In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 143: Restaurant Storytime 8, Sweet Pickles Books, Forgotten 90s Musical Artists, 4-Minute Mile(5-8-2024)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 143

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The beloved Sweet Pickles books. Some forgotten 90s musical acts. The most toxic workplace I've experienced.
Episode 143 of the podcast has a bit of everything.
It begins with the return of a podcast staple, Restaurant Storytime. This 8th installment is a segment 143 episodes in the making. Toxic workplaces are unfortunately all too common. This segment reveals the most toxic place I've been a part of. It might veer off into rant territory at times but it's also packed with laughs. You won't believe your ears at some of the memories this segment evokes.
The mood gets lighter as we go way Back In the Day to a beloved part of many Gen-Xer's childhoods. Sweet Pickles was a series of books featuring animals with unique personalities kids could relate to. It was also a brand that extended into other forms of merchandise. Smart moms know how kids' minds grow!
This week's Top 5 will dive into some forgotten 1990s musical artists who were big during the decade but perhaps have faded with time. Hopefully, this segment will shine a new light back on them.
This Week In History and Time Capsule will be centered around a barrier once thought to be beyond the human body, the sub-4 minute mile.
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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 143. So what are we going to talk about this week? Well, we got a lot of fun stuff to get into. We're going to start off with something that's been a long time coming. The newest installment, Restaurant Storytime. This is the eighth one. Restaurant Storytime 8. Get out before it's too late. We're going to go way, way back in the day. Things that will bring a smile to the face of many Gen X kids. As we look back at the beloved Sweet Pickles books. And if you don't remember them, I will fill you in There's going to be a brand new top five right in my wheelhouse. The top five forgotten musical artists of the 1990s that you forgot were awesome, but I'm going to remind you that they were. And there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule centered around the very first sub four minute mile ran by Roger Bannister. All that and more coming up right now on episode 143 of the In My Footsteps podcast. This is going to be a lot of fun this week. We're going to cover a lot of different ground on this week's podcast. I'm hoping that everybody out there is in the sunny, warmer weather now as May is really getting rolling. I feel like we're kind of out of the woods as far as cold temperatures go, but I know as recently as the end of April, we were having mornings on Cape Cod that were right around freezing. I was kind of like, aren't we done with this yet? You wouldn't know it was May based on the weather. Thank you all for coming aboard and spending about an hour hanging out with me this week. I appreciate everyone that tunes in, even if it's every now and then, or those that are making this appointment listening. I mean, 143 episodes, that's a lot. I either must really enjoy making these and sharing them with you, or I'm just too stubborn. Special thank you to my Patreon subscribers, Leo, Laurie, Mary Lou, and Ashley. $5 a month on Patreon will get you access to monthly bonus episodes of the podcast, early access to the main show, and other things. I'm trying to develop more ideas for Patreon. One potential idea is some sort of newsletter just based around the podcast, almost like fleshing out a little more of what I talk about each week. The video podcast idea, it's kind of on ice right now because what I've realized is I need to basically buy a new camcorder just to do this. I can't do my webcam because it's crappy quality. And I also am looking for a way to create a green screen behind me so that it's not me and my wall that really looks so ghetto. So maybe I'll come back to that later in the summer when I have a couple hundred dollars just laying around to buy myself a camcorder. Even if becoming a Patreon subscriber isn't feasible, you can do so much to help me help the podcast. Just by sharing it, spreading around word of mouth, if you're into Gen X nostalgia, I'm constantly going down the rabbit hole of nostalgia topics that maybe I hadn't thought of to hopefully share things with you that bring back memories of when you were younger or give a history lesson to people that are younger and are curious about what things were like in the dark ages of the 80s. But without further ado, let's get into a segment that has been 143 episodes in the making from the dawning of the podcast. Restaurant Storytime 8, get out before it's too late. We're going to dive into what that means right now. When I say that this segment here is 143 episodes in the making, I'm not kidding. I began this podcast in November of 2020. I started brainstorming the idea the week after I gave up alcohol in the middle of September of 2020. At the time that I gave up alcohol, at the time I started this podcast, I was working in a retirement home. For those who might know me, for those that worked with me, I worked at two retirement homes back to back. The story goes, I was working in a gym as a trainer, not getting enough hours, not making enough money. I was pretty much flat broke. And the owner of the gym was kind of an idiot. He wasn't a fitness guy. He was a used car salesman. So he understood how to