In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 118: Yarmouth's Sandy Pond Club, Birthday Greatest Hits, 1980s Fast Food Fails, Portsmouth NH, Great Emu War(11-1-2023)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 118

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It's Birthday Week on Episode 118 of the podcast!
There's a cause for celebration as I make another trip around the sun. What better way to reminisce than by looking at how a birthday evolves and changes as we age? Oh, and also there will be a makeshift Top 5 as I share some of the best(worst) birthday memories!
From a celebration today, to celebrations in the past, it'll be a fond, if somewhat hazy, look back at wild times on Cape Cod in the 1970s as we check out the story of the brief but spectacular existence of Yarmouth's Sandy Pond Club bar.
This week's Road Trip features one of my absolute favorite places in all of New England, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It will be tough to narrow down all there is to see and do there into a manageable segment, but we will get it done.
As a kid in the 1980s, no birthday celebration was complete without a trip to the drive-thru of your favorite fast-food establishment for dinner. This week's Top 5 is the other side of the coin as we look at the ambitious or downright odd menu items that became legendary fast food fails in the 80s.
There will be a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule featuring the strange but true story of Australia's Great Emu War.
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Speaker 00:

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 118. November's here, my birthday month, and we're going to kick off the first episode of November as I try to figure out where my youth went and look back at some birthday memories and how age is just a number. Yeah, we'll see. We're going to venture back for longtime Cape Codders and take a trip to the legendary drinking establishment known as the Sandy Pond Club of Yarmouth. We're going to take a road trip to one of my favorite places in all of New England, the town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire There'll be a brand new top five that are the top five 1980s fast food failures. And of course, there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule all coming up right now on episode 118 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Ah, yes. Happy birthday to me. When this podcast goes live, my birthday will be tomorrow. Most of you will hear this after it's already happened. Thank you all for celebrating with me by checking out the podcast. The best gift I can get from you besides a million dollars is you sharing the podcast, letting others know, tell them to check it out. Of course, you can also become a subscriber through Patreon or Buzzsprout. The second member-only podcast drops today, November 1st. These bonus episodes... Follow my old travel blog. Well, it was supposed to be kind of a sister travel blog. It became more of a running commentary on life from about 15 years ago and is way more like a fever dream combined with an episode of Seinfeld. I share clips from these bonus episodes for you to get an idea of what they are. Sort of a try before you buy. You'll find them all over social media. This month is kind of a slow month in terms of book events, but it's going to ramp up in December, so I'll keep you all posted. But I have nine books. They all make great holiday gifts. So click the links in the description of the podcast to go check them out if you're interested. I tell you, just last week, I really dodged a bullet when it came to work as far as content goes. My entire laptop had to get reset. which that's no fun. Luckily, I had everything backed up just in case, but it was several days where I had no laptop, so I couldn't do any podcast work, any marketing, any sort of content work. Thankfully, it's all running smooth now, but just remember if you do any sort of computer work at all to back up your work on an external hard drive because you don't want to lose something you've worked hard on. I think I told you this before, but my big road trip I did in 2019, so four years ago this month, my computer failed then and I lost a couple thousand photos from that trip because they weren't backed up. That was what led me to get my current laptop that I have now. But enough about that. This is my birthday episode. We're going to kick it off with kind of a present to longtime Cape Codders. You of the generation ahead of me, Sit back and relax and reminisce as we talk about the relatively brief but spectacular history of the Sandy Pond Club in Yarmouth. So let's pop the top on that right now. It began its existence as a hunting lodge before becoming one of the legendary establishments during the golden age of Cape Cod nightlife. The Sandy Pond Club is still talked about glowingly by those who frequented it even more than 35 years after the building was burned down after the town of Yarmouth bought the property. The land on which the Sandy Pond Club once stood is at the north end of Town Brook Road in West Yarmouth, Massachusetts. It was purchased in 1939 from Raymond Ellis by Nelson Cressy, who was Yarmouth's police chief at the time, a position he had been promoted to the year previous. The property abutting Sandy Pond became home to a remote hunting lodge used by Chief Cressy. The lodge remained in his possession until 1953, when a future Cape Cod legend entered the picture. Jack Braggington Smith, who would gain fame decades later for his Jack's Outback Restaurant on Route 6A in Yarmouthport, showed his new wife Dorothy the site and Sandy Pond in 1953. Dorothy had come to Cape Cod from Rangeley, Maine after the death of her first husband, George Goodspeed, and the site gave her pleasant memories. She decided to purchase the land, Jack then took over Chief Cressy's lodge and turned it into the Sandy Pond Club. Popular establishments became