In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 110: Restaurant Storytime VI: Prep Boys Rock; Being A 90s Mall Rat; Weird Maine Laws; Meet Chester Vermont(8-30-2023)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 110

Share episode

Send us a text

Episode 110 begins with a return to Restaurant Storytime. In this chapter, we go back to the beginning of my time working in hospitality. The days of food prep in a rustic barn, loud music causing problems, mosh pit cleanup parties, broken windows, and more. This is Restaurant Storytime VI: Prep Boys Rock.
Small towns typically have palpable charm. Small towns in New England have it in spades. Small towns in Vermont just might be something out of a fairy tale. This week's Road Trip takes us to one such small town, that being Chester, Vermont. Come and Meet Chester.
Though the days of the indoor mall might be starting to wane due to the rise of online shopping there are still countless memories to look back on. We will go way Back In the Day to reminisce about what it was like to be a 1990s mall rat in the days when hanging out at the local mall was a weekend appointment. Was being a mall rat as fun as we remember? Let's find out.
After the wild look at the weird Rhode Island laws in Episode 108, it's time to keep moving around New England. This week's Top 5 features weird Maine laws. Will they be able to top the unique and often hilarious laws of Rhody?
There is also a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule looking back at the beginnings of the famed Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Find more content on YouTube, support the podcast if you want, and Buy Me A Coffee!

Helpful Links from this Episode

Listen to Episode 109 here 

Support the show

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 110. It's going to be a fun, very 90s heavy episode this week. We're kicking it off with part six of the Restaurant Storytime series. This one is simply entitled Prep Boys Rock. And as a look back to my crazy days as a prep boy in the 1990s, we're going to take a road trip up north to the small town of Chester, Vermont. We're going to go way, way back in the day and look at what it was like to be a 1990s mall rat. Was it as stereotypical as what you think it is? There's going to be a brand new top five as we continue the Weird Laws series, and we look at the weird main laws that are going to make you shake your head and laugh. And of course, there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule, all coming up right now on episode 110 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Welcome in, everybody. This episode goes live the last week of August, one of the last days of the month. It's going to be the last episode before Labor Day, which is seen as the unofficial end of summer. It's not really. We've still got almost a month left. And I've said it many times, the period after Labor Day to the end of the year, it's my favorite time of year. Fewer people, but still good weather. Lots of holidays, lots of birthdays, including my own. Hopefully wherever you are, the weather is cooperating. You can take the podcast out with you to the beach or for a walk or just sitting inside in the AC or avoiding the rain. As always, I want to say thank you to everyone who's been tuning into the podcast, sharing it, That's the best way to get this to grow, increase the audience. I advertise it, I market it, but you who listen and enjoy it, sharing it means the most. Branching off of that, so I did a thing. I now own the domain theinmyfootstepspodcast.com. I have an idea for something to do with this domain name as far as a website, but there's really no timetable on it. It might be something that I kind of chip away at and then suddenly launch a website months from now. But with trying to do a weekly podcast, now subscriptions that are going to be coming up next month, along with book events seemingly every couple of weeks, it's tough to find time to create another website and to do it well. I could create a website that looks like Homer Simpson's one that he did on The Simpsons with just flying toasters and lips yelling. But then who's going to want to go to that? A heads up coming up this coming Tuesday, September the 5th at 6 p.m. is my next book event at the Sturgis Library in Barstable Village. It's going to be on the second edition of the Cape Cod travel guide I wrote combined with my photography book. There's all sorts of links in the description of the podcast, but it'll be a fun event showcasing some of the best places to visit on Cape Cod, a little history, and also how to shoot photos of these places. And if anybody was interested, my Searching for the Lady of the Dunes event, my premiere event for that, that was at the Osterville Library a week and a half ago, it's now up on their YouTube page that you can watch the whole presentation there. Again, there's a link in the description of the podcast if you want to check it out. And if you want to see it in person, that's coming up on September 13th, which is a Wednesday. And that'll be at 6 p.m. at the Marston's Mills Library. And of course, you can always go to theladyofthedunes.com to buy the book, watch the documentary, or just learn more about the case if you're not familiar with it. But