sell to people, but he didn't understand fitness in general. So when I said I need more hours to make more money, he said, oh, if you get more clients, then I'll give you more hours. So it was a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that I didn't get more clients with few hours. And so I needed a different job. So I ended up leaving there. I started working at a retirement home and doing some in-home personal training on the side. And just a heads up, the first retirement home, any people that are listening from there, this is not about Mayflower. I really enjoyed my time there. I just want anyone who might have worked with me there to know I'm not speaking about you. This is about the other retirement home. And I'm not going to name it because this is not going to be a flattering segment on the podcast. So I'd rather keep it vague. But you'll get the idea. You'll be able to paint a picture in your head of the kind of hell, the toxic hell I went through. But first and foremost, I chose to go to this place. My goal was to switch retirement homes and have fewer hours in the retirement home so I could pick up more in-home training clients on the side. Because you make way more money doing that than working in a kitchen in a retirement home. That's just a fact. And this other retirement home seemed to fit the bill. It would be closer to part-time. I'd have more time to do my own thing. So I said, all right, that's great. One of the people I worked with at the current retirement home I was at at the time, Mayflower, actually pulled me aside and said, you might not want to go to this other place. It's not what you think. But my mind was made up and I'm kind of stubborn. I'd rather go and fail sometimes than listen to reason. So I left Mayflower and I went to this other place. This was snakebitten from the start because honestly, within two weeks, maybe two weeks of starting there, COVID shut down the world. So what that meant was, I couldn't go train people in home. That was all wiped out. Now, kind of lucky for me, in a backhanded compliment kind of way, I was seen as an essential worker. So I went from part-time at this other retirement home, now to full-time. So immediately things had changed. What this did was give me more time there to see all of the things that I couldn't believe actually really were happening in this kitchen. The very first thing that kind of sets the tone for this whole segment is the fact that within a week of COVID shutting things down, one of the other cooks there had a close encounter, a close exposure to COVID. But this guy decided not to tell anybody for a few days. So he was working with us many times unmasked after knowing he was in close contact with someone who had COVID. And this is at the peak of COVID when it was killing thousands of people a day. This guy decided, no, I'm not going to tell anyone. Word came out over the weekend and he got fired, thankfully. Because you would think lying about possibly contracting a deadly disease, a contagious disease, would require you to get fired. Oh, but don't worry about this guy, because after I left this place, they hired him back. I guess it's no big deal that he lied to them and put lives of senior citizens in danger. When I say this was the most toxic work environment I've ever been a part of, I'm not kidding. I'm not saying that to be overly dramatic. There was a very cliquish vibe there from the start. The chef, the sous chef, and one other cook were this little group. I found that out the hard way within my first week or two of being there. When the chef finally decided to get off his ass and come out of his office and do something to actually make lunch for he and the sous chef and the other cook that they called their little buddy. Didn't offer anything to anyone else despite there being three or four other people working in that kitchen. Nah, the hell with them. I'm going to make stuff for my little buddy in the sous chef. And I got pissed off and I called them out on it. And they seemed to be shocked that I actually would say something. Despite me being the newest guy as far as seniority went there. A lot of these other people in that kitchen would confide in me how much they hated the chef, how much they hated the sous chef, how they didn't deserve their jobs, how they were only there because the people that owned the retirement home, the chef and sous chef would kiss their ass so they enjoyed that. It's funny, this segment is already starting to get ranty and it's been over three years since since I left this place. There's a reason why I waited for the storm to calm down because I was way more animated when I left this place. The kitchen was usually unclean. The flat top, it was caked with black kind of ash in the corners. Like they would clean it, but not clean the whole thing. And anytime I would try to do the whole thing, scrub it, it was basically, I was told, ah, you know, that's just how it is. There was a dishwasher, the main night dishwasher, that was one of the most dirty, disgusting people that I've ever seen work in any restaurant I've been a part of. It wasn't so much the fact that he didn't know how to wash dishes. He would pick up and put the mats from the floor covered in sand in the dishwasher, which would then clog the dishwasher. It wasn't so much that he would wear the same clothes every day. You could see stains all over them. He would talk and say things that you just wanted him to leave you alone, like you thought he would try to trap you in his van and skin you alive. My biggest thing with this guy was