a part of the family as Braggington Smith's father, Harold Smith, was the original owner of the nearby Mill Hill Club at the same time. Though it would retain much of its hunting lodge charm, including a huge fireplace, Braggington Smith had plans to make his new establishment one of a kind. Over time, he would purchase a total of 90 acres of land surrounding the club. The road leading to the Sandy Pond Club was dirt and filled with dangerous potholes. The potholes, though, actually slowed people down as they drove the remote quarter-mile road, thus curbing any car accidents. The isolation of the road gave way to an oasis on the water, and patrons knew they had arrived. Despite the proximity of the new establishment to the town of Yarmouth, it quickly became an underground hit. Braggington Smith incorporated the pond itself into the club by adding pontoon boats, a diving tower, and a downstairs bar for those who chose to visit in swimsuits. The Sandy Pond Club was nothing if not unique. It was a spot that had many distinctive traditions and activities that left an indelible mark on those who visited. There were oddities like the Lefty Righty Club. This consisted of a cup hanging from either the left or right side of the club. On busy nights, folks would have to hold their drinks in the hand that corresponded to the mug. Throughout the night, a saxophone player at the club played a familiar tune. signaling that the cup was being moved and that all drinks had to be switched to the other hand. The music was a great cross-section. as there was rock and roll in addition to some tremendous jazz legends, including Lou Colombo and Leroy Perkins' Excalibur Band, as well as famed pianist Bob Hayes. Dick Doherty of the equally legendary Crystal Palace and Hyannis played a jam session there in the days before he owned his own establishment. Iconic rock and roll pioneer Chubby Checker even played a gig at the Sandy Pond Club. Jeans were not allowed. Patrons dressed in a classy, casual manner. Braggington Smith's son, Brian, lovingly refers to the Sandy Pond Club as the original Jack's Outback, the old man at his best. Jack's Outback was another endeavor the elder Braggington Smith owned, a beloved breakfast and lunch spot on Route 6A in Yarmouthport. Though Braggington Smith sold the club in 1971, its popularity did not wane. It was leased by Cape Cod happy hour legend John Morgan, who ran it for three years as Groggery at Sandy Pond. On many nights, the club was packed wall to wall, with more than 400 people squeezing inside. A season's pass cost only $1, and if one happened to be a year-round Cape Cod resident, one's pass was basically good forever. It was a place locals and visitors as well as town firefighters and police frequented for the atmosphere as well as the cheap drinks. The beer of choice at the time, Schlitz, cost $0.50, while mixed drinks like the popular Cape Codder were $0.70. The 1970s was the heyday of raucous crowds at the Sandy Pond Club, but sadly it did not last. After the 1978 season, the club closed due to financial difficulties, with the building remaining vacant for several years. By the early 1980s, the town of Yarmouth had purchased the land, to eventually become a recreation area. The nearly 70 acres, including the hunting cabin turned roadhouse bar, cost the town $400,000, or just a shade under $1.5 million when adjusted for inflation to 2023. On July 23, 1983, the Yarmouth Fire Department staged a controlled burn of the property, officially ending the club's reign in the woods near Sandy Pond. The legacy of the Sandy Pond Club still lives on now 45 years after its end. It lives on in the dirt road on which one can still drive and walk. It lives on in the shores of Sandy Pond itself, where former customers can relax and remember the good old days. It also lives on in the number of couples who met while working or patronizing the Sandy Pond Club, and that may be its most enduring legacy, bringing people together. How many of you longtime Cape Codders of that generation, 60s, 70s, remember going to the Sandy Pond Club? For me, I was a year old when it closed, so I naturally had no memories of the club, the property, the hunting cabin. I can't remember who it was in my family that told this story. I think it was my mother, but if it's not, I hope she doesn't get upset that I'm attaching her name to it because it's a funny story. My knowledge of Sandy Pond is as the recreation area. I've been there hundreds and hundreds of times over my life. But I believe my mother was the one that told the story that when Sandy Pond, the recreation area, was first opened, which I believe was 1985 or 86, she did not want us kids going swimming in Sandy Pond itself. And the reason was that there used to be the bar right on the water. And even though you'd have to think that the town did its best to scour the floor of the pond to get any glass out of there, she didn't want to take the chance of us kids finding rogue, broken Schlitz bottles on the muddy bottom of Sandy Pond and slicing ourselves up. An interesting little side note, I did this... History and review of the Sandy Pond Club for my book Cape Cod Nights that came out in 2019. Something that I found was pretty consistent for all of the bars and nightclubs, specifically those during the golden age of Cape Cod nightlife, which is pretty much mid-1960s through the early 1980s. I was able to find nearly no photos from anybody to share from any of the times at any of these clubs. Which I guess is to be understood for a couple reasons. One, the prevalence of cameras wasn't as big back then. You didn't have a camera on your phone with you. But second is the idea that you're at these clubs drinking and you don't have the right frame of mind to stop to think to take pictures of everyone or the building or whatever. So when I would interview people for the Cape Cod Nights book, most of the people would say they had memories but they were pretty hazy. But what