In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 148: The Unique Story of Solo the Cat; Napoleon Dynamite 20th Anniversary; Briefly Famous People From the 1980s(6-12-2024)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 148

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A pet story that needs to be heard to be believed. The anniversary of the world's most popular Napoleon. Some people who had their 15 minutes of fame in the 1980s.
Episode 148 of the podcast is a crazy collection of nostalgic fun.
We kick the show off with an anniversary. 20 years ago this week a small, low-budget indie flick burst onto the scene. It was insanely quotable and infinitely hilarious. What was it that made this movie so popular? We'll dive into it as we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the modern-day classic Napoleon Dynamite.
Many of us grew up with beloved pets in our homes. The host is no different. A liker of dogs but a lover of cats I was blessed to have many incredible animals share their lives with me. However, there was one pet, a cat named Solo, who was the most unique animal to reside in my childhood homes. I will take you way Back In the Day to tell the strange but true story of Solo the Cat.
Artist Andy Warhol popularized the concept of 15 Minutes of Fame. This week's Top 5 is going to shine a spotlight on some such people from the 1980s. We will look back at some of those who became celebrities, maybe even big-time celebrities, but faded away as the 80s drew to a close.
There is as always a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule looking at the invention of something known as an Automat(Hint: It has to do with food).
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Speaker 01:

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 148. School's about to get out for most kids, so it's time to celebrate summer vacation. And I got more nostalgia than you can shake a stick at on this week's episode. We're gonna kick it off with a look back at the 20th anniversary of one of my absolute favorite movies, Napoleon Dynamite. We're gonna go way, way back in the day, and I will share the story from my own childhood about possibly the most interesting Pet that I had, or at least one of the most interesting solo the cat. And you'll see why I include this on this week's episode. There'll be a brand new top five that are the top five people that were briefly famous in the 1980s. These are people that if you grew up in the 80s, you'll remember all their names. But if you're younger, you'll probably have no clue who they are because they faded quickly. And of course, there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule all coming up right now on episode 148 of the In My Footsteps podcast. That's right, 148 episodes. Welcome in, everybody. I must really love doing these. I just keep pumping out the content. I hope wherever you are, you are enjoying the beautiful weather. Summer, it's still not officially here, but come on. It's June. School's almost out. Wherever you're listening to this podcast, whether it's at the beach, out hiking in the forest, at some family barbecue with my voice in the background just annoying everyone, thank you so much for listening. Like I said, I love doing these 148 episodes with no end in sight. I keep finding new stuff to talk about. When I first started doing this podcast in November of 2020, I remember saying on these shows that if I didn't do any more research, I had enough content to get me through about four years worth of episodes. And that was before I started the shift over to Gen X nostalgia. That really opened things up. It's like a never-ending well of content. I just have to keep looking and finding it. We have got a lot to get into, but I couldn't start the show without giving a big thanks to my Patreon subscribers, Leo, Laurie, Mary Lou, Ashley, Kevin. Thank you all so much. $5 a month gets you access to bonus podcast episodes, early access to this show, early access to YouTube videos. And who knows what else? I'm still thinking of new content to put up there to make becoming a subscriber more enticing. But if spending $5 a month on Patreon isn't feasible, I totally understand. What you're doing right now, listening to the show, that does so much. Leaving positive reviews, ratings, telling others about it, sharing it, that's really the lifeblood of this. Any content creator will tell you more eyes and ears on their product and reviews of their product. That's how you grow your audience. It's real simple. Coming up at the end of the month, so actually only in a couple of weeks, episode 150 of the podcast is going to be a listener's choice episode. If you follow me on social media, the Facebook fan page for the In My Footsteps podcast, Instagram, Threads, I've been putting up the polls with choices for you to pick what I talk about on that show. I'm trying to put up all of the polls twice, just in case you missed the first time, so be on the lookout. If not, just listen to episode 150 and see what the listeners have chosen. It's going to be all