and have never heard back. But if any of you out there have any information about the disappearance of Bonnie Bickwit and Mitchell Weiser, please reach out and let's try to get some kind of conclusion for the family and friends that have been dealing with this for 50 years. Between 2017 and 2021, I released three Cape Cod history books through Arcadia Publishing. They were historic restaurants of Cape Cod, Cape Cod Nights, which was about nightlife, nightclubs, and bars, and iconic hotels and motels of Cape Cod. I often joke at events that I do that historic restaurants was where you went to go eat, Cape Cod Nights was where you went to drink and party, and iconic hotels and motels was where you went to sleep off the damage you did to yourself. In doing the hundreds of hours of research for those three books, there was a fascinating little common thread with some places that I didn't realize until I was doing the hotels book. Because for all of the places in the books, I would give you the basics, their address, where they were located, but also the years that they were active, if they were closed or if they were still open. And one thing I noticed was the surprising number of places that had closed in the early to mid-1990s on Cape Cod. And I mean famous businesses for those that grew up on the Cape. And the more I wrote articles for my blog about Cape Cod history, I was finding it even more. So I decided to do a segment on the podcast about this kind of changing of the guard in the early to mid-90s on Cape Cod and maybe what caused it. The short answer was that it was a recession. Obviously, that's not going to be the end of the podcast segment where I just say the end. Now you know what happened. This recession began in 1989, slowly creeping over the country. And by 1990, Cape Cod was fully in it. I don't know about those of you listening to the podcast that grew up on Cape Cod. I was 12 going on 13 in 1990. So as a kid, I'm not really going to recognize the what would be considered a recession. I'm too young for that. In my research, I saw that this recession, after the fact, maybe during, was considered to be the worst recession in Massachusetts in 50 years, so since the Great Depression ended. And then right in the middle of this recession, Hurricane Bob hit the New England area. Up until a few weeks ago, I had always thought Hurricane Bob was a Category 1 hurricane, but it turns out it was Category 2. which makes the week and a half that my family went without power seem more appropriate. Because I had always thought, God, our power grid must have been bad that a weak little Category 1 storm knocked out our power for a week and a half. But we'll do a Hurricane Bob segment at some other point in the podcast. So that passed. It only made the recession worse. Luckily, the main depths of this recession were brief. But the thing is, it took a long time for the area to recover. I was reading that Cape Cod was not fully recovered from the recession until late 1997 into early 1998. And the irony is one of the things that helped pull Cape Cod out of this recession was off Cape money, quote unquote, also known as people coming to Cape Cod here on vacations, which is all well and good. But also a lot of people coming here, buying land and building second homes, which that has been a major issue on Cape Cod in the 21st century, is the proliferation of these McMansions that all look the same right on the water. And these people that build the second homes and then rent them for unbelievably ungodly money in the summer, which then prices out rent for so many other people. That can be traced back, a lot of it, to the recession that we're talking about here in the early 1990s. It truly is a double-edged sword. Thank you for helping pull us out of the recession, and now thank you for pricing out Cape Cod for so many longtime Cape Codders that can't live here. But rather than keep going on about the long-term damage that was done by the second homes being built, I wanted to make sure I spent a lot of this segment talking about the actual famous businesses that closed during this changing of the guard of the early to mid 90s. I'm going to try to quickly go over some of these. If you want me to do deeper dives into some of these places in future podcast episodes, just shoot me a message. But otherwise, I've got a pretty big list here that we're going to dive into. Do you remember Johnny Yee's in West Yarmouth? It was a Chinese Polynesian restaurant on Route 28, right next to what is still Giardino's restaurant. Johnny Yee's was around from the late 1960s into the early 90s, right smack dab in the middle of this recession. A fun story about Johnny Yee's is the fact that when doing the research for my restaurant's book, I was able to make contact with him. So I was able to interview him and get his perspective on what it was like to run that restaurant. But when he called me and called my phone, I let it go to voicemail just so he would have to leave me a message. So for years, I had a message from Johnny Yee on my phone that I would share with my family because my Uncle Bob used to work there. So they found it fascinating that I had Johnny Yee on my phone. What about the Asa Burr's house in Hyannis? That was a classic American steakhouse. Main Street, Hyannis... The house was literally the Ace of Burrs house for a man named Ace of Burrs that was a captain. I believe where the Ace of Burrs house was is Torino Restaurant and Bar for those that are in the area these days. There was Bloom's Prime Rib House at 633 Route 28 in West Yarmouth. That area is now the Sons of Erin Club or Restaurant. I'm not sure which it would be classified as. But the Bloom family in that time frame, late 70s through the early 90s, they had a pretty good grip on restaurants and entertainment in the mid-Cape area. Besides Bloom's, there was Fred's Turkey House, which was just up the street, and also Starbucks. Not the coffee house, but the Hyannis restaurant near the airport rotary. There was the Cape Half House restaurant, which was right near the Dennis Harwich line on the West Harwich side. It's now the Noble House Japanese restaurant. There was the