about you folks? Do you have memories of the Sandy Pond Club? Are they pretty hazy? You can still drive that Town Brook Road, the dirt road with the potholes that would lead you to the Sandy Pond Club. It's really overgrown. And unfortunately, when you get to the dirt parking lot where the club was, there's a pair of big boulders that block the road. So unfortunately for all of you looking to reminisce, you can't fully get the experience. But you can always get to those boulders and close your eyes and imagine there being that hunting lodge slash bar on the water. This week's road trip is absolutely perfect for my birthday episode of the podcast as we take a trip to one of my absolute favorite places to go in all of New England, the town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I have three towns in New England that are my absolute favorite places. This is the second of the three. I already shared Newport, Rhode Island all the way back in episode two almost three years ago. The third spot, well, that's going to have to wait a little while, but you'll know when I share that one. Portsmouth is right on the coast of New Hampshire. As of 2021, their population was 22,277. This town is just over 60 miles north of Boston and just over 50 miles south of Portland, Maine. It's right on the Piscataqua River that separates New Hampshire from Maine, so you can look right across the river and see the town of Kittery, Maine right there. It's hard to pick a place to start in Portsmouth, but I would recommend the Strawberry Bank Museum. They're centrally located at 14 Hancock Street, but it's this historic waterfront neighborhood that brings all of more than 350 years of Portsmouth history to life. There are historic homes to visit. You'll get some costumed role players. So it's a little bit like Plymouth Plantation if you're familiar with that in Massachusetts. There's gardens, historical landscapes. There's craft demonstrations. The entire area is about 10 acres at the south end of Portsmouth that back in the day was a neighborhood known as Puddle Dock. It first opened in 1965. and I won't do a good enough job explaining it to you, so I'd recommend checking out strawberrybank.org. I'll put a link in the description of the podcast. Mainly because both words are spelled differently, strawberry is spelled with one R, and bank is spelled with an E. If you're walking all around Portsmouth, all around Strawberry Bank, you might want to walk down to Market Square for some good shopping, eating... There are dozens of stores and restaurants along Market Street, Saris Street, Congress Street, Pleasant Street. Check out goportsmithnh.com to get a better idea of what's there. Portsmouth is definitely a very walkable town. Sometimes finding a place to park is difficult, but once you do, it's very easy to just start wandering around. I mean, it's not that large. Like I said, the population is just over 22,000, which is big, but it's kind of in a smaller area. So you visited Strawberry Bank. You went shopping at Market Square. While you're in the walking mood, you might as well go and check out the Harbor Trail. This walking route right along the water includes many important landmarks of Portsmouth. There are guided walking tours of this harbor trail with people that can share with you all about the historic buildings and landmarks that are there. And there's the Harbor Walk Park that's right at the foot of the Memorial Bridge. You can get some crazy views there. Great photos. And naturally, if you're there right along the Piscataqua River, there's lots of piers and boats coming and going. So you can do lots of walking and lots of shopping and dining. and exploring the historic sites of Portsmouth, but you can also just sit along the water and just watch the boats go by. Sometimes taking a road trip to somewhere can be best enjoyed by just sitting and soaking in the atmosphere. And if you want to soak in the atmosphere and get some beautiful photos, you definitely have to check out Prescott Park. It's located on Marcy Street, And it's over 10 acres of a waterfront park with the land being purchased in the 1930s by sisters Josie and Mary Prescott. There's beautiful fountains and water displays and some incredible trees, but then wide open views of the river and the boats. And if you go during the summer, the Prescott Park Arts Festival is held there. There's music and theater and art outdoors on the water. It's just a beautiful place to go and visit. Portsmouth in general, but Prescott Park as well. This is one of those towns that I'm going to try to do justice to with explaining places to go to, but I will keep saying just go. Park your car and just wander around. Wintertime's a little harder to go up there. I'd recommend spring and summer, but any time of year is good for the history of And while if you've been listening to this podcast at all, you know, speaking of history, that I love lighthouses, and there's Portsmouth Lighthouse, which is located on neighboring Newcastle Island. I consider Newcastle to be just an offshoot of Portsmouth. The lighthouse was built in 1877 and is 48 feet tall, and it overlooks the entrance to Portsmouth Harbor from historic Fort Constitution. The lighthouse itself is temporarily closed as the wooden walkway that gave people access to the lighthouse was destroyed in a storm in December of last year, December 2022. That's kind of why I didn't lead off this segment with the lighthouse and the fort. That's more in my wheelhouse, but I know that they're kind of closed right now. But if you're listening to this podcast in the future, maybe they'll be open for you. If you go to see the lighthouse Fort Constitution, you can't see one without the other. However, the fort is also currently closed due to pending repairs. It was originally known as Fort William and Mary, but renamed Fort Constitution in 1808, following it being rebuilt after it had been abandoned by the British during the Revolutionary