the fact that he came in at least once, probably more than once, with open bloody wounds on his arms and he would put little band-aids on them. So he's working around silverware and plates that would go to senior citizens, some of them at risk, immunocompromised, and he's handling them with hands that aren't clean, with arms that have bloody sores and wounds on them. I got hired a few weeks after another cook, and he and I kind of bonded because we were new to this insanity. It's like some people that were there Didn't see this craziness there. Like they were a part of the machine now, like the Stockholm syndrome. So he and I would talk about the things we were seeing, like what in the world is going on here? There would be food frozen for at least six months, sometimes over a year in the freezer that would be taken out and used for residence. And I would look at the chef and be like, you're really going to unfreeze meatloaf that's been around for six to eight months and use for residence? But this jackass insisted it was fine. There's no way. I would say three months at most. Even if it's considered safe at six months, no way. Would you want to eat that? Paying money to live in a retirement home, knowing that your dinner had been frozen for six months, eight months, a year? I learned that... Head chefs typically don't do much. They're more of like an administrator. They sit in their office and they just order things and sit around. But every now and then this chef, he would have to come out and work the line at dinner and we'd get not even busy, like just above slow. And he couldn't handle it. He'd be shaking like you would think he was on the front lines in a war. I'm like, dude, you're in a retirement home. You've got the cushiest job. There's three or four tickets on the board and you're shaking like you're about to be sent to the gallows. What is wrong with you? Go back in the office and sit there. And the sous chef was one of the most unsanitary, disgusting people I've ever worked with. Picking scallops and cleaning chicken with no gloves. picking her nose or wiping her nose while doing things, not going to wash her hands first. But it just was what it was. This place was so insane and toxic. That was just normal. Some of the other cooks would complain, but nothing would get done because they wouldn't do anything. It was all just talk. The rest of us cooks in the kitchen did our best to keep this functioning because we had pride in our work. And if some of you out there are listening to all this ranting I'm doing and wondering, why didn't I say something to the higher ups? Oh, I did. The first time ever at any job I've been at that I've had to go to the general manager and talk about the disgusting conditions and the incompetence of the people I worked with. But again, nothing got done. My complaints with specific details didn't matter. So realizing that I was stuck there during COVID, it just caused me to drink more. This is where my alcohol issues kind of came to a head because that was the only way I could deal with this crap. It got worse when I stopped drinking. In September of 2020, when I stopped drinking and my head got clear, then I saw things even more and I'm like, oh my God, I don't want to be here. It was just a never ending cycle. sous chef and the chef sitting on their asses in the office of the break room or eating in the break room with their little buddy and then the two the chef and sous chef every hour on the hour taking 15 minutes to go stand outside and smoke or leaving early or extra days off for them because they've got seniority so that's fine i can only speak to the kitchen I don't know if the rest of that retirement home was run in the same incompetent way. They didn't get shut down by the state, so I can only assume that maybe the rest of the place was better. The last straw for me was I had a close encounter with COVID. Luckily, I didn't end up getting it. I tested negative, you know, day after day. But I called over to the retirement home and explained the situation. Despite the fact that I said I've got a close encounter here with COVID, the chef decided rather than him get off his ass and work, it would be better for me to come in with that risk. I would just wear two N95 masks. So basically like being suffocated just so he didn't have to work. I walked into that kitchen. All the rest of the crew knew what was up. They looked at me like I was a ghost. They were terrified that I was in there. And the only guy there that I kind of bonded with, he came over and didn't get too close, but he said, what are you doing here? And I said, the chef said it's fine if I'm here. I don't want to be here because it's dangerous to others, but he's a lazy prick. Within an hour or two, I got sent home because everyone was terrified that I was there. Talk about irresponsible and lazy. The best way I can sum up how bad this job was, how toxic it was, is I quit this job in the middle of the COVID pandemic with no backup plan. I would rather dive into the stormy sea than sit on the dock, even if it's rickety and falling apart. I did an exit interview with the GM. I liked the GM. He was a great guy. He seemed to be kind of powerless because the people above him didn't want to make change despite it being painfully obvious. There were a few bright spots. I had a handful of people that I connected with. Like I said, the GM, maybe they'll listen, maybe they won't. I won't name the GM, but the other cook that I bonded with, Bruce, if you ever listen to this, thanks. The head of the dining room, Ed, God, he got me