right now we're going to go from talking about one of Cape Cod's most infamous murder mysteries to another sort of story time, that being Restaurant Story Time. It's a series I've loved to share, I've loved to put together and talk about. This will be the sixth edition. So let's go to Restaurant Story Time 6, Prep Boys Rock, right now on episode 110 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Oh, it's time for the return of that beloved segment known as restaurant story time. This is the sixth installment sharing some of the horror stories and funny stories of my days working in the restaurant industry. In the past, I've spoken about a knockout shot with a red bliss potato, a snowball fight indoors, crazy swans attacking everyone, the bloody murder of a possum. and nearly succumbing to the fumes of bleach inside a closed room. For part six of this segment, we are going all the way back to the beginnings for me, when I was a food prep boy, along with my tag team partner at the time. Food prep, for those of you that have never worked in the restaurant industry, is literally what it sounds like. Preparing the food that will be made for customers. Simple things like pre-made salads, mixing coleslaw. Maybe cracking eggs if you need them for breakfast. You get the idea. When I started my journey as a food prep boy, I was 15 years old. And anyone who can look back on their jobs when they were teenagers, I don't think we took them very seriously. My prep boy tag partner and I, we weren't Beavis and Butthead levels of incompetence. Not at all. We actually did a good job. But we definitely marched to the beats of our own drum. A few things that made this job memorable was the fact that if you've listened to the podcast, you know that this restaurant I worked at, our food prep area was not attached to the restaurant. It was across the parking lot in this dilapidated barn, meaning that even though we were doing work for the restaurant, we were kind of on our own, like this little island thing. I got along immediately with my prep boy tag partner. We were the same age within six days, which is wild. Well, we're still the same age within six days, but we were back then too. I don't know which one of us would consider the other to be the evil twin. I don't think either of us were evil. We were just 15 years old, not used to working and not used to being pushed. Without fail, our days in the prep room... which were weekend days during the school year and then more full-time during the summer. These days began with us walking into the prep room and there being this yellow-lined sheet of paper with two columns typically worth of prep that needed to be done. Sometimes it was even the backside. And what we found out right away is that whatever was written on that sheet of paper was not all that needed to be done. We'd usually get into work between 7 and 8 a.m. and team up to defeat the prep list. But then when we would think we were done, we would go and check with the chef and he would suddenly have six or eight new things that needed to be done. At times we wanted to not tell the chef that we were done and just leave, but we didn't know if we'd get in trouble. I'm actually surprised we didn't get yelled at more based on some of the things we did. Things like labeling food we prepped with code words or shorthand that didn't make sense. I've got a couple examples. For example, slicing red onions. They were sliced red onions. Sometimes on the prep list, they would be shortened to S-L-RED-O-apostrophe-S, slorettos. And being smart-ass teenagers, we would spell a word, slorettos, and write it and put it on there in tape. Because some of the containers we used for the food prep were washed out buckets that used to have clams or oysters when they would get delivered by the fish people. None of these high-tech lexic cans and hard plastic containers. Nope, it was clam buckets. And the cooks would depend on our labels to know what to grab. So if they go over there looking for sliced red onions and they're looking and they see this thing that says Sloretto's as one word, I'm actually surprised we didn't get yelled at more for that. or being told to write today's date on whatever we prepped. So if we made corned beef hash, instead of writing today's date as in August 30th or 830, we'd literally write today's date, the words. Oh my God. The more that I think of this and talk about it, I am shocked that we didn't get yelled at. These days we're filled with music and soda. We had a small radio, a tape deck that that plays cassettes for those that weren't alive in the 80s and 90s. And sure, we'd listen to local Cape Cod radio like Rock 104 or Underground UN 93.5, but the way that I got the name Prep Boys Rock was from mixtapes that I would make to bring in. And this being the mid-1990s, roughly, you're looking at the bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Guns N' Roses, R.E.M., And when we played that music, oh, we played it loud. Being a part of this prep room and in this kind of backroom offshoot of the prep room, we were sealed off. So there was no windows, nothing to absorb the sound. So the sound of this music would just rattle off the walls. I know I loved it loud. I don't know if my prep boy tag partner loved it as loud as I did. There would