War. So this fort goes all the way back to the early 17th century. But even though the fort and the lighthouse are temporarily closed, there's still so much else to see in Portsmouth. If you're someone who likes to read or someone who likes to have a drink as they read, you could check out the Portsmouth Book and Bar. They're at 40 Pleasant Street and bookandbar.com. The building is from 1860. It's a bookstore with drinks, coffee, some light food selections. They have entertainment. Authors, you can sell your books there. If you go, you'll find several of mine there. It's just a fun and unique experience. For those Cape Codders who know the Wellfleet bookstore and restaurant, it's kind of like that, just not with as much food. But that's all right, because if you're up there looking for something to eat, you can check out Lexi's Joint. They're at 212 Islington Street and peaceloveburgers.com. It's a great specialty burger place with craft beers and a great atmosphere. They have four locations, Portsmouth, Dover, Exeter, and their newest location in Epping. They even do catering with Lexi's Burger Bus. They also have a location in Newburyport, Massachusetts. I was sticking to the New Hampshire ones, but I don't want to sell them short. I say this with most places on the road trips, but especially with Portsmouth. If you're going to go there, you want to make it more than a day trip. You want to spend the night, soak in all hours of the day and night in Portsmouth so you can stay at Hotel Portsmouth. It's located at 40 Court Street and also larkhotels.com. That's the parent company that owns them. as well as dozens of other amazing hotels, including the Cunamesset in Falmouth on Cape Cod. It's a 32-room boutique hotel just steps from Market Square, so you're very centrally located there. Like I said, visit goportsmithnh.com to get a full view of what to see and do. I can't say enough good stuff about Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It took a lot of willpower to hold off doing a road trip segment there. I'm glad the podcast lasted long enough. Now I'm thinking about my third of three favorite spots. I wonder if the podcast will last another 116 episodes. I think that's what it was between Newport and Portsmouth. Nah, I'll probably do it before then. When it comes to Portsmouth, just go. Just take your car, go. You can check out the places I've mentioned. Well, except the fort because it's closed for repairs. But then there's so many other little nooks and crannies in Portsmouth that you're going to find that I don't have time to mention. Little things, like there was outside this store one time I went, there was a row of different colored chairs, and I had someone sit in the last chair and took a photo, this perspective photo, and then through the Photoshop trickery, took all the color out except for the chairs. It's this beautiful photo. But I found this area just wandering around the streets of Portsmouth. Whether it's spring and summer or Halloween time or the dead of winter, there's never a bad time to go to Portsmouth depending on the weather that you like. So go and enjoy Portsmouth. I hope my gushing about it got you revved up to go. And I'll be back with the next road trip segment. I will try my best to make it sound as amazing as Portsmouth does, but that might be tough. This week in history, we are going back 91 years to November the 2nd, 1932 and the beginning of the Great Emu War. For those of you that might not watch Puppet History on the Watcher channel on YouTube, you're going to be in for a treat with this story here. The Great Emu War was undertaken in the country of Australia to deal with an overwhelming number of emus, the birds, that were destroying crops within the wheat belt of Western Australia. At the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, Australian farmers were told by the government to increase their wheat crops with the government promising and then failing to deliver assistance in the form of subsidies. Most of these farmers were discharged World War I veterans that were given land by the government. So the farmers were growing more and more wheat, which flooded the market so wheat prices continued to fall. So the farmers... were in dire straits and they were preparing to harvest the crop in late 1932 while also threatening to not deliver the wheat to the government. This time of year was made worse because migrating emus, as many as 20,000 of them, flooded into this farmland and they began to eat all the wheat and destroy fences which allowed rabbits to get in to eat more wheat. A group of these ex-soldiers went to meet with the Minister of Defense, and the soldiers told him they had seen during World War I the effectiveness of machine guns, and they requested to be deployed to use the machine guns on the emus. The Minister of Defense agreed, and even said that the emus would make great target practice for the soldiers. The war on the emus lasted a month. But the soldiers would see anywhere from 50 to 100 to 1,000 emus being spotted, but then as they would charge them with the guns, the emus would break off into smaller groups and run away. It was said that within a few days, each of these packs of emus seemed to have their own leader, like a general, to go up against the soldiers. After a week, the military was withdrawn because it was seen as a big failure. But then a few days later, November 12th, they sent the military back in. It was said that after a month, by December 2nd, the military was killing approximately 100 emus per week. Now remember what I said a few minutes ago, that it was upwards of 20,000 that had flooded these wheat fields. A hundred a week was not going to get the job done. When the soldiers reported back December 10th, after the war was over... They estimated that there were 986 kills for sure, and possibly 2,500 wounded birds that had died or would die as a result of their injuries. That still would leave, what, 16,000 or