through a lot of times. The irony is I'm naming these people, the GM, Ed, Bruce, we all left within the same week or two period because we couldn't take the insanity. But this story does have a happy ending, at least for me. I know for a fact that the chef got fired and then the sous chef left in solidarity with the chef. So good riddance to both of them. I hope whoever took over that kitchen is doing a much better job, but the bar was so low. On my worst day, and I mean dirt worst day of any day at any restaurant I worked at before, that day was 10 times better than the best day I had at this retirement home. And to kind of tie a bow on this amazing rant that I've gone on about this place, probably three, four months ago, I bumped into that guy from the other retirement home, Mayflower, that had warned me about going to this other place. And I said to him, you were right about everything. And all he did was smile and say, I told you so. This week in history, we are going back 70 years ago to May 6th, 1954, and young British medical student Roger Bannister shattering the four-minute mile mark in running. How fast can you run a mile? Like if you were out there trying to just empty the tank and go as fast as you possibly could. Ten minutes? Nine minutes, maybe some eight minutes, maybe some of you out there listening that are hardcore runners, sprinters, seven minutes, maybe six. When you start to put into context how fast a three minute and 59 second mile is, it's incredible. Roger Bannister's accomplishment, it rewrote the record books, it ignited a wave of inspirations. Maybe not to try to top a four-minute mile, but just to top yourself. It's like if you watch the Rocky movies and you get inspired. You don't want to go boxing, but maybe you want to get out and do some kind of exercise. Or maybe that's just me. A sub-four-minute mile was considered the holy grail of middle-distance running. The belief was that the human body just couldn't do that. It was impossible. Yet Roger Bannister did it. 70 years ago on the track and Oxford Ifly Road track. It was a windy day, an overcast day, which probably helped. I know during my peak days as a runner, you'd almost prefer to run on a day that wasn't bright and hot and sunny. You want it cooler, 60 degrees, maybe clouds. On that day in 1954, Roger Bannister crossed the finish line in a time of 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds. It's incredible to think of for me as a runner, someone who enjoys running, you know, one of the crazy people. Because at my best, my peak, the best I could possibly do was 5 minutes and 35 seconds. And that's not to humble brag or pat myself on the back. It's just to show that me, at my very, very best I think I could possibly ever do, I was still over a minute and a half slower than Roger Bannister. The sub-four-minute mile that Roger Bannister ran kind of opened the door to what else could the human body do that you don't think is possible. Things like a thousand-pound deadlift... or a 400 plus foot free dive, which is basically diving underwater with no oxygen. Even if things like that are not anything you ever thought about or wanted to do, Roger Bannister breaking the four minute mile is inspiration for you to just be a little better in your own life, where you think about what is your four minute mile in life. And I'm not going to veer too far into self-help and motivation. It's just more of what it means besides just, oh, he ran fast. And if you were wondering, in the decades since, with all of the improvements in athletic science and nutrition and such... The current record for the mile is 3 minutes, 43.13 seconds. That was set in 1999 by Moroccan Olympian Hicham Elgaraj. And I hope I'm saying his name right. That reminder, though, of the power of human potential and the boundless possibilities that lie within each of us really came to the forefront 70 years ago this week with Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile. Now it's time for a brand new time capsule. We're going to stick to that day that Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile, May 6th, 1954. Let's see what was going on in the world of pop culture back then. The number one song was Wanted by Perry Como. The song was originally written by Jack Fulton and Louis Steele, and this version by Como was the most popular recording of it. This song was released as a single by Como, and after reaching number one on the Billboard charts, it was also number one for jukebox plays, which I don't know how they figured that out. And it was also the number two most played song in the country for the year 1954. The number one movie was River of No Return, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing 45 cents. This movie starred Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum about a man released from prison and the river that reunites him with his son and connects him with Marilyn Monroe, who's a saloon singer. The film was a minor success, making about $4 million on a budget of just over $2 million, and it's 54% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, so it's slightly rotten, but it's worth checking out if you like Marilyn Monroe. The number one TV show was I Love Lucy, because of course it's the 1950s and I Love Lucy is always number one. It's come up several times on the podcast in these time capsule segments. It's the show about Lucy Ricardo and her husband Ricky and Lucy's shenanigans trying to get into his band, play with the band. It was really the first classic quintessential television show. and is routinely seen as