fun anyway. There aren't any choices for the show that I'm dreading you to pick, so don't worry. Like I said, though, we've got a lot to get into, so let's just start it off. I'm excited to talk about and quote this movie. So let's talk about the 20th anniversary of Napoleon Dynamite coming up right now. 20 years, but it also seems like yesterday that Napoleon Dynamite first burst onto the scenes. It's a movie that's so quotable. It's retro, yet it's modern. It's a mix of all these things. It was a low-budget movie that made tons of money, and this is another reason why it pays to do the research. For me, just looking up things for content for the podcast, I just happened upon the fact that the 20th anniversary of this movie was coming up, and I said, oh, I got to talk about that. Any excuse to have clips and quotes from this movie in the podcast, of course I'm going to take advantage of that. June 11th, 2004, so yesterday from when this podcast is going live, Napoleon Dynamite was released. The movie centers around a high school student named Napoleon Dynamite in the small town of Preston, Idaho, and him trying to fit in at school, and his wacky family, his brother Kip, the two of them live with their grandmother. And when the grandmother gets hurt hanging out with her friends, their Uncle Rico shows up. And there are so many interestingly odd characters in this movie. There are times when you forget when this movie is supposed to be taking place. It's supposed to be modern, 2004. But for most of the movie... I thought it was the 1980s, based on the decor of the house where Napoleon lives, but I guess that comes down to the grandmother being her house, and the old van driven by Uncle Rico, and just the small-town Idaho vibes. I guess it lends itself to feel like it's the 1980s. You immediately get an idea of what this movie's going to be about from the opening scenes, with the White Stripes song, We're Going to Be Friends. while the credits roll, but it's different plates of food. So it really leans into its low budget. It had a budget of $400,000, which in an age even then where there were so many movies where budgets were $100 and $150 million, Napoleon Dynamite's budget was like finding change in your couch. I think that's part of the reason and part of the charm is that the whole cast was people I'd never heard of. This movie is an earlier example of the internet buzz helping a movie along. Like I said, it's infinitely quotable. There are so many different quotes in it, like these. See? I'm sure even if you haven't seen the movie, you're familiar at least a little bit with some of these quotes. The character of Napoleon Dynamite himself, played by John Heater. It's a unique character. Tall and lanky with that bird's nest hair and the glasses. And being pretty confident, but also very clueless. Like there's a scene in the high school cafeteria where Napoleon goes over to the girl Deb. played by Tina Margerino, and he's kind of into her a little bit. So he goes to sit with her, and his big compliment, I guess, is to tell her that even though she's drinking skim milk because she thinks she's fat, she could drink whole milk.

Speaker 00:

I see you're drinking 1%. Is that because you think you're fat? Because you're not. You could be drinking whole if you wanted to.

Speaker 01:

Deb is another very awkward character. She has a side ponytail. And she does a lot of homemade crafts, bracelets. She does studio photography. Honestly, the most famous person in this movie, when it came out at least, was probably Hayley Duff. And she's popular girl Summer Wheatley, who's running for president against Pedro, who's the new student. And there's a bit of a clash there between the nerds or less popular people in school and the popular students. Napoleon's brother Kip, who I'm assuming is a few years older, he looks like he's 30-ish at least. He sits at home all day in chat rooms talking with babes, he says. Especially his long-distance girlfriend named Lafonda. But Kip's dreams are of being a cage fighter. It isn't until the grandmother gets hurt. She's riding four wheelers in the dunes and she gets hurt. So Uncle Rico shows up. And when he first comes into the movie, he's out in this field with his van and he's practicing his dropbacks and throws like a quarterback in football and filming it. Because we come to find out that he was a star athlete in high school, but that's where he peaked. So all he wants to do is go back to the 80s and relive his glory days. He becomes kind of the main antagonist for Napoleon, while also going into business with Kip, trying to do these get-rich-quick schemes, including selling Tupperware. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is where Uncle Rico is trying to show these people how tough the Tupperware is, daring the husband to try to break it, and he can't, and he's all ashamed. And then it flashes to Kip, who is putting a piece of Tupperware under the back tire of Uncle Rico's van, and he backs over it and it explodes, and he just says, dang it, and drives away. Dang

Speaker 00:

it.