be times that it would be playing loud and he would pretend that he was speaking to me, but just moving his lips and not saying words just so that I would turn the music down and say, what? And then he'd just keep moving his lips to be a smartass. Back then, we didn't have anything like an intercom, so people couldn't call over to the prep room and say, we need this, bring it over. Luckily, most of the chefs could whistle, and that really high-pitched whistle, you put your fingers in your mouth, and it's horrible. So no matter how loud the music was, we'd hear that whistle noise. Come to the door of the barn, they'd yell over, bring us some coleslaw or bring us sliced tomatoes or whatever. There was one cook, though, that he couldn't whistle. He was probably in his mid-60s then. So he would go out on the deck off the side of the kitchen and he would just yell. So if you're a hundred something feet away indoors, do you think you could hear someone yelling? Now imagine you have music blasting. You're not going to hear him. So there was one time that this cook was yelling. We didn't hear him. And he marched his angry ass all the way over to the prep room, walked in and ripped our radio out of the wall and threw it. And the best thing about this was that I had brought my camcorder that day. I have videos of my days there. Just fun, random stuff. But I happened to have my camera that day, so there's a video after of the radio with the cord wrapped around it on a shelf. There's also some of those videos that show that same cook with a cigarette going right next to his cutting board in the prep room. It was a different time in the 90s in the restaurant industry. My prep boy tag partner and I, we always got the job done. We always did our job the best we could despite being smart ass teenagers at times. Naturally, the best part of the day was when we were finished. Our cleanup parties were legendary. Scrubbing all the machinery, the slicer, the cheese grater, the mixing bowl, the stainless steel tables, sweeping up, mopping. And you're probably wondering, thinking of all the music I mentioned that were on those mixtapes, what song was the one that really got us through to finish the day strong? Shockingly, it was Somebody to Love by Queen. I don't know how it ended up happening like that. I think it was by coincidence at one point. But it was like a mosh pit to Queen. Throwing the trash can around. So much so that I think I put the handle of the Rubbermaid trash can through the wall at one point. That's something that sticks with me to this day. We'd make sure we checked with the chef that our prep list was done, front and back of the yellow line paper. Sometimes I would ride my bike into work, so I'd be tired when I got there. And I swear the chef just wanted to see if he could kill me before I left. So the prep room would be clean... Then we'd have to go and throw our aprons into the apron bins. These were in the barn where all the old cars were lined up and campers and the barn had holes in it. And we'd do the crazy NBA long distance three point shooting for our aprons. Then we'd have contests to see if we could throw dinner rolls from one end of the barn to the other and hit the other end. I'll pull back the curtain for everyone that worked there at the time. We may or may not have smashed a few barn windows by accident. We may or may not have put holes in the drywall. We may or may not have punched boxes of french fries that were frozen. But I will tell you what, we did not damage that walk-in door. This was during that time, I swear, there was one time I came in to do prep and the big, heavy walk-in refrigerator door was laying on the floor of the prep room with the walk-in wide open. I don't know how it happened, if it fell off on its own. But I do know that the chef had to put a sign on it that said, please open the door carefully. If that's not an ominous sign, I don't know what is. Like you're going to open the walk-in door and it's just going to tip over on you and crush you underneath it. Those were really fun days. Blasting our music in the wintertime, opening the convection oven and just letting the heat pour out into the prep room because it was freezing. Roaming through the barn, just seeing what was in the different rooms. Sure, there was dry storage, but there were all these nooks and crannies that were just too intriguing for teenagers. I enjoyed it at the time. My prep boy tag partner is still one of my favorite people I ever worked with. He became my friend outside of work as well. And now we're like old war buddies sharing stories of the battles we went through during prep. Somewhere I still have those prep boys rock mixtapes. If I can find them, I'll share pictures on social media of what our playlist was. But that was a little bit of working in the restaurant industry in the 90s. Restaurant Storytime Part 6, The Prep Boys Rock Story. I've done a good job of keeping people's names out of it to protect the innocent or not innocent. And I've got plenty more Restaurant Storytime adventures to come. So if you're enjoying these, there'll be more to come. All the fun and foolishness and embarrassing memories. There's just something about small town New England that is so special. It's like something out of a book or a