Cranberry Goose slash Cranberry Moose restaurant in Yarmouthport right on the curve of Route 6A before you get to where Willow Street hits Route 6A. That property has been several different restaurants in the decades since Cranberry Moose closed. Currently, it's called Leonessa. There was the famed Dorsey's Steakhouse on Route 28 in West Yarmouth. which before that it was the gay 90s. It's an antique shop now located right next to the Yarmouth House restaurant. There was Mary Jean's restaurant on Main Street Hyannis. A lot of people from the Melody Tent that played there would go to Mary Jean's before or after. I believe that's Brazilian Grill now. There was Fiddleby's restaurant on North Street Hyannis. There was also the Sword and Shield restaurant on Route 28 in Harwichport. And when it comes to restaurants, the one that naturally sticks out the most to me is my grandpa's donut shop, Sullivan's Donuts, that was on Bursa's Way in Hyannis, in the Bobby Burns Pub Plaza. Like I said, I was a kid at the time, so I didn't realize that the recession had claimed his business. But there was beloved nightclubs like the Compass Lounge. where they actually were sold in the early 90s and became a spot called the Kaz Bar that was more Mediterranean themed. And that did not last. It failed spectacularly and became Compass Lounge again. But again, that didn't last long and Compass Lounge closed and became a CVS that's right on Route 28 and Long Pond Drive in South Yarmouth. But it wasn't just restaurants and nightclubs that got closed due to this recession. There were places like Butner's Department Store that had been around probably close to 70 years by the time they closed. There was Close Quarters, which was kind of like a Marshall's, TJ Maxx-type place. Cotton Pick and Tees, which was at the Willow Street Route 28 intersection in Hyannis. There was Hinkley's Home Center, which obviously in the name was a home repair, remodeling, building center. But there were even places like Century Bank, which used to be bigger on Cape Cod. If you go online, you can find there's at least a bank with the same name, but they're very centrally located in Minnesota. So I'm pretty sure it's not the same, but who knows? And there was even Centerville Nursing Home closed. It was amazing. Once I really started digging into all of the places that closed during that time frame, just to hear all those names. And I'm sure there are others, smaller little mom and pop shops that came and went during that time that I just didn't find. But all those places I just went over, especially the restaurants, they were all big names that spent decades on Cape Cod. And this recession of the early 90s killed all of them. For those of you longtime Cape Cod-ers, did all of those names bring back memories? Like I said, if you want me to go over any of those places in more depth, just shoot me a message and I'll throw it in a future podcast segment. And for those of you listening to the podcast that are not from Cape Cod, have no idea of Cape Cod, I know that all of those places I named with specific addresses and what's there now, it means nothing to you. And I appreciate you listening. Just know that all of those places were really big in their day down here. But it is also amazing to see the changing of the guard that this recession caused and how Cape Cod changed. Not always for the better, but we did come out of the recession. And even now, that recession is over 30 years ago, which is just mind-blowing where the time goes. This week in history, we are going back 187 years to October 2nd, 1836, and Charles Darwin's return to Britain with the information that leads to his theory of evolution. For Darwin, it was a return after five years at sea. On December 27th, 1831, he departed Plymouth, England, aboard the HMS Beagle. And Darwin was only 22 years old when he was hired to be that ship's naturalist. Most of the trip was spent sailing around South America. And during the trip, Darwin spent lots of time on the shore collecting plants and animals and filling his notebook with observations of what he saw. Throughout the time around South America, Darwin collected a lot of bird specimens. And one of his key observations came when he was studying the specimens from the It was here that Darwin noticed in the finches that these birds were similar on the islands to the birds located on the mainland. But these finches on Galapagos showed certain characteristics that they had that helped them to gather food more easily on the Galapagos Islands. And these observations were part of what led him to the theory of evolution through natural selection. After his return to Falmouth, England on October 2nd, 1836, Darwin became a bit of a celebrity as a naturalist and a geologist. But then through his publications of his notebooks and observations, which were published in 1839, entitled Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by the HMS Beagle. That is a long title. However, it was his book in 1859, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, that solidified Charles Darwin as an icon in the history of science. Darwin's theory argued that organisms gradually evolve through a process called natural selection. In this process, organisms with certain genetic variations that suit their environment tended to have more descendants than other organisms that lacked those variations and thus influencing the overall genetic makeup of the species. And I am really glossing over a lot of this. This is very much a CliffsNotes version of Darwin's theory of evolution and origin of the species and all of that. But he made his big return to Falmouth, England, aboard the HMS Beagle. After five years at sea, 187 years ago this week in history. And now it's time for a brand new time capsule. Let's see where Darwin's theory of evolution led us as we see what was going on in the world of pop culture 28 years ago this week, October 2nd, 1995. The number one song was Fantasy by Mariah Carey. This was off of her album Daydream. And the song itself has a famous sample of the Tom Tom Club's 1981 song, Genius of Love. The song spent eight weeks at number one and became only the second ever