Speaker 01:

There are so many clips and scenes from this movie that just crack me up every time I see them. Napoleon screaming at Tina the llama all the time, trying to feed her. Uncle Rico whipping a steak at Napoleon's face while he's riding his bike. It's random if you haven't seen the movie.

Speaker 00:

Watch this. What the heck are you doing?

Speaker 01:

Or when Kip and Napoleon go to Rexquando... The self-defense class and Kip's just getting slapped around. These scenes and my enthusiasm for them, it's kind of how the movie built its following. People telling people or sharing the clips all over. I guess AOL was still a big thing back in 2004, but sharing it all over the internet. So I said at the beginning the movie had a $400,000 budget. It ended up making more than $46 million. And that's just... Theater tickets, that doesn't count home video or DVD sales and all the merchandise that was out there. I still have a Napoleon Dynamite pen that's got him standing on it. I used to have the sound speaker. You'd press it and it would have different quotes. The soundtrack is great as well. Although a few of the songs that are in the movie aren't on the soundtrack. That White Stripes song I mentioned that's at the opening credits isn't there. Backstreet Boys, Larger Than Life, that's not there. But it does have I Want Candy by Bow Wow Wow, The Promise by When in Rome, which if you don't know the name, if you heard the song, you'd know it. It's a classic 80s song. But the most famous song in there is Canned Heat by Jamiroquai. That is the song that's kind of in the climax of the movie where Napoleon does this whole dance routine on stage at the assembly for the presidential debates. Pedro's running for president against Summer Wheatley, and he doesn't realize there needs to be a skit after their speech. So Napoleon does this dance, and he's really good because he was learning how to dance. That's where the movie turns because the whole audience, all the kids love it and clap, and the popular kids are upset. Napoleon ends up at least friends with Deb. It's kind of assumed that they end up being boyfriend and girlfriend. Pedro becomes president of the school. Grandma comes back and they show her kissing Tina the llama. Uncle Rico at the end is back in the field with his van trying to throw the football lefty because he got his arm broken. He was selling bust enhancing pills after the Tupperware failed and he was selling them to Rex Quando's wife who is a bodybuilder. And Rex walks in with Uncle Rico putting these sauce pots over her chest to show what her boobs could look like after the bust enhancement pills. And then Rex just beats the hell out of him. And Kip becomes hip-hop wonder because La Fonda shows up and she's African-American from Detroit. And she changes Kip to be cool. So he's got do-rags and baggy pants and chains and he's talking peace out. If you haven't seen this movie, you really need to. If you don't have time for an hour and a half, go on YouTube and just find clips of it and kind of whet your appetite. I know you'll like it. There's been talks for years about possibly a sequel to Napoleon Dynamite where they're grown up. Here we are 20 years later, it hasn't come true. I wonder what the longest period in between sequels of a movie are. Anyone out there know that? I can always Google it and find out. So I did just Google it. The magic of editing. The longest gap between sequels of movies is 64 years? What the hell? It's between Bambi and Bambi 2? Did any of you out there know that? I know I didn't. I thought it was going to be something different. So there, the more you know, you learn something here. Napoleon Dynamite's 20 years old. You need to go see it. Bambi had a sequel 64 years later. And you got to hear some clips from this awesome movie. So there you go. Happy anniversary to Napoleon Dynamite. This week in history, we are going back 122 years to June 9th, 1902, and the opening of the very first automat restaurant in America. Because I had no clue what an automat restaurant was, I figured why not talk about it here. The automat restaurant is basically considered a precursor to a fast food restaurant. The concept revolutionized dining in the early 20th century and and epitomized the unique blend of convenience, technology, and culinary innovation. In Europe in the late 19th century is where the automat first came from. The first one was in 1895 in Berlin, Germany, opened by a man named Max Siloff, and it was known as the Quisiana Automat. So what exactly is an automat? I know I've said that word a lot. It's coin-operated machines dispensing meals and beverages, so it's like vending machines, but a restaurant. This sort of convenience and self-service naturally gained popularity quickly, and that's what caused it to come across the ocean to the U.S. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was the site of America's first automat, opened by Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart. These two men sought to combine the efficiency of mechanized food service with the quality of traditional dining. That's got to be a tough thing to get right, because you know that not a lot of stuff you get out of a vending machine is fresh, even today. So you can imagine over 100 years ago. The Philadelphia Automat featured a wall of small glass compartments. Each of those contained a portion of food, and customers inserted coins into the slot to unlock the compartment and retrieve their meal. The success of this first Automat came down a lot to the technological innovations and the novelty of something new like this. They were equipped with intricate mechanisms that accepted nickels. They operated like a clockwork system to dispense food. That meant that the food would always be fresh as it would be replenished regularly by kitchen staff behind the scenes. So even though they were vending machines, it was kind of a mix with a traditional restaurant. Those transparent compartments that allowed the customers to see food before purchasing added to the appeal of because as I learned coming up in the restaurant industry, you eat with your eyes first. Horn and Hardart employed their chefs to prepare a wide variety of dishes, ranging from things simple like macaroni and cheese to freshly baked pie, even coffees that people at that time really enjoyed. By the 1920s and 30s, Horn and Hardart had opened multiple automat locations and they became a symbol of modern, efficient American ingenuity. They also played a significant role during the Great Depression, offering economical dining options for those that were struggling financially. Just a few cents for a decent meal. As I said at the top of this segment though, it was seen as a precursor to fast food restaurants, so their decline came when real fast food restaurants came along. the rise of McDonald's and Burger King and drive-thru restaurants, that was the convenience that automats could not match. By the 70s, they were almost all gone with the last location that was in New York City closing its doors in 1991. The automat restaurant, it represents a fascinating chapter in the history of dining. From its roots in Europe to its American heyday, and its influence on modern fast food restaurants. And that very first automat restaurant in America opened 122 years ago this week in history. Oh, you see, it's a special, special time capsule. Now I've got music like I told you I would. And it's a special one in general for the date that I've chosen. We're going back 46 years ago to June 9th, 1978. Let's see what was going on in the world of pop culture back then. The number one song was You're the One That I Want by Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta. This is from the Grease soundtrack. This song is one of the most popular singles ever. ever, selling more than 15 million copies. The soundtrack for the movie Grease has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, so it's one of the most popular soundtracks ever. For Olivia Newton-John, it was one of five number one singles that she had. The number one movie was Damien Omen 2, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing $2.34. This is the supernatural horror sequel to the movie The Omen about young Damien Thorne and his journey towards becoming the Antichrist. The movie was a modest success, making over $26 million on a budget of nearly $7 million. It had mixed reviews from critics. It's 48% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, so it is considered rotten. It's a big drop from the original omen that is 85% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. The number one TV show was One Day at a Time. This is a sitcom about a divorced mother raising two teenage daughters. It was on the air for nine seasons and a total of 209 episodes between 1975 and 1984. And if you were around back then... June 9th, 1978. Maybe you were looking to record some home movies. Well, you're in luck. Kind of. You could get yourself an Elmo Super 8 macro camera for $686 or about $3,300 when adjusted for inflation to 2024. This camera, though, was loaded with features, including sound, which was not always part of Super 8 cameras. So this Super 8 would have been good for basic filming inside-outside, but if you were looking to make anything professional, probably not. June 9th, 1978 is also the birth date of one of my oldest and dearest friends, John. And I mean, what can I say about him? Some of my most... Cherished memories of my entire life involve him being there, filming foolish skits together, making radio programs, audio programs that literally are the precursor to this podcast, except with my insanity dialed down quite a bit. The random funny conversations we would have with Barry sitting at Bass Hole, which is a beach, Gray's Beach on Cape Cod. Eating candy, drinking soda, and just talking about things that were so foolish and insane. It's also seeing who he is now as a grown man, middle-aged man you are, just like me. Being a great husband, a great father. I mean, hell, he had to deal with me as a teenager, so I think that helped him in parenting. And seeing how far he came as a video game designer, his knowledge in computers from when we were in high school where I didn't understand the big deal, and he was so far ahead of the game. So