movie. Throughout all of my travels in New England, it's virtually impossible to have gone to all of the small towns that the six states have to offer. And interestingly, the research that I do for these road trip segments, sure, I've been to a lot of these places I've talked about, but for the ones that I haven't been to, this research doubles as kind of an itinerary for myself for when I go to these places. One such example of a small town that is just quintessential New England is that of Chester, Vermont. As of 2020, it had a population of 3,005 people. And to give you an idea of where it is, it is about 70 miles west of Concord, New Hampshire, and just over 35 miles north of the Massachusetts border. There's something magical about Vermont as summer turns to fall and the foliage starts to creep in. And just the untold number of small towns with these small farms and beautiful scenic landscapes and these small churches that dot the landscape with the changing leaves around them. Just go on Instagram and search for Vermont and you'll see what I mean. For me to get from where I am on Cape Cod to Chester, Vermont, it's a little over three and a half hours drive. Vermont can be a tough one to just take a day trip to. A perfect place to start your trip to Chester, Vermont would be the Stonehouse Antique Center. They're at 557 Route 103 South and also StonehouseAntiqueCenterVT.com. There's just something magical about antiquing in a small Vermont town, especially as it becomes fall season. But it's also a 20,000 square foot store. And they have events, too. They're having a Celebrate Autumn event, September 22nd and 23rd. That's a Friday and Saturday. They're also a member of the Antique Trail, which is antiquetrail.com is a listing of reputable antique stores in a lot of U.S. states. There's more than 1,600 of them, and the Stonehouse Antique Center is one. If antiquing is not your thing, or if you just want to enjoy the great outdoors in northern New England, check out the Lost Mine hiking trail. The trail itself is of moderate difficulty. It's a loop that is just over two miles, so it's doable for just about anybody of any age and any ability. Parking is at Water Farm Road, and the trail is not far from the parking lot. And naturally, since it says it's a lost mine trail, there is an abandoned mine there, which just sounds exciting to see something like that. Over on the east side of Chester by Green Mountain Union High School, there's another trail. The Green Mountain Trail is just under two miles, and it includes views of the South Branch Williams River. Even though I say these trails are of moderate to easy difficulty, always use your best judgment. I would say hiking in Vermont is probably not as recommended as it gets into wintertime, unless you're really experienced. Perhaps the most unique feature of Chester, Vermont is the Stone Village Historic District. It's 100 acres of stone craftsmanship houses on Route 103. These buildings were erected in the 1830s when Scottish masons came over to work in a factory that's no longer there. It's said that this particular type of stone masonry is extremely rare in the United States, and the 50 buildings in Vermont are the only examples of it left in the country. Of the 50 stone buildings in Vermont, 10 are in Chester, clustered into this stone village historic district. As a topper, some of these stone buildings even have secret rooms that were used to house runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad. I'll put a link in the description of the podcast so you can see these buildings. That will probably make you want to drive to Chester. These things are incredible. A trip to Chester could be a bit of a hike for people from a So if you drive a long distance and get there, you're probably going to be hungry, especially if you do any of the hiking. So I would recommend the Country Girl Diner. They're located at 46 Route 103 and also countrygirldiner.com. It's a classic diner, what you would expect. The diner car itself was built in 1944, and it's been in its current location in Chester since 1966. Before then, it spent some time in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, which I find interesting that diner cars can just be moved all around. You can't really do that with traditional restaurants. And I mean the building themselves. Restaurants, I'm sure, can move around. It is simple diner food, diner fare. If you go to the website, you'll see the menu, see the photos. Just because it's typical diner fare doesn't mean it's not something you need to go out of your way to get. They're open from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday and are closed on Mondays. If you're not looking for a typical diner fare, you could go to Machloman's Scottish Pub. They're located at 52 South Main Street and at machlomans.com. That is spelled M-A-C-L-A-O-M-A-I-N-N-S. I wouldn't do that to you, give you that name and expect you to just type it in. It's hard enough to spell. It's Scottish food, Scottish hospitality. It's got typical Scottish dishes like haggis, neeps, and tatties. I hope I pronounce all those right. But it's also got regular, you know, American fare. Nachos, burgers. It fits in with the stone masonry of the Stone Village Historic District, the Scottish vibe. I