song by a female solo artist to debut at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. At the time, it was Mariah Carey's ninth number one single. And as of recording of this podcast, she has 19 number one songs. The number one movie was Seven, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing $4.35. This is an excellent movie. It's a crime thriller. It stars Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey, with murders based around the seven deadly sins. If you have not seen this movie before, I highly recommend you go see it. The ending is extremely famous, where even if you haven't seen the film, you likely know the what's-in-the-box finish to this movie. It made over $327 million worldwide on a budget of right around $34 million, and it is currently 83% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, so definitely go check out Seven. The number one TV show was ER. This show has been mentioned before in previous time capsules because it was such a juggernaut, lasting for 15 total seasons from 1994 to 2009, 331 total episodes, and 23 primetime Emmy wins. So any time capsule I do in the time that this was on the air, there's a chance that this show was number one. For those that don't know, it's a medical drama based in Chicago. created by Michael Crichton and starring tons of famous people. Go and look it up because I don't have time to name everything about the show. And if you were around back then, October 2nd, 1995, you've got children that are in elementary school. You might want to take advantage of the new computer craze that's going on, getting them the Laptop Smarts device from Tiger Education. This was a talking laptop style toy with 25 learning activities including spelling, math, music, arts. For ages 6 to 10, I didn't even know that laptops were really a big thing in 1995, but yet there's a kid's toy for it. And if you wanted to get one for your kid age 6 to 10 or maybe a little younger or older, you can find it in the Sears catalog for $49.99. When adjusted for inflation to today, that is just over $100, which I don't know what a typical tablet costs today, but I know a lot of kids have those, so it's probably the same deal. And that'll wrap up a brand new time capsule and this week in history. And now it's time to jump into the new top five as we continue with our Weird New England Laws series. This is state number five out of six. So get ready for some laughs and head shaking as we look now at the Weird New Hampshire Laws on the brand new top five. Oh boy, here we go. Part five of the top five weird laws from all the New England states. I wonder what I'm going to do when I run out of these. Next week's episode is weird Massachusetts laws, and that's it for New England. And no, I'm not going to do them for every state in the country. Then it'll start to get ridiculous. But this week on the top five, we're going to look at the top five weird New Hampshire laws that were either on the books and got repealed or are still on the books and no one bothers to enforce. I hope you've enjoyed these segments. I've loved researching them and putting them together. I'll put the link to stupidlaws.com in the description of the podcast again so you can see what kind of weird laws exist in your state, wherever you're from. After next week, when I finish the Massachusetts Weird Laws, I'm going to put together a video for YouTube that features all six New England states to kind of sum it up for anyone that's missed any of the episodes. But let's get into the top five. As always, with many of these top fives, I have honorable mentions to kind of get your appetite going. So honorable mentions for Weird New Hampshire Laws. It was once illegal to bathe within sight of your own house during the day. Cleaning up any sort of trash at White Mountain National Forest could lead to a $150 fine. It is illegal to check into a hotel under an assumed name, so be careful on any weird motel hookups. It is illegal to pick seaweed up off the beach at night. And finally, the last honorable mention, you cannot sell the clothes you are wearing to pay a gambling debt. Boy, as with all of the states, there are just some weirdly specific and weirdly random laws that were either on the books or have been repealed. But let's actually start the top five with number one. On Sundays, citizens in New Hampshire may not pee while looking up. Number two, It is illegal to inhale bus fumes with the intent of inducing euphoria. That is how it is worded. It basically means you can't breathe in the fumes trying to get high. So I guess you would have to pretend that you were doing it accidentally. Sitting behind a bus that's idling. Is that even a thing? Are people finding their ways to stand behind buses and breathe in the fumes to just enjoy getting high from the brain damage being induced? I can just picture it being a bus driver and seeing in the rearview mirror these people sitting behind your tailpipe breathing it in with these big smiles and the bus driver having to go to court and saying there needs to be a law against breathing in the fumes to get high. And how are you going to know they did it intentionally? Maybe it was accidental. They tripped and fell behind the bus and then whoops. And for those that really want to get high behind the bus, maybe they're looking for someone to invent a bus fume scented vape cartridge or something like that. There's a million dollar idea. Number three, no person while hunting or obviously on his way to or from hunting may have a ferret in his possession, custody or control. I don't know why you can't have a ferret if you're going hunting. What is it about them? It's not like having a bloodhound that can go retrieve something that you've shot. Do ferrets attract certain animals that then makes it unfair? Sort of like having decoy ducks that a deer or a coyote would see a ferret and say, ooh, I got to go get it, and then they get shot. And the law specifically says possession, custody, or control. which sounds like three ways of saying the same thing. Number four, you may not tap your feet, nod your head, or in any way keep time to the music in a tavern or cafe. This sounds an awful lot