John's birthday passed a few days ago. I am proud and lucky to have him still as a friend and someone that I consider as close as a brother. And that'll wrap up a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule, including music. Man, it's a special day. Now we're going to look at some celebrities whose special days in the 1980s were quick and fleeting. So let's look at some briefly famous people of the 1980s right now. The whole concept of 15 minutes of fame is attributed to Andy Warhol, who was the American visual artist. It's attributed to him from a program for one of his art shows in 1968. There's debate on whoever came up with it first, but that's irrelevant. The idea of everybody having that brief period of time, kind of where their life is at their peak. You don't have to be famous. but it's sort of that peak of your life, I guess could be considered 15 minutes of fame. For this week's top five, though, we are taking it literally with celebrities that were famous for a brief period of time in the 1980s. This one for me, it didn't take a ton of research, but I couldn't just rattle off names of people that were here and gone fast from that decade, because I was a kid then, and these people were here and gone pretty fast. I think those of you that grew up in the 80s, you'll remember all of these. For those that have no idea who they are, I'll do my best to explain. As with most of these top five lists, I have honorable mentions to kind of get the wheels turning in your head for what might be in the top five, and the top five's in no particular order. So let's start the where are they now segment of the podcast with the briefly famous people of the 80s. Honorable mentions include actor Steve Guttenberg, who was huge for a few years and then basically faded away. Pop slash rock band Men at Work, who had two straight number one singles and then quickly faded away in the early 80s. football player William the Refrigerator Perry, who briefly became a mainstream crossover star with the Chicago Bears, and pop singer Martika, who was mostly known for her single Toy Soldiers that went to number one in 1989 and being on the TV show Kids Incorporated. So those are the honorable mentions for the briefly famous people of the 80s. Ironically, I think you probably remember most or all of those, and that's why I put them in the honorable mentions. I wanted the more obscure ones to be in the top five. Top five, let's start it off right now with number one, Eric Stoltz. Eric Stoltz is an actor. He's best known for portraying Rocky Dennis in the movie Mask, which came out in 1985 and earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Also in the 1980s, he was in movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Some Kind of Wonderful, Say Anything. He was also the original Marty McFly in Back to the Future. He was cast in that movie, but was replaced by Michael J. Fox early in production because his form of method acting didn't fit what they were looking for for that movie. Stoltz hasn't stopped acting, and he's even into directing, but I think his last real brush with fame was Pulp Fiction in 1993. Number two is Samantha Fox. When I was thinking of briefly famous people in the 80s, she was actually the first one that popped in my head. She was a pinup girl, a singer. Her debut album, Touch Me, came out in 1986. I was too young to have posters of her on my wall, but I knew who she was. She was more on the bad girl side, not the sweet, innocent ones like Debbie Gibson and Tiffany. Her biggest hit was off of that album, Touch Me. It was the same title. Touch Me, I Want Your Body. It went into the top five. She was big in the late 1980s, but once the 80s ended, she basically faded away. But if you look her up, you'll find those famous posters that were probably on a lot of teenage boys' walls in the late 1980s. Number three is LaToya Jackson. She is one of the sisters of Michael Jackson, part of the famous Jackson family. Latoya became briefly famous in the mid-1980s, I think thanks a lot to the overwhelming success of Michael Jackson's Thriller album. It was almost like anyone with a Jackson name could then start to try to live off of his coattails. That's when Jermaine Jackson had his biggest hits. Janet Jackson came out and she had more staying power. Her biggest hit song as a musical artist was 1984, Heart Don't Lie, which peaked at number 56. She also came out with the song Just Say No that was for the Nancy Reagan anti-drug campaign. Her brush with real fame in the mid-1980s didn't last long, so she ended the 80s infamously posing for Playboy magazine. And then she posed again in 1991 to help promote her autobiography. Number four is Grace Jones. She is a Jamaican-born singer, songwriter, model, actress. She was discovered in Studio 54 in the late 1970s. She had a few top 40 hits, especially over in the UK in the early 80s. She was especially known in the 1980s for her distinctly androgynous appearance. Very tall, short hair, kind of intimidating looking. She scared me on TV when I was little. You might know her more from movies. She was in Conan the Destroyer. She was in the James Bond movie