would recommend... taking at least a day or two to enjoy Chester and the surrounding area of Vermont. A day trip would likely be a bit of a chore and is not recommended, so stay overnight when you go there. I recommend the In Victoria. It's a bed and breakfast located at 321 Main Street, right on the green. It's also at invictoria.com. It's a beautiful building with the rooms named after Queen Victoria's sons and daughters. It's luxurious, so it might not be in everyone's price range, but if you're taking a vacation to scenic Vermont in a place like Chester, you might want to just go all out. If you go in the winter, it's located near Okemo Mountain, so there's skiing nearby. There are nine different rooms, and something that really spoke to me is a private RV hookup. It's what you think it is. It's your own RV in the driveway of the Invictoria. One of my dreams has always been to take an RV and just drive it around the country and do this podcast essentially on the road. So driving up to Chester and staying at the Invictoria in an RV in their driveway just sounds like heaven. Another thing that really drew me to Chester is their town website. It's called meetchestervermont.com. It's just the cutest sounding name to describe your town. It has everything you could possibly need to plan your vacation to Chester. All the events, shopping, dining. And I just love how the website sells the town. It tells you everything that's good about it, why you should go there, how it's centrally located, what's nearby. All coupled with beautiful photos of the area. Naturally, I'll link to the website in the description of the podcast so you can see it. I just thought it was a very different approach to a website for the town. A lot are very stale and maybe not bland, but it's just right to the point. I thought Meet Chester, Vermont was a really nice way to draw in potential tourists, visitors. So check out the website, plan your trip, drive on up to central Vermont, whether you're shopping for antiques, hiking the Lost Mine Trail. Looking in wonder at the stone craftsmanship of the Stone Village Historic District. Eating, shopping, it's all there. And it's going to be fall soon, so they're going to have foliage too. But don't take my word for it. When you go up to Chester, like I always say, take your car and find your own way. The best part of a road trip is finding something great that wasn't on your itinerary. And I'll be back next week with another beautiful spot for a road trip in one of the six New England states with the hundreds and hundreds of places they have to offer. This week in history, we are going back 220 years ago this week to September the 1st, 1803, and the official or unofficial beginning of the Lewis and Clark expedition out to the western part of the United States. When it comes to the Lewis and Clark expedition, there are so many possible dates to choose as far as the beginnings of their journey. I chose September 1st, 1803 because that is the first day that Meriwether Lewis wrote in his journal, which documented the first day of travel in the journal that became known as the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In short, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were tasked with exploring the Louisiana Purchase. This was a giant chunk of land that would make up much of the United States as we know it today. It was purchased by Secretary of State James Madison and Robert Livingston, the U.S. Minister to France, for $15 million. When adjusted for inflation to 2023, that is just under $406 million, which sounds like a lot of money. I mean, it is. But the Louisiana purchase itself was about 828,000 square miles. It included land that made up much of the Midwest from Louisiana, Texas, all the way north through Kansas, the Dakotas, Montana, even parts of Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. Just a giant chunk of the United States. President Thomas Jefferson tapped his personal secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to lead the Corps of Discovery mission. through the Louisiana Purchase, and Lewis, after realizing what a challenge it was going to be, he got his army friend and fellow Virginian, William Clark, to join him and be his equal. Although Lewis began writing in his journal September 1st, 1803, they did not actually embark on the majority of the journey until May of 1804. In addition to having their supplies, they had a 41-man crew, a 55-foot keelboat that had to be built for this journey. They began from St. Louis, Missouri, going westward up the Missouri River. This journey would last about two years, and it's being summed up very quickly for this segment. Lewis and Clark would meet Sacagawea, who helped by letting other Native tribes know that Lewis and Clark came in peace, letting them know things for their diet. There were incredible amounts of trials and tribulations that they had to deal with on this journey. Finally, on November 15th, 1805, Lewis and Clark reached the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of the Columbia River in Washington. It took them one year, six months, and one day from the time that they left St. Louis, Missouri to reach the Pacific. And by the time they returned to St. Louis on September 23rd, 1806... They had traveled nearly 