more birds still alive, untouched, to destroy the wheat? So the Great Emu War was a failure. And interestingly, it wasn't the end because the farmers again requested military assistance to fight the emus in 1934, 1943, and 1948, only to be turned down by the government. I highly recommend watching Puppet History on the Watcher Network to get a full, in-depth look at the emu war. But the first battle of the war between Australian farmers and the emus began 91 years ago this week in history. And now it's time for a brand new time capsule. We are going back 33 years ago this week to November the 2nd, 1990, the day I became a teenager. Oh my god, it's so long ago. Let's see what great stuff was going on on my birthday way back then. The number one song was Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice. Oh god, it's not starting well. This song was off of Vanilla Ice's To The Extreme album, which I had the cassette of. The song samples Queen and David Bowie's song Under Pressure. Even if Vanilla Ice tried to say in interviews it was totally different. This was easily Vanilla Ice's biggest hit of his career. to the point that he has remixed and re-released this song several times, including a hard rock version that was... The number one movie was Jacob's Ladder, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing $4.22. This is a psychological thriller starring Tim Robbins as a soldier... Before and during and after Vietnam, who has these weird visions and dreams and hallucinations. It opened at number one and has a 72% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but yet it barely broke even, making $26 million on a budget of $25. But it's become a cult classic. It's another one of those movies that's appreciated years after it was in theaters. The number one TV show was actually a movie, Three Men and a Baby. This was a comedy starring Ted Danson, Tom Selleck, and Steve Guttenberg about three men who received the gift of a little baby that's one of theirs, but they don't know, and it's the hijinks of them trying to raise this child. It was a huge hit, making $240 million on a budget of somewhere between $11 and $15 million. and spawned the sequel Three Men and a Little Lady. And if you were around back then, November 2nd, 1990, you want to get a gift for your birthday that makes you seem like you're so cool in middle school, I might recommend a Bart Simpson Eat My Shorts t-shirt. And you could find one for anywhere from $11 to $14 at Spencer's Gifts in your local mall. And if you're looking back at that time now saying, Bart Simpson t-shirt, why would you want to get that? All I can say that in 1990 alone, 15 million Bart Simpson shirts were sold. The Simpsons may be long past its expiration date, but back in the day, it was easily one of the best shows ever made. And I wore that Bart Simpson t-shirt until it was ripped with holes in it. But that wraps up this week in history and the time capsule. But now it's time for the main course of top five 1980s fast food fails. This should be fun looking at what restaurants thought were some great bright ideas that eventually got flushed. So let's pull up to the drive-thru window right now. I would say that this is going to be a delicious and tasty top five, but that sadly is probably not the case, as this week we are going to look at some of the biggest fast food fails of the 1980s. When putting together this top five list, I noticed that some of these failures from these restaurants were not necessarily due to low sales. As you'll hear, a few of these were actually quite popular. It actually falls on the restaurants themselves not being prepared for the popularity of some of these items. But enough of the setup. Let's get to the actual top five. You know that with the vast majority of these lists, they're in no particular order, and they also have honorable mentions. These will be the appetizers to the big fast food fails. So, honorable mentions for fast food fails of the 1980s include Jack in the Box's Frings, which were basically french fries and onion rings in the same package. The Pizza Hut Priazzo, which was the ultimate deep dish pizza with two layers of dough and a bunch of toppings. The McDLT from McDonald's, which is famous for those commercials from the 80s. Keep the hot side hot and the cool side cool. You'll go look it up. You'll find it. And the final honorable mention was the Taco Bell Beefer, which was basically like a sloppy joe on a burger bun from a restaurant that has the slogan, Think Outside the Bun. So no wonder that failed. Do you remember any of those? Well, let's get ready for the actual top five. Let's dive into it. Let's open up the bag and look inside and see what they messed up on our order. Starting with number one, the A&W 1 3rd Pound Burger. This product failed due to the stupidity of some people in this country. It was during the 80s that A&W released their 3rd Pound Burger to directly compete with McDonald's Quarter Pounder Burger, complete with the advertising slogan, 3rd is the word. But unbelievably, this failed because the majority of people in America thought that quarter pound was bigger than third pound because the four is bigger than three. I can't make this up. I know A&W is seen as more for the root beer, and their restaurants have been less and less popular. We had one in Harwich on Cape Cod for years that just closed down in the last couple years. But for people to think that third pound was smaller than quarter pound, I don't know if that's a failure on the school systems or just stupidity gone wild. Number two was the Taco Bell seafood salad. When you go to Taco Bell, what do you want? Mexican food or at least American version of Mexican food? Chicken, beef. I think the last thing anyone would want is seafood salad, which I find disgusting anyway. I don't know what your thoughts are on it. It was a crispy, flattened out kind of tortilla shell made to be kind of like a bowl filled with lettuce, other