one of the greatest sitcoms ever made, even now, 70 years after it was on the air. And if you were around back then, 70 years ago this week, a little kid, you've got something you want to find something fun to play with, asking for a toy, well, check out the catalog and get one of the brand new Lionel electric trains. You could get yourself the Gandhi dancer train. There's four train cars that measure a total of four feet in length, so I'm assuming each car was a foot long. A 75-watt transformer to help this train go around the tracks. The track oval was about 54 inches long and about 27 inches across, which I'm assuming you could buy more track because that doesn't seem like very far for this train to go. But yes, electric model trains, boy, they were all the rage in the 50s. that'll wrap up another time capsule another this week in history we're going from the 1950s all the way forward to the 1990s for this week's top five so let's get into some of the forgotten musical artists that were awesome from the 1990s so Still kind of hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that the 1990s were 30 years ago. Basically, kids today in the 2020s are talking about the 90s the way that people my age talked about the 1960s. And that just seems so hard to believe. And we are now far enough removed from the 90s that we can look back at some of the forgotten musical acts, the ones that were great at the time but have kind of fallen through the cracks. For me, growing up in the 90s, I can tell you that none of this top five and the honorable mentions, none of them fell through the cracks for me. But for you, it may be that way. I'll be interested to hear as far as these artists, which ones you think were forgotten about or which ones you think shouldn't even be on the list. It's going to be all subjective like all these top fives are. I did my very best to be objective because growing up in the 90s, I was huge into grunge and alternative music. I could have made a top 20 with grunge alternative bands from then that I liked that aren't talked about anymore. This top five, they're going to be in no particular order. And with all of these lists, there are some honorable mentions. When it came to this list, eventually I had to stop looking because I kept finding more and more bands that I said, oh, I got to put them on the list. And I could have just kept going. It would have been a top 50. With these honorable mentions, I'll give you what I think was that artist's most popular song from the 90s as well. So if you want to go listen, if you have no clue who they are. Honorable mentions include Blackstreet, who had the hit song No Diggity, Everclear, who had the song Santa Monica, Tonic, they had the song You Wanted More that was in the American Pie soundtrack, Soul Asylum, who had the song Runaway Train, and 311, who had the song Down. With all of those honorable mentions, they had more than one hit song, but I wanted to try to grab the one that would probably stick out to you the most. Let's get into the actual top five. Top five forgotten musical artists of the 1990s, starting with number one, Cake. Cake is still around, still going strong. They were formed in Sacramento, California in 1991. The lead singer, John McCrea, he has a very unique voice. I wouldn't say it's monotone because that would be insulting him, but it's very unique, I guess I would say. No one else I've ever heard in any band sounds like him. They had two big albums in the 1990s, Fashion Nugget, which came out in 1996, right after I got out of high school and had the song The Distance and included the cover of I Will Survive. And they followed that up with the album Prolonging the Magic in 1998, which had the big song Never There. And it also had the song Sheep Go to Heaven, which always reminds me of my friend Barry. That was kind of what broke the tie for the top five between Cake and 311, was Sheep Go to Heaven. Number two is Days of the New. They were formed in Charlestown, Indiana in 1995, fronted by guitarist and singer Travis Meeks. Days of the New had a very unique style where they were an alternative rock band, but fronted with an acoustic guitar. The band released three albums, all entitled Days of the New. Two of them came out in the 90s. Their first album was from 1997. It had the songs Touch, Peel, and Stand and Shelf in the Room. I really liked the uniqueness of this band being rocked but fronted with the acoustic guitar. It was unlike a lot of music that was out at that point in time. Their second album, which is also known as The Green Album, came out in August 1999, so right under the cutoff for the 90s. It had the songs Enemy and Weapon in the Wound, which was an alternative rock song that had a clarinet in it, so it was very different. Fun fact about Days of the New, the entire original lineup except for Travis Meeks reformed as a new band with the lead singer Hugo Ferreira to make the band Tantric, whose self-titled album in 2001 is excellent. Number three is Toad the Wet Sprocket. This is the type of band where I would say, no, they're not forgotten as far as I'm concerned. They have a special place for me because in my youth, especially right after high school, when I wanted to be a singer songwriter, Toad the Wet Sprocket and their music, their style, their lyrics reminded me of what I thought I could do as far as creating some sort of a band with me and my friend Barry, who actually has the musical talent. Toad the Wet Sprocket was formed in Santa Barbara, California, way back in 1986. Their breakthrough came in their 1991 album Fear, which