8,000 miles on foot. The Journals of Lewis and Clark is a book today that details that whole expedition from the first-person perspective of Meriwether Lewis. And the very first entry in that journal that started this all off came around 220 years ago this week in history. And now it's time for a brand new time capsule. We're going back 40 years ago this week to September 1st, 1983 to see what was going on in the world of pop culture back then. The number one song was Every Breath You Take by The Police. This was off of their album Synchronicity and topped the Billboard Hot 100 for eight weeks. It was The Police's only number one hit song, which is surprising. It was voted Song of the Year for 1983 by Rolling Stone. It won Grammys for Song of the Year and Pop Performance by a duo or group with vocals. And although they had a ton of great songs, it's easily the police's most recognizable hit. The number one movie was Mr. Mom, and you could get in with a ticket that cost $3.15. This is a comedy starring Michael Keaton and Terry Garr, and Michael Keaton is a stay-at-home dad having to learn what it's like to do all of the day-to-day operations of running the household. It's a fun role reversal as Michael Keaton's character is laid off so his wife rejoins the workforce. It's 76% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. I remember it as a kid. It was a movie I always enjoyed. It made $64 million at the box office and was based on a screenplay by John Hughes, the legendary director. And interestingly, the success of Mr. Mom led to John Hughes getting a three-picture deal. And the three pictures he would release through Universal Studios with that deal were 16 Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Weird Science. So pretty good. The number one TV show was Simon & Simon. This was a drama series about a detective agency out of San Diego, California run by brothers Rick and A.J. Simon. It starred Gerald McRaney and Jameson Parker as the Simon brothers. It ran for a total of eight seasons and 156 episodes. The show ended in 1989, but there was actually a reunion movie, Simon and Simon in Trouble Again, that came out in 1995. And if you were around back then, September 1st, 1983, maybe you had a five-year-old son that was going on six years old and he was interested in playing the Atari 2600 or even the Atari 5200 that were the most popular gaming consoles of the time. Well, you're in luck. If you were looking to save money on either of those, you could get a $30 rebate off of the Atari 2600 or 5200. If you wanted these rebates, you had to buy the console at any of the local Anon Hope stores, or Ames, or Kaldor, Kmart, or Strawberries. There's a lot of classic 80s New England stores in there for you. And I did have the Atari 2600. I don't know if my mom used this rebate to get it for me, but at the time, that gaming console was great. And that'll wrap up another Time Capsule, another This Week in History. And now the moment you've all been waiting for as we jump into a brand new top five. After the foolish success of the Rhode Island weird state laws, we're now going to look at weird Maine laws. So be prepared to shake your head and laugh and remember these things when you go to Maine so you don't break any of these laws. Now back by popular demand, the weird laws segment, also known as the top five. You remember in episode 108, I did the Rhode Island weird laws. I loved it so much that I decided to do it for all six New England states. It is not hard to find these types of weird laws for every state. So those of you that are listening that are not from New England or are just curious about what other states have weird laws on the books, they're easy to find. I'll put a link to one of these sites that I've used for my research in the description of the podcast to help you out. But this week we are doing weird main laws. Some of these seem like they are right out of Stephen King novels. And much like the Rhode Island list, I have a ton. So I've got five honorable mentions and five that will make up the actual top five, but they're not in any particular order. And my definition of weird might be different from yours. So are you ready for the honorable mentions for weird Maine laws? Get ready because the edibles are about to kick in. Honorable mentions. In the town of Huberson, it is illegal to eat five potatoes in a meal without giving one to each of your pigs. It is illegal to wear a helmet when driving a car. In Augusta, it is illegal to walk down the street while playing a violin. In Freeport, it is illegal to spit from a second floor window. And lastly, it is illegal to sell a car on Sunday unless it's equipped with plumbing. Yeesh, that makes up the honorable mentions. How weird are these? Top five weird Maine laws, starting with number one. In the town of Wells, there is no advertising allowed in cemeteries. Where to begin with this one? You're standing there at a funeral for a loved one in the town of Wells, and over your shoulder is a huge billboard for life insurance or something. Or some of the tombstones end up like NASCAR uniforms with Tide logo on it. Has anyone out there ever seen advertising in cemeteries anywhere before? to the point where it would need to be put into law that you can't do it. I would think