A View to a Kill. She was in the Eddie Murphy movie Boomerang in 1992, which that might have been her last real brush with fame. She does have kind of a lasting legacy as she's been noted as an inspiration for other female artists like Annie Lennox, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna. And finally, number five on the list of the top five briefly famous people of the 1980s is C. Thomas Howell. He is an actor and a musician. His debut film role was in E.T. the Extraterrestrial. And in the early to mid 80s, he was huge. He was in movies like The Outsiders, Red Dawn. He was in other popular movies like The Hitcher and Soul Man. An interesting little fact that fits in well with this list is that C. Thomas Howell was the runner up to be Marty McFly in Back to the Future with Eric Stoltz, who was number one, being the person that got that role initially. So this list is bookended by people that could have been Marty McFly in Back to the Future. Do you remember any or all of these briefly famous people of the 80s? Naturally, going forward, I will do segments like this for people from the 70s, from the 90s. But I'll tell you, 15 minutes of fame is a lot better than no minutes of fame. And although my cat Solo might not be famous, he was definitely a unique animal. And I'm going to go way back in the day and share with you why. From the day I was born, basically until I was 21, just about that entire time, my family had a cat as a pet. I can only speak for me, but I'm someone that when it comes to pets, I like dogs, but I love cats. Maybe it's because for the most part, I don't have to worry about my cat killing me in my sleep, because there's no cats that are 100, 150 pounds. At least not ones that you can buy as pets. I know there are big cats. And you out there, pet owners, cat owners, you know that every animal you get has a unique personality, kind of a unique story with their life, just like any human does. And I've had several unique cats that have been pets in my life. My favorite pet I ever had was an orange tabby cat we called Tigger. He wasn't quite fat like Garfield, but he was a larger cat. He basically hated everyone except me. We had a calico cat that we called Recy. She was black and orange and a bit of white. So she looked kind of like a Recy cup candy bar. When I was born, my parents had a gray and black striped cat named Roo, who when we had to move when I was little, Roo went to live with my Nina and Grandpa. And even though I just said Tigger was my favorite pet I ever had, I think the most unique story that surrounds any of these pets has to be my cat that was named Solo. In order to talk about Solo, we've got to talk about his mother, who was a gray cat that we called Smokey because she looked like smoke that would come out of a chimney. This was, I believe, 1985, so I'm seven going on eight. Smokey got pregnant. No idea who the dad was. Damn deadbeat cats. Everything culminated right around my birthday. I was having one of my first sleepovers, a nice big one with several friends as I turned eight years old. The house we lived in at the time, my room was in the basement. It was a finished basement, which was awesome because you could shut the door and no light would ever get in there, be pitch black in the middle of the day. And it ran basically the length of the house. Like the house was split in half lengthwise. Half of it was the finished basement that would be my room. And the other half was storage, laundry, etc., My memories of this are hazy, but thankfully my mother has this story ingrained in my mind now from her experience. Apparently, me and my friends, I don't know how many there were of us, four, five, were sitting down there hanging out, seven, eight-year-old boys. And in through the door wanders Smokey the Cat, and she plops down in the middle of this circle of little boys... and decides this is a good place and a good time to have my kittens. On one hand, it's a great sign of love that she felt comfortable being there with me to have her kittens. But on the other hand, it's an animal giving birth in front of an eight-year-old boy, which I'm sure scarred me quite a bit at the time. The most interesting thing about smoky giving birth in the center of my friends at my birthday sleepover was the fact that she did not have a litter of kittens. She had one. One big kitten. That's why we named him Solo. I'm sure my mother and stepfather had fun cleaning the rug after the kitten was born there. So immediately Solo the cat is unique because he was one in a litter. I don't know how rare that is for cats. The average number of kittens in a litter is four to six, with one being very rare, just like numbers like eight and nine being increasingly rare too. Solo's life got interesting even more so within a few weeks. Our cat Smokey was killed. She was hit by a car in front of the house, which sadly for me, me and my sister Kate saw it. We saw our cat get hit by a car, saw the aftermath, which that's traumatizing. I was eight. Kate was six. That memory is seared into my brain. That was 1985. I can still remember across the street, my friend Matt Medeiros, who I've