salad toppings, snow crab, shrimp, etc. You can find photos of it online. It doesn't look appetizing to me, but I'm kind of partial. I don't like Most seafood, seafood salad especially. But if you're going to a fast food restaurant, you tend to have your favorites that you want. So Taco Bell offering seafood salad just doesn't seem like it would work. And it didn't. This product debuted in 1986 and quickly was pulled after several cases of food poisoning came out. Talk about tripping at the starting line. That's why Taco Bell needs to stick with what brought them to the dance. Number three is McPizza. I could have made a whole top five based just on McDonald's fails, but I tried to stick to one, although the honorable mention had McDLT. McPizza is literally a personal pizza. It debuted in the late 1980s. Originally, the McPizza was larger, but then it got scaled down to personal sized, which should have been a sign that there were issues with it. The main problem was the wait time and having to get these pizza ovens into all these franchises. Because if you go to McDonald's and place your order, you're looking at getting your stuff, whether in the restaurant or the drive-thru, in what, two, three, four minutes? McPizza would take on average from 11 to 16 minutes. So God help you if you got that at the drive-thru. It was scaled back and discontinued by the end of the 1990s. Number four was Burger King's BK Burger Bundles. These I actually remember. They were little burger sliders. I think because I was a kid back then, I liked burgers that were more hand-sized for little kid hands, just like Kentucky Fried Chicken had the Chicken Littles. Same idea. These came out in the mid-1980s and were initially sold in packs of three or six. They've disappeared and come back as BK Burger buddies and burger shots. The reason they failed in the 1980s was due to the size of the burger patties and they would fall through the grates of the grill and just burn and catch fire. So I think it became less that people didn't like them and more that the specific restaurants couldn't figure out how to make them without ruining a lot of them before. I haven't been to Burger King in many years. Do they still have BK Burger Shots, I guess they'd be called now? If you want sliders, stick to White Castle. And finally, number five on the list of 1980s fast food fails was Wendy's Salad Bar. I appreciate the fast food restaurants for trying to put healthy food on the menu, but if you're going to a fast food restaurant, you're not looking to eat healthy. Interestingly, though, the Wendy's salad bar was actually a big success because people could serve themselves. The main problem came from keeping the salad bar restocked so items would just be out a lot. At its peak in 1987, Wendy's salad bar had 35 items that you could choose from, including chocolate pudding, because you know nothing goes better with... lettuce and tomatoes and onions, then a scoop of chocolate pudding. It evolved into the Super Bar, which was more of an all-you-can-eat buffet, but that was eventually phased out by the early 2000s, and the salad bar was a thing of the past at Wendy's. And that'll wrap up this week's top five. Any of you out there remember having any of these fails during the 1980s? Did you eat the A&W third-pound burger? or have Taco Bell seafood salad, or wait for a McPizza, or get a bunch of the BK Burger bundles, or eat at Wendy's Salad Bar. I hope I didn't get your appetite up because you can't go and get any of these now, I'm sorry. But I'll be back next week with a brand new Top 5 filled with more tasty morsels than you can stuff in a fast food bag. Well, by the time a lot of you hear this, I will have celebrated my latest birthday. I always want to do some sort of segment on the podcast that coincides with my birthday. Last year, I did a segment sharing my legendary and embarrassing 21st birthday escapades. But this year, as I'm now closer to 50 than 40—oh my god— I wanted to try to recapture my youth by doing a segment saying age is only a number. But it's evolving into something looking at how birthdays in your life change as you age. And at the end, I will share some birthday greatest hits, I guess you'll say. You'll have to stick around for that. I know I'm not the only one that thinks this, but I'm sure a lot of you out there as the years go by... and beloved memories or times in your life get further and further from the present day, you really start to wonder where the time has gone. High school is long gone. College is long gone. Christ, my 20s are long gone. It kind of gets to this point that you're moving up a ladder in your life, different grades of school, finishing school. If you go to college and get your first real job in the real world, But eventually you get to the top of this ladder and it's kind of just a plateau where you're just moving in the same direction. Like you've stopped growing and you're now just existing. And believe me, this is not meant to be sad or depressing. It's actually going to be a pretty funny segment as we go on. I was just trying to figure a way to describe what it's like to grow up and eventually become an adult. And then what happens there? You just become an older adult and then an elderly adult. Although I guess the further you go, the more you kind of regress. Where your first few birthdays and your last few birthdays probably mirror each other more than you would imagine they would. But like I said, age is only a number. It kind of depends on what you do with those years. I look at someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who's 76 years old and is in better shape than 95% of the people on the planet still. Granted, he came from a much higher place, so his coming down is still so far above most people. But ask yourself this honestly. How many of you out there feel your age? I have days where I feel older than I am. Like the other day, I went running, and I can't run like I used to several