the closest you would ever get is if one of those planes flew overhead dragging the banner behind it. But I don't think there'd be any advertising for grave diggers. If you want your grave dug fast, call this guy. Or gravestone makers. Because who's touring a cemetery looking for advertising? It's not like the Yellow Pages. And why is it just in the town of Wells? Do they have this problem where they had to end up putting a law on the books? So no advertising in cemeteries in Wells is allowed, period. But they just get weirder. Number two, it is illegal to push a live moose out of a plane. It says nothing about dead moose carcasses if you're throwing them off into the woods. It doesn't say if it makes a difference if the moose has a parachute on or not. And if it has a parachute, it doesn't know how to pull the string anyway. So I guess that's useless. This one didn't have a specific town mentioned. So this is for the whole state of Maine, which leads me again to say, was this an issue? Was there somebody that kidnapped a moose and brought it up in a plane and threw it down over a town? Because moose are pretty big. It would be like dropping a Volkswagen Beetle out of a plane. And how would you get one into a plane? Do you have to shoot it with tranquilizers and drag it? Or do you coax it into the plane like a stranger with candy? What if you were transporting the moose somewhere else and it died during the flight? Could you then throw it out? So many questions about this. But yes, it's illegal to push a live moose out of a plane. Number three, in the town of Rumford, it is illegal to bite your landlord. So your rent got raised. You're really angry. Your landlord's getting in your face. You can't bite them. It doesn't say anything about throwing them down the stairs. This sounds like something that actually would have happened. That somebody either got their rent raised or were served an eviction notice or something, and they bit their landlord. And lawmakers in the town of Rumford said, we've got to fix this now. That's illegal. But again, it comes down to, was it accidental? What if you were yelling at your landlord and they got close and you were saying something with your mouth wide open and you accidentally bit them? Is this a defense you could use in court? Sort of like the Rhode Island law where you could not intentionally bite off someone's limb, but what if it's accidental? So it's illegal to bite your landlord in Rumford. Number four, it is illegal to have an armadillo as a pet. What makes this even better and even weirder is the fact that you can own an alligator in Maine as long as you have a permit. An armadillo is like a bowling ball, and they're actually pretty cute, but an alligator could freaking kill you. So you can't have an armadillo that could fit in the palm of your hand, basically, but you can own an alligator that you could then use on your landlord. You can't bite him, but the alligator can. Any of my listeners from Maine, did you know about this one? Do you know anyone that owns an alligator in Maine? Is it like the people that have the pythons as pets and then they let them free where they own an alligator? And God forbid if it got free and now you've got alligators that just live in Maine. But despite the dangers of alligators, they're legal, but armadillos are not. And finally, last but not least on the top five weird Maine laws is number five. In the city of Portland, it is illegal to tickle under the chin of a woman with a feather duster. This sounds like something that the Three Stooges would have done in a skit that Curly would have tickled under a woman's chin with something. In my research, I believe I read that things like this actually happened, which is why this specific law was put into the books. Who would have been walking around in Portland with a feather duster, A, just walking around with it, and then decide they see a woman on the street and they say, I'm going to go tickle her under the chin with this? I don't know why, but that just sounds like a very main type of law. And it doesn't say if you can tickle under the chin of a woman with something else, a handkerchief or one of those buttercup flowers to see if they like butter, but don't do it with a feather duster. And that will end this week's top five weird Maine laws. Had you heard of any of these or have you broken any of these? Did any of you out there bite your landlord or throw a moose out of a plane? And I'll be back next week. We're going to go to Connecticut and do top five weird Connecticut laws. And at the end of this, we'll see which state tops them all with just the weirdest laws you could find. In the 2020s, in the days of digital online shopping, everything you could possibly need is at your fingertips with places like Amazon and all the big box stores have websites you can use to order from. The days of the mall are starting to come to an end as fewer people feel the need to go to travel to actual stores. For people of an older generation, my generation, This is doubly sad, because for many of us, the mall was not just a place to go shopping, but a place to go and hang out, see all of your friends, and just be a carefree teenager. So we're going to go way back in the day right now, as I recount my days of being a 1990s mall