had the big hit song All I Want and Walk on the Ocean. They had a lot of great songs, but those were the ones that got played a lot. They also contributed the song Good Intentions to the Friends TV show soundtrack. And although they broke up in the late 90s and they haven't really had any hit songs in 25 years, they've gotten back together, they've released new music. I've seen them in concert twice, which was great. They're not rock. They're more almost alternative folk kind of music. It's hard to narrow down the... genre for Toad the Wet Sprocket. You just have to listen. Number four is P.M. Dawn. P.M. Dawn was an R&B group formed in New Jersey in 1988 from two brothers, Atrell and Jarrett Cordes. Their breakthrough came with their 1991 hit song Set Adrift on Memory Bliss, which was from the album Of the Heart of the Soul of the Cross, The Utopian Experience. Which is a long title to remember. It samples Spando Ballet's song True and was probably the first song I remember as a kid hearing that I remember the original song where they got the sample from. They also released a song I Die Without You which was in the Eddie Murphy movie Boomerang. Atrel Cordes, the lead singer who was also known as Prince B, he had a lot of health issues, specifically in the mid-2000s on. He eventually passed away in 2016. What might blow your mind, though, is PM Dawn is still an active group. Atrel's cousin, Doc G, took over control of PM Dawn. I had always assumed that they just split up when Prince B passed away, but nope, I guess they're still going strong. And finally, number five on the list of top five forgotten musical artists of the 1990s is the Gin Blossoms. Kind of a lighter alternative rock type band. They broke through in 1992 with their album New Miserable Experience, which had the song Hey Jealousy. The band was formed in Tempe, Arizona in 1987. And they're still going strong to this day, even though they haven't had any hit songs in at least 25 years. New Miserable Experience was a major album in my high school years. Like I said, Hey Jealousy, but then Found Out About You, Until I Fall Away, Alice in Road, those were all great songs. They followed it up in 1996 with the album Congratulations I'm Sorry, which had Follow You Down, which was a really good song. Then they broke up in 97, they reunited again a few years later, but by that point it was kind of over for them. I do believe a few years ago, the Gin Blossoms played the Barnstable County Fair on Cape Cod. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I'd kill to have music that was good enough to play a county fair. Several years ago, the band Sister Hazel, who had the hit song All For You in 1996, they played the county fair, and I flipped out, ran to the stage, and videoed while they were playing the song. Boy, my nieces looked at me with shame after that. But it's a great song. Leave me alone. That wraps up the top five, though. You remember these bands? Was that music ring a bell to you? I am still of the mindset that music in the 90s, music in the 80s, it had a different vibe. It had meaning. It had soul. Once auto-tuning and an over-reliance on electronic instruments came about, I just feel like everything sounds the same now. Or that could just be me getting old. Who knows? In the colorful landscape of children's literature and educational materials, there's one name that stands out like a beacon of whimsy and learning, and that's Sweet Pickles. And for those of us that grew up back then, in the decades of the 70s and 80s, Sweet Pickles wasn't just a brand. It was a companion in the journey of life and childhood discovery. So what we're going to do now is go way, way back in the day and take a stroll down memory lane and explore a little bit of why Sweet Pickles was such a big part of countless young lives during this era. I'm sure all kids from all generations over the last century thinks that the books they grew up with when they were little were the best ones. So I'm not going to say that Sweet Pickles were the greatest kids books ever. But there was definitely something different about them. The Sweet Pickles books were first published in 1977, the year I was born. The Sweet Pickles series was co-founded by Ruth Lerner Pearl and Jacqueline Reinach, and they were meant to be a blend of education but also entertainment. Sweet Pickles itself was a fictional town. And there were 40 books in total centered around an anthropomorphic animal in each one that gets into a situation, a pickle, quote unquote. And there were 26 different animals, 13 male, 13 female, with each of these animals having a different character with personalities and traits that any child growing up could relate to. If you were reading the Sweet Pickles books, chances were you shared something in common with one of those 26 animals. A funny thing about these Sweet Pickles books was that all the animals were alphabetical. So the 26 animals each was one letter of the alphabet. So it's pretty easy to find animals that start with A, B, C, D. But when you're trying to find X and it's a Xerus... which is a squirrel that's found in Africa, you know, you're kind of reaching. One of the defining features of the Sweet Pickles books was the ability to tackle complex themes and moral lessons, but in a way that resonated with kids that were five, six, seven years old. For example, you could learn about honesty in the book Good For Me And You, Sad For Me And You, featuring the character Zippity Zebra. Or you had Zany Zebra teaching you about the importance of friendship through the book Just Me in the Tub. Of course, you can't have children's books without bright, colorful illustrations and having them live in Pickletown, where Sweet Pickles is from. I've been trying for years and years to create some sort of characters to make a children's book series. And it's so difficult to come up with characters that will resonate with children, but also be interesting enough and have some sort of message to them. Which makes me appreciate these Sweet Pickles books even more as an adult. To have 40 books, 26 different characters that all stand out, stand the test of time. Now I've given you an overview of the Sweet Pickles books. But we who grew up in the 70s and 80s remember sweet pickles mostly through the commercials. Here comes the sweet pickles bus.