like the movie Footloose. Don't you even think about dancing to the music or enjoying the music? Sit there like a robot and stare ahead. I can't figure out why this would be an issue. If you're working at the bar and people are nodding their heads, does it distract you? You can't pour the drinks right if someone's tapping their feet? And even if you had a couple hundred people inside a bar tapping their feet, I don't think it's going to be that loud that it could disturb the rest of the town. It really does sound like Footloose just unleashed on New Hampshire. And finally, number five on the top five weird New Hampshire laws list... Before your cattle can cross the road, they must be equipped with some sort of device that collects its feces. So in other words, before you can bring your cows across the road, you've got to put a diaper on it. I get this because piles of cow poop must be pretty big, especially if dropped in the road and you run it over. But besides a diaper, what else could you put on a cow? I mean, I guess if you had a reusable grocery bag or something, you could kind of wrap it around its tail, maybe. Would that catch everything? This law sounds like something that happened before there was automobiles and people were either horse and buggy or walking and someone just stepped in it or saw the cows pooping in the road. And has anyone ever seen pictures of cows with diapers in New Hampshire? I just want to know if this law was something that was put on the books to scare people but was never enforced, or if they actually had cows with diapers. These are the important questions that I ask on this podcast. Did cows wear diapers? But that'll wrap up the top five weird New Hampshire laws. Next week on the podcast, we will finish off this series with the top five weird Massachusetts laws. And then I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to have to come up with new top fives. This has been a lot of fun. And I hope you've enjoyed the weirdness of New England laws. Back in episode 101, I did a review on an old early 80s PSA video that I had remembered from childhood called The Ounce of Prevention. It was created by the Shriners Hospital and had a lot of the Looney Tunes characters, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, etc. And I loved watching that full film. It's only like 15 minutes, but the full film and sharing it with you and hoping that some of you that are of my age group went and checked it out. out on YouTube. Well, we're back with another similar PSA film. This one is called Snuffy's Fire Safety Brigade, and it came out in 1977. Those of you around my age that grew up in the 1980s might remember the PSAs for Snuffy the Talking Fire Engine, this little red fire engine that was telling these kids what to do in case of a fire. I even think that Snuffy, or at least a knockoff of Snuffy, came to my elementary school when I was in probably first grade. So 1984. Because I remember this little red fire truck that either spoke or was just there with a face on it, spraying water around. It wasn't until recently that I even knew there was this Snuffy's Fire Brigade film. I had always thought it was just that one PSA from the late 1970s, but I should have known better because in that PSA, it mentions that the people that created Snuffy and that whole film was the Burger King Corporation, which I guess as a kid, I never noticed. And as an adult, it never really crossed my mind that there was likely more to it with Burger King and Snuffy. So I started doing my research, Snuffy the Talking Fire Engine and Burger King, and I found some toys that they must have had in their kids' meals back then. A plastic, cheap-looking Snuffy with a sticker face on it, which I'm sure is probably valuable today, but it doesn't look that great. I will post the link to the video for Snuffy's Fire Safety Brigade in the description of the podcast so you can watch for yourself, but I'm going to kind of go through it a little bit. It won't do justice to the time capsule to the late 1970s that this film is. So it starts off with the title and Snuffy parked in a grassy park. For those of you that can't picture Snuffy, it's a small, it's a fire engine, but it looks like something from the 1930s with a big water tank on the back and the headlights are two big googly eyes and it's got these oversized red lips across the grill and the bottom lip would just move up and down when Snuffy would talk. When this movie starts off, there's a group of people practicing for a parade and It looks like high school kids, like a high school band. And there are four kids sitting in these really cheap looking wooden bleachers overlooking the parade. One of the little girls has an overalls dress. And one of the little boys has a very stereotypical 70s shirt on with kind of a block color across the shoulders and little rings of color on the arms. It's one of those things that when you see the film, you will say, oh yeah, that's late 70s. It just speaks to you. The kids obviously want to be in the parade, and they go to grab these signs that say Hotspot Spotters Unite, I guess so that if they see a fire, they can tell people. One thing you'll notice when you watch this video is that the high school band colors look very much like Burger King's colors, brown and mustard yellow. So it's like Burger King High School. And after one of the Burger King high school boys comes over and tells them they can't grab the signs, that's when Snuffy the Talking Fire Engine comes rolling around from the other side of the bleachers. I'm sure it's just the quality of the film that is on YouTube, but some of the sound really sounds like it's muffled and cracking. And the school band has got these cheesy trumpet music it's playing. If you've seen the Snuffy PSA, you'll know the music, at least from that. So anyway, the four kids are upset that they're not allowed to be in the parade, and Snuffy says he can help teach them about fire safety. But that's, of course, after the kids have to pretend that they don't know that this fire engine that just rolled up on them is speaking. Then you get to hear the first of the songs that are included in this film.