talked about several times on this show, his cat Snowflake, who was all white, coming down and sitting next to Smokey's body. mourning his friend. Boy, that's rough. So Smokey was buried in our backyard. She's still there now. The people that own that house, they go metal detecting or something. I don't know if she had a collar on, but they'll find the shoebox with a skeleton in it. So there's this kitten, Solo, had no mother. So my mother and stepfather had to feed him. Little bottle or eyedropper to feed this cat so that it would live. Within a period of a few weeks or probably months, Sola was fine. Normal cat, outdoor cat, doing normal cat things. One thing that I always did with the cats as a kid and all through having cats was at the end of the day, even though they were outdoor cats, we wanted them to come in. So I would... open the front door, and take the box of cat food, either Friskies or Meow Mix, and shake it. And the cats knew that sound. It was ringing the dinner bell. So you shake it a few times loudly, wait a few seconds, shake it again. Typically, the cats would be coming in the front door within 30 seconds. That was a nightly thing. Shake the food, Solo would come in, feed him, Shut the doors, we're all in for the night. Fast forward a bit, Solo was probably close to two years old, and one night I went to the front door and shook the food. No Solo. Waited, shook the food again, and again, and again. And the cat doesn't show up. I'm sure my mother and stepfather were like, he's probably off killing some squirrel or mouse far away, he's fine. We didn't really worry about coyotes and such in the mid-1980s on Cape Cod. Not like today where you'll get five or six going through the yard sometimes. I didn't think it was a big deal until probably the second or third day that I was doing the food shake and no solo. It was only a couple of years earlier that I had seen my cat get hit by a car. So immediately I'm thinking he wandered off and got hit by a car. But I was also a hopelessly optimistic child, probably 10 years old. So I continued shaking that food at the door every night for months. My mother would know better, but I'm thinking it was at least three or four months that I was shaking that food, no cat, just doing it out of habit. By this point, we had gotten our cat, Recy, the calico. We got her from a wood pile behind my Nina and Grandpa's house. She was wild. So I'd shake the food, hoping for Solo, but I also would shake it for Recy to come back. Solo and Recy ended up, I guess, as a cat couple. So Recy got pregnant the first time. One of her kittens ended up being Tigger, my favorite cat. So it's like three generations of cats from Smokey to Solo to Tigger. Anyway, months go by and I'm shaking the food out the front door, not even thinking about it. And all of a sudden, here is Solo. Solo the cat returns after months and months of just being gone. And I'm just beside myself. I can't believe that he is actually here. It's like it's a dream. And he just wanders in the front door like it's nothing, like he'd been gone for a couple hours. All of us in the family are just shocked. Here's Solo. Where the hell has he been? What we noticed right away about him was, despite being gone for, I'm gonna say, four months or more, he didn't look skinny. He'd been eating well wherever he had been for the last several months. But the shock of having Solo return... It only got amped up to a million. Because after he got done eating his food, he proceeded to walk down the hallway, go into the bathroom, and get up on the toilet and use the toilet. I can still see that image in my head. I was 10 years old. Here is my cat that had just returned from being gone forever. And he's in the bathroom sitting on the toilet. Obviously, he didn't flush, but he sat on the toilet and used it. Shortly after that, my mother and stepfather, I think they figured out he likely had wandered far off, so far that he couldn't hear me shaking that damn food, but he got taken in by someone who then trained him to use the toilet. And it's almost like at some point he wandered off from wherever he had been and heard the food and returned home. Or so we thought. All of my happiness to see Solo back, and my shock at him using the toilet, it all came full circle probably within a few days, maybe a week or two at most. There I am at the door, shaking the food again. Here comes Recy, but there's no Solo. And this went on again, day after day. shaking the food, no solo. And this time, he never came back. My mother has said basically what she thinks is that he came back to us to say goodbye and go back to wherever he was. I'd love to know what happened to him. I'm always hopeful that he ended up having a long, full life. I mean, he was two years old when he vanished and came back and then vanished again. But this isn't Ancestry.com. You can't look up a cat and find out where their address was. And just because we called him Solo, whoever took him in didn't know he was an only cat. Only child cat. She could have named him Pablo. And I'm not going to know that. That was just the craziest story. Solo the cat had a very unique life. And