Speaker 02:

Smart moms know how kids' minds grow upon sweet pickles.

Speaker 01:

Your child's head start for school starts with this free sweet pickles preschool bus. There are stickers, games, puzzles, and hours of fun inside.

Speaker 00:

There was that song right there. But in the commercial, these Sweet Pickles characters would be driving around in this big green bus or van. And when it came to this van, you would get this package. At home, you'd get a van. There would be cards in there for learning and games. So it became more than just books. Sweet Pickles transcended the realm of literature and they expanded into a wide array of merchandise. Like I said, the van, the plastic van or bus or whatever it was, plush toys, puzzles, board games. It was pretty ingenious because they didn't limit themselves to the books where the kids read the books and, oh, I wish there was more with sweet pickles. Oh, no, there was way more. So the parents would have to go and buy stuffed animals and puzzles and board games and all that merch. I loved the commercials. I never got the Sweet Pickles van. I wanted that so bad. I probably could go grab it on eBay now, just to have, be in my late 40s and reading Sweet Pickles. Sweet Pickles were everywhere in the 1980s. Some of the books were read on the Captain Kangaroo children's show. Eventually, the series sold more than 50 million books in total. The original books went out of print sometime in the mid to late 1990s, but in 2012, celebrating the 35th anniversary of Sweet Pickles, the books were re-released as e-books and you can get them online. When doing my research for this segment about Sweet Pickles, there was something else that popped up that I thought I would rope into this a little bit, and that was the Weekly Reader magazine and books. Weekly Reader was a... Children's educational magazine that began way back in 1928 as My Weekly Reader. This magazine was huge through the rest of the 20th century. At its peak, which was in the probably 1950s, they had a circulation of over 6 million magazines weekly. What began as a magazine for elementary school students eventually evolved to magazines Kindergarten as well, but then middle school, high school. I vaguely remember the weekly reader magazines when I was in elementary school. It was fun to have news geared towards you and your age because you didn't want to listen to the regular news or whatever your parents were into. Although Weekly Reader did do presidential elections where you could vote and they would send it into Weekly Reader. So there'd be a poll with whoever we as kids thought should be president. And actually the kids in those elections got 13 out of 14 right during the 20th century. With the only one they got wrong, they chose George H.W. Bush over Bill Clinton in 1992. Weekly Reader also had their own series of books. Not as many as Sweet Pickles. They only had 14. Weekly Reader was around until 2012 when they ceased existence as an independent publisher. They were bought by Scholastic, which the Scholastic publisher, their whole story, that'll be another segment for a back in the day sometime later. But even though Weekly Reader went out of business in 2012, they were already kind of fading. as more kids were online. That's why I think people of my age, around my age, that started school in the 80s probably have some memories of the Weekly Reader magazine. I would assume that most schools had a subscription where they got several issues that would be either in the library where you could read it, or maybe in classrooms. This was one of those things that, like I said, when I was researching the Sweet Pickles books... The Weekly Reader magazine and books kind of popped up and I had forgotten all about them. So I thought, why not kind of pull them into this a little bit and give you a double dose of nostalgia. Circling it back though, Sweet Pickles, it wasn't just a brand of children's books and merchandise. It was a cultural phenomenon and it shaped the childhoods of us from that generation, late 70s, especially through the mid 80s. Those Sweet Pickles commercials were on my TV almost every day, either before school or on weekends. I wanted to be friends with all of those different animals. Goof-off goose, moody moose, questioning quail. How many of you out there read or had those Sweet Pickles books? When they came out, not now, like going back and collecting nostalgia on eBay. But back then, did you get your parents to buy it for you? Did any of you have that van with all the games inside of it? I'd be super jealous if you did. Sweet Pickles left an indelible mark in the hearts and minds of millions of us Gen X kids that grew up in the 70s and 80s. And same with the Weekly Reader magazine. It's just two more reasons why I always waxed nostalgic about growing up back then.