Speaker 01:

So

Speaker 02:

there you go. I don't want to play too much of it. I don't know if I'll get in trouble for copyright, but there's Snuffy singing his song as the kids are marching across the park. They end up in a little makeshift fire station. This is where they probably had the PSA bit shot where, you know, 30 seconds of the fire truck rolling in and telling the kids about fire safety. The kids try on all the firefighter gear and then Snuffy tells them that the hotspot spotters are all his TVs that he's got. And then Snuffy proceeds to tell all the kids that there's stuff in each of their houses that could be considered dangerous for fires. And one by one, he goes through each of the kids' houses. One of the little boys, his house, they show his house, and he's got this tiny little TV. But the thing is that there's so many plugs plugged into one outlet, so that's the problem. Another little boy, his dad has old paint rags and turpentine laying around the basement. They even show something similar to the Ounce of Prevention video with the cookies being close to the hot stove. That was in the Ounce of Prevention too. And then after seeing all of that, the kids break into another song, how they hate to live in a hot spot.

Speaker 01:

Well, what do you say now?

Speaker 00:

Oh, we'd hate to live in a hot spot, but you won't. Yeah,

Speaker 02:

that's the song there. It goes on for quite a while. It gets even funnier because the two little girls dance with each other like a slow dance to that song. I'd love to find out if these kids, if any of them did anything or got anything from doing this film. Because they're all basically 9, 10, 11 years old maybe. So if this came out in 1977, they'd all be in their mid-50s, around 60 by now. I couldn't find any of their names. It does have a lot of good stuff for kids to learn, dangers of matches and things. And there's yet another song when they talk about what do you do if you see a fire. Now remember, this film is only 14 minutes long, and there's already three songs in it. This is where they teach them about stop, drop, and roll, which is in the snuffy PSA that you would see all the time on TV. I remember that, especially on WLVI TV 56 in the mornings. And it talks about what to do if your house is on fire and how to all meet up out in front of the house. There's even this disturbing bit of the video where there's this dragon stuffed animal on fire. And it's running around just on fire because it won't stop, drop, and roll. I'm sure that scarred some kids that saw this. And once the dragon finally stop, drop, and rolls, then it has to sing a song with sunglasses on. That's the fifth song in this video. And all the kids are dancing in a very cheesy, exaggerated 70s way. This is where you can tell that the disco era was going on. Some of the lighting and camera cuts. Like I said, this whole video is very much a snapshot of 1977. And naturally, in the end, the kids pass basic fire safety training, according to Snuffy, so they can now go be in the parade. And the four kids are marching down the street with Snuffy singing that same I'm a Little Fire Truck song that I played that clip of from before. And there's dozens and dozens of extras. Little kids marching with signs. The Burger King colored high school band. It's so much fun to watch. It's only 14, a little over 14 minutes long. But if you're into nostalgia, and you all know obviously I am, it's a fun way to just go back in time. 45 years or so. It still blew my mind after all these years to figure out that Burger King was the one that created Snuffy and this film and that PSA that I always watched. And then it all comes full circle right near the end as Snuffy's driving towards the camera and he's got a fire hat on with a big Burger King logo on it. And it just ends with it saying it's a production of Burger King Corporations for a public service announcement. There's no listing of the cast, who the four kids are. But like I said, those of you that are around my age, you'll definitely have a trip back in time watching this. People that are younger, you can laugh at the cheesiness of this whole thing because it is very cheesy. Like I said, there's six songs in just over 14 minutes. And the kids aren't trained singers or actors, and whoever does Snuffy's voice is definitely not a trained singer, but that's part of its charm. So do any of you out there remember Snuffy the Talking Fire