I'm hoping it was a long life wherever he went to. From being an only kitten in a litter to having to be raised with people feeding him because his mother was hit by a car within a few weeks to then vanishing for months. But then when he returned, he used the toilet to then vanish again forever. Do any of you out there have crazy pet stories like that? I'm sure mine's not unique, but it was a lot of fun to tell you that full story. Especially for those of you that had pets growing up or are cat lovers. And I have a picture of me as a kid with Solo the cat. I'll share it on social media so you can see him put a face to this story. But until next time, that'll wrap up episode 148 of the podcast. Just shake the food at the front door and I'll come running back next week with episode 149. Let's pop the top to celebrate the end of another great show. Ah, there we go. Coming up next week is going to be episode 149. We're going to look at some companies that went under when the dot-com bubble burst almost 25 years ago. And we're going to look back at Boston's very own music television channel, V66. I have a listener, Scott, that mentioned this to me. I'd never even heard of it. And I was like, I'm using that on the show coming up. So that's going to be a fun story. If you're interested in any of my nine books, check out my website, ChristopherSetterlin.com. Visit TheLadyOfTheDunes.com for all of the information about that infamous Cape Cod murder case, Frank Durant's amazing documentary. my book, Searching for the Lady of the Dunes, all kinds of newspaper articles, videos that I made during the process of making the book. I'm working on a special video article. It'll be a podcast segment about the 50th anniversary of the Lady of the Dunes murder. It's basically going to be a CliffsNotes summary of Everything. It's like what I do at my book events for Searching for the Lady of the Dunes. Kind of crammed into a more manageable segment. So stay tuned for that. Follow me all over social media. Subscribe to my YouTube channel. I'm trying my best to do fun video segments from the podcast for you to check out. They take a good amount of time, especially to do them well. But I try my best to fit them into my schedule. When it comes to the Lady of the Dunes and Provincetown and Cape Cod at that time period, if you're interested in what it was like to be a part of Provincetown at that time, check out the book Shelter of the Monument, A Provincetown Love Story by local Cape Cod author Yvonne D'Souza. It's a book with empathy, desire, compassion, these strong emotions. Yvonne reveals her feelings on every page and Shelter of the Monument is a book. It's a story that will stay with every reader who's loved not wisely, but too well. It's a great coming of age memoir and it's filled with Cape Cod, Provincetown, imagery, stories, all of that. If you're interested in Shelter of the Monument, I'm going to link to Yvonne's website in the description of the podcast. It'll be there going forward, but I highly recommend it. A perfect summer read. If you enjoy reading about things that are less serious, more random, slightly foolish, maybe every now and then poignant, check out my initial impressions blog. That is also linked in the description of the podcast. Someday it'll be Another podcast. I want to do that, but it's also, where's the time? If you add an eighth day to the week, maybe. But it's all a labor of love. All this content creation that I do, it's my passion. Writing books, blogs, articles. This podcast, the bonus ones for Patreon, all the videos on YouTube. They all take time and effort, especially when you care about your product. That's why I keep coming back to thanking those of you that listen to the show, that share it, spread it word of mouth. Those of you that leave positive reviews, those that subscribe to YouTube. Content creators need all the help they can get. I can promote myself till my voice goes hoarse. But to have people out there that enjoy my work and are willing to share it with others, that means the world. Before I get out of here, special happy birthday today when the podcast goes live to my oldest friend Barry's wife, Rachel, another very talented author. She does teen and young adult books, including the highly rated Game of Strength and Storm you can find on Amazon. So shout out to Rachel. Also, happy early birthday to another one of my oldest friends, Steve. You've heard him on the podcast before. Dedication to the craft. Don't worry, you'll get yours next week on the show. Get out there in the sun. Enjoy the summer weather is here. Take the podcast with you wherever you go. If you're just listening to this show now, I've got 147 other shows. Catch up on them. They'll be good for my mental health knowing you listen to the show. But until next time, folks, 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 we call life because you never know what tomorrow brings. Thank you all again for tuning into the show. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund. You already knew that. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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