years ago. And I hurt my right foot, so I've been hobbling around. That makes me feel every bit of my age. But for the most part, I have kept myself in pretty good shape. And that includes years of heavy drinking and years of eating like crap and years of battling mental health depression. And still this day, I feel pretty good. So even though I say I'm closer to 50 than 40 and it kind of gives me the shivers, oh God, the reality is I feel more like I'm in my early 30s. if I had to pick an age. And with tweaks in your diet, tweaks in your exercise, small adaptations for your own mental health, I always talk about it on the podcast, but the vast majority of you listening can roll back the years somewhat. You can't do it really, but you can feel better than your age on your driver's license would say. My grandpa, who was my hero and role model, as you all know, lived to be 93. So I'm just about halfway there. And the only thing I think I can do better than my grandpa with my life is to outlive him. So my goal is just to do that. I can't be an Olympic caliber sprinter, swimmer. I can't be married to the same woman for 70 years. I can't run several successful businesses. But I can live longer. But let's circle back to birthdays in general. It's amazing how the birthday itself changes as you age. When you're a baby, first few years old, toddler, you're given what people think you'll like. Since little kids really don't have that defined sense of self yet. With my nieces and nephews, I gave them what I thought I would like at that age. And your birthday parties are typically family fun. If you're in preschool or the first few years of school, maybe you have a few friends come over. Then you get to be six, seven years old, and you start to have defined things that you enjoy, defined things that you want. And luckily, for the most part, what kids want for presents on their birthdays up until age 10, you know, six, seven, eight, nine, it's all stuff that's affordable. So for the most part, kids would get everything they wanted. I know that's how it was for me. I don't remember being disappointed on my birthdays when I was young. It was always good presents, typically some sort of fast food for dinner, KFC, McDonald's, and a few friends, eventually evolving into sleepovers. I think my first birthday sleepover was when I turned eight or nine. Then you hit puberty, become a teenager. That's when you prefer cash over typical presents. When my nieces and nephews hit puberty, teenagehood, 13, that's when I stopped buying them presents and just started giving cash. Sure, you could do gift cards, but then you're stuck going to a specific store. Does anyone of my age, my generation, remember getting paper gift certificates to certain stores and being able to go into that store and buy a pack of gum and get the change from the gift certificate? Now you know why gift cards really came around because I used to do that all the time. And if you got clothes as a teenager for your birthday, it was hard to hide the disappointment. That was really frowned upon because there was no way in my mind my parents would know what my style likes were. Then you get into your 20s, past 21. It becomes less about what you get for your birthday and more about where you go and what you do because you've got that freedom. Go back to episode 92 of the podcast and listen to my segment on my 21st birthday. That kind of sums it up. And it kind of stays that way in your 30s and your 40s. Although it's less about going out and drinking all night and partying at bars, but it is still going out, hanging with friends, going to dinner. Maybe it's just me. Does that sound like how all of your birthdays have evolved depending on where you are in age? That as you get older, you value the people and the experiences more than the gifts. Sure, I like getting stuff or buying stuff for myself. But truth be told, I prefer spending time with the people that matter as I get older. But now the moments you've been waiting for. This is kind of an impromptu top five for my top five most legendary birthday stories. Minus my 21st, that's already been told. When I turned eight years old, my mother brought me and my friend Brian to the Museum of Science in Boston. I can't remember if someone else was with us as far as an adult. My friend Matt was supposed to come too, but he couldn't go. There was going to be three of us eight-year-old boys. I love the Museum of Science, but what I remember most about that trip was the drive up and the drive back. It was like the evolution of my travel love. The big hit songs on the radio at the time were Part-Time Lover by Stevie Wonder and Who's Zoomin' Who by Aretha Franklin. They are ingrained in my mind because they played on the radio, I'd say at least three or four times each on the ride up and back. You ever have a song play in a certain situation and then every time you hear that song after you can feel that situation again? Every time I hear part-time lover, I think of going to the Museum of Science at age eight. It was either when I turned eight or when I turned nine. I had my first birthday sleepover. I know my friend Brian and my friend Matt were both there. Maybe there was another kid. I don't know. What made this memorable was my pregnant gray cat Smokey came downstairs into the basement room that I had. and plopped herself down in amongst us young boys and pushed out one big kitten. Yup, my cat gave birth on my birthday in front of all my friends. And one kitten, and we called him Solo, which that's a story I'll have to share more about in another episode, Solo the Cat. When I turned 30, I was out at a place called the British Beer Company. Two friends were with me trying to get me drunk off my ass. They made me take the birthday shot, which was warm gin. And then while we were there, one of them went and found a, how do I say this nicely? An older lady, probably from somewhere in Latin America. And they plopped her down next