Engine from the late 70s, early 80s? Did Snuffy or some cheesy knockoff come to your school around that time? Because I'm pretty sure it came to mine. And I'll keep on the lookout for any more... 70s and 80s PSA, longer films, not the shorter ones because I'll review those. I've done some in the past, but I want to find more films like this Snuffy's Fire Brigade and Ounce of Prevention and things like that. So if any of you know any other ones I should review, send them my way. And that'll put a bow on episode 114 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Thank you to everybody who's been tuning in. Thank you for watching. You can still buy me a coffee if you want, but the best thing you can do is spread the word about the podcast. Tell people to check it out. It might seem a little random, but it's way more structured than you think. The research that I put in for each episode to make sure that each show is the best I can possibly give you. It can be a lot of work, but it's a lot of fun to share these and see the response I get from you. You can always send me an email, christophersetterland at gmail.com. Find me over on X and Threads and Instagram. There's a Facebook fan page. Subscribe to my YouTube channel. There's lots of videos up there, more than 300. I just did a video version of the My Cape Cod Roots segment that I did in episode 112. So it's a lot of fun with the visuals that I put in there as well. Visit my homepage, ChristopherSetterlin.com. It's got links to all of my books, which you can also find on Amazon. Check out theladyofthedoons.com. I built that site specifically for my Searching for the Lady of the Dunes book and the Lady of the Dunes documentary. You can buy the book there, watch the documentary there, see all the different stories from the newspapers through the years pertaining to the case. So much info. I'm always working on something. Like I said at the top of the show, if you're listening to this right after it drops this weekend, October 7th from 12 to 3, I will be out in front of Read Books on Route 28 in Harwichport signing copies of, I believe, six of my nine books. So if you need any of my books, come on down. If you want to say hi, you can come on down as well. I'll keep you updated with more events as they get closer. There are more coming up, but I don't want to just promote tons of them. I want to do the one that's coming up the closest to when this podcast goes live. Coming up next week is going to be episode 115. We're going to continue spooky season as I tell the story of Provincetown's hidden smallpox cemetery. We're going to take a road trip to Salem, Massachusetts. Salem is a great place to visit, but during October, it's the best if you like scary stuff. We're going to go way, way back in the day as I reminisce about what it was like to stay home sick from school in the 1980s and 90s. This is the segment I was going to do in episode 112, but I changed it when Bob Barker passed away to do a longer segment about The Price is Right. So there may be some crossover with that segment here. There'll be a brand new top five as we finish off the Weird Laws series with the Weird Laws of Massachusetts. This will be the sixth of the six New England states. Embarrassing my home state the most. And as always, there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule coming up next week on episode 115 of the In My Footsteps podcast. So it's fall, it's October, the leaves are starting to change. The weather's getting crisp, but it's still great to be outside. Enjoy it. The sun is great for your mental health. And this is the time of year that even people that have no photography skill at all can get great photos with the foliage that New England has to offer. Even if you're not from New England and you're listening to this, hopefully in your area, you get that fall foliage and get to see the leaves change. There's nothing better than the scenery with the oranges and reds. Take care of your mental health. So thank you again to all of you that have been supporting me through nearly three years with the podcast. And remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path. Leave the biggest footprint you can in this world because you never know what tomorrow brings. So enjoy every moment on the journey. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, and I'll talk to you all again soon.

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