Speaker 01:

Call now and we'll send the Sweet Pickles bus to your door.

Speaker 00:

That'll wrap up episode 143 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Let's pop the top to celebrate. A little ASMR. It's an energy drink. Relax. I'm sure that's not too much better for any of you out there. I know my mom won't like that, that I've got the energy drink going, but we're finishing off the episode strong. Thank you so much for tuning in. This week was a lot of fun, a little bit ranty at times, but man, that's what makes these so much fun to put together. Sometimes I don't know where I'm going to go with some of the stuff I say. I mean, I have notes to kind of keep me on track, but then I let it just be free flowing. If something comes to me, I throw it in there. Like the energy drink, that was kind of spur of the moment. And I just took a drink of the energy drink and it went down the wrong pipe. So there, that serves me right, I guess, somewhat for sharing the energy drink. Next week, it's going to be episode 144 of the podcast. And one big thing that I can't wait to share, it's the 30th anniversary of the movie The Crow, which was such a huge part of my growing up. The movie itself, the soundtrack, Brandon Lee and the story surrounding him. So we're going to go into all of that. It won't really be a full movie review. It's just going to be what The Crow was as a movie. For those of you that might not be familiar with it. If you enjoy my content, like I said, you can become a subscriber at Patreon for $5 a month to support me, support what I do. This, along with my writing and any content creation, it's still a side hustle, a passion project, and has been for years. But there's always hope. I chase my dreams until my legs won't let me run anymore. If you're in the area on Cape Cod, Friday, May 24th at 1pm at the West Dennis Library, I'll be speaking about my searching for the Lady of the Dunes book, the Lady of the Dunes murder case, the infamous murder case itself. It's a fun and interesting topic and I really enjoy speaking about it and sharing the book that I worked so hard and so long on and sharing Frank Durant's amazing documentary that none of this would have come about without. If you can't wait until May the 24th, visit theladyofthedunes.com. You can get your own copy of the book, you can watch the documentary, and you can learn all about the case itself if you have no idea what I'm talking about. Especially if you're not from Cape Cod or New England, it might be a little foreign to you. If you're interested in any of my nine books, visit ChristopherSatterlund.com, my website. I said at the beginning of the podcast, I'm thinking about doing some kind of a newsletter around Patreon. I might be trying to do a newsletter type deal with my website. The problem is when my website was first put together in probably 2008, I had an email newsletter signup sheet. You know, put your email in and you'll get the newsletter. The problem was all the bots invaded the email. So I'd say... 95 out of 100 emails that say website submission that I get are bots. So I got to get that fixed. Then I can make an actual newsletter and not worry about thousands of bots that subscribe to my newsletter. Do I have to send it to them, to the bots, if they subscribe? Wouldn't that be not fair if I didn't send it? Before I go, I want to wish a happy early birthday to my Uncle John. So happy birthday, Uncle John. Hopefully you listen to this podcast and hear that. Thanks again to everyone for being a part of this wackiness that I put together every week. I was making fake radio shows all the way back when I was 12, 13 years old, and here I am, 46, doing something like this where it's not quite as crazy as it used to be. I try to be organized and informative, but at times it feels like I'm still that 12, 13-year-old trying to make my friends and family laugh at what I do. So until next time, folks, this has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, and in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can because you never know what tomorrow brings. Thank you all so much, and I'll talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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