to me and basically said I was looking to get lucky with her. All I can say is that I looked at her and I looked at them and And I said, there's not enough alcohol in this place to make her look good. I mean, that's as nicely as I can put it. I remember saying that because there was no filter. Yikes. I don't think she was happy. She was gone within a few minutes. I think when I turned 33, I went to this local restaurant bar that's one of my favorite hangouts, especially when I used to go out and drink a lot more. There was a bunch of people there for this celebration, including one girl that I was very, very into, like, over my head, crazy about. She was Pam to my gym, for those that know The Office, except it didn't end the same way. Anyway, the more I drank, I ended up blackout drunk, and I had to be told a few days later at work when I said, "'Boy, I'm glad I didn't do or say anything stupid on my birthday.'" that I professed my love to this girl at the bar. She told me that she had a boyfriend, which I knew, but I said I didn't care. I had a friend, and my brother basically had to corral me and get me the hell out of there before I said anything else stupid. Perhaps the king of all birthday stories, well, besides my 21st, was when I turned 12. And we had a big celebration. There was at least a couple of friends I invited over, including one kid who was new to the area. And I thought he was so cool. And I invited him, among others, to my birthday. And I got a bunch of cash for my birthday, 12, 1989. The party ended, everybody went home, and I couldn't find my birthday money. There was only one suspect, and it was this new kid. My mother had to call his house and ask where the money was. And at first he denied it until my mother said she was going to go to the police. Unless he handed the money over when we drove over there in a few minutes. And we drove over and he handed my mother my birthday money. Just imagine that. Going to a kid's birthday party. Someone invites you and you steal all their money. What kind of a scumbag person are you? Needless to say, he was never my friend again. Funny how things like that can ruin a friendship. But I got all my money back. There are some of my most infamous birthday memories. I asked my mother if she could remember any other funny stories from birthdays, but she couldn't. I guess that's good that I don't have a lot of embarrassing memories like that. But thank you to anyone who's ever celebrated my birthday with me, wished me happy birthday, any of that stuff. I'm about halfway through this life, hopefully. And it's been a good one. And hopefully it's only going to get better from here. And that will wrap up episode 118 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Thank you all for celebrating my birthday week birthday episode. It was definitely a lot of fun to reminisce about birthdays past, even the one where I got my money stolen. Thank you to everyone who has shared the podcast. Those of you that have become Patreon subscribers, I hope you enjoy the members-only episodes. I'm sure to come up with more ideas for members-only stuff on Patreon and Buzzsprout, digital art, maybe some merch. I don't know. If you want to find me other places where you don't have to become a subscriber, you can find me all over social media. Subscribe to my YouTube channel. I put a few segments of the podcast up as videos every week and the full podcast audio as well. I'm on Instagram. I'm on threads way more than X now. There's the Facebook fan page. My website, ChristopherSatterlund.com. Learn all about the Lady of the Dunes murder case by visiting theladyofthedunes.com. I built that website, so go easy on me. But it has Frank Durant's amazing documentary. You can watch it for free. You can buy a copy of my book about the case, the documentary, and just learn all about it. It costs nothing to check out all this other content. And I do appreciate everyone who does check out my stuff, share it, comment, all that great stuff. Thank you. But this here, the main podcast, that keeps rolling on next week with episode 119. We will celebrate three years of me doing this podcast. It started as an excuse for me to stop drinking and became something where I now have Patreon subscribers for it. It's a long, strange trip. We're going to take a look at the history of Cape Cod Community College. Speaking of a long, strange trip, it was a long trip to get that from the planning stages to actually opened. We're going to go way, way back in the day and look at the NFL Sports Talk Football video game series from the Sega Genesis, a.k.a. Joe Montana Sports Talk Football. Oh man, that brought back some fond memories for me. There'll be a brand new top five that are the top five athletes that I ever got to see play live. Boy, this was a tough list to put together and narrow down. And of course, there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule coming up next week on episode 119 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Remember to take care of your mental health. We're into November. The sunset is getting earlier. The foliage is starting to go. Soon the leaves will just be brown and dead on the ground. And it'll get chillier, longer nights. So remember to lean into the things that make you happy to kind of help you navigate through what could be a long winter. Hopefully it's not. The podcast will keep going, so at least you've got that to look forward to if you enjoy this show. Now granted, it's only about an hour respite from the winter each week, but at least you can hang your hat on that. And remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey because you never know what tomorrow brings. Better to try something and fail than not try and regret. So thank you once again for tuning in. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, but you are in your path. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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