rat. You can get a vibe for this in the 1995 Kevin Smith movie Mall Rats. I'm going to look at it through my lens of what it was like being part of the Cape Cod mall, Cape Cod mall rat scene. The stereotype probably looked down on us from our parents as mall rats was just being lazy teenagers sitting around at the mall, not doing anything, which was mostly true. But for the most part, we didn't get into any trouble. It was the stereotype of the early 90s kids loitering. probably the different mall store owners mad, wanting people to buy stuff, but they're just standing there. For me, my peak of mall rat hood was eighth and ninth grade, right when I was old enough to really go off far away on my own, but still young enough that I didn't have a driver's license, so I couldn't just go anywhere. And when I say going off on my own, I mean, I had been going places by myself or with friends since I was 10. get on my bike and go to the corner store. It was a very different time in the mid to late 80s, early 90s than it is now. The more I researched 80s and 90s malls in general in America, the more I realized a lot of them look alike. I was finding photos online thinking it was the Cape Cod Mall and it would be some random mall in Missouri. So I don't know if the architects all had the same notes or if there was one group that did all the malls. There was a lot of benches in a square facing out with a giant potted plant. I don't know if they were real or fake. The Cape Cod Mall had tons of those just in the middle of the causeway with the stores on either side. I can only speak for me, but it was typically Friday nights. get done with school, likely either do your homework quick or save it until the rest of the weekend, which meant it might not get done at all. There'd be a group of you that would go. Typically, one kid's parents would drive you there, and then another kid's parents would be the pickup. It was very rare, I think, that the same parent would do both, because, God, I could only imagine them having to sit in the parking lot of the mall for three hours. You would either spend your allowance, or especially freshman year, that was when I got my first job, where I got an actual check I would have to cash. My jobs I've mentioned on here before, when I was 12 and 13, it was cash under the table. So you might go and cash your check that you got on Friday. And back then, in the early 90s, the Cape Cod Mall had not expanded yet. It was like a rectangle. I don't think it had been enlarged much since it first opened in 1970. I rarely needed anything from any store at the mall when I would go there and just hang out. It was literally like looking for your friends. Get dropped off at the front, which was the Filene's. The parents would either park and you'd get out or they just pull up right in front of the store and you'd enter the mall through the Filene's. And as soon as you walked in, the line of sight, you could see the main part of the mall. And I'm sure the people that worked at Filene's got used to seeing all of us teenagers walking in on Friday nights. They probably didn't even bat an eye. And back then at the Cape Cod Mall, the food court was directly across from Filene's. So when you walked out of Filene's, there was all the food court stuff. Orange Julius, Au Bon Pain, Taco Maker, Papa Gino's. Freshens, yogurt. Am I bringing back memories for you 80s and 90s kids what it was like there? Even though I'm speaking mainly about the Cape Cod Mall where I grew up, I think, like I said, a lot of malls had the same stores. So you're probably hearing a lot of store names that bring back memories for you as well. Once out in the main part of the mall, then you start looking for people you know. You could either do a full lap around the mall and cover all the ground, or you pick a spot you want to sit and see if other people will pass you by. The old Cape Cod Mall before the expansion, they had a lot of brick walls with fake plants. You could sit on the walls. At one point, there was a waterfall or a water wheel, not a waterfall. But if you got dropped off at the mall at, say, 5.30 and you were going to get picked up at 8, 8.30, 9 o'clock, You don't want to just sit and wait to see if friends will walk by. You actually want to go and do something. So if you were wandering around the Cape Cod Mall or any mall for that fact, what stores would you see? What stores would you go into? I think even back then they had Spencer's Gifts, which was just all kinds of weird and unique stuff. They had weird lighting. You'd walk in and it was a little darker with spotlights and you'd find all this weird stuff that you felt like you shouldn't be seeing. There were the main department stores that you could go in and kind of get lost and hide in the nooks and crannies. Like I said, Filene's, but there was Sears, there was Woolworth, there was Jordan Marsh, and they all had basically different shades of the same things. For me, myself, I would probably go to the baseball card shop, although I could easily drop my whole paycheck in there on packs of cards, so I had to really watch myself. Or if you were into music, you could go to Record Town or Tape World. Back in the early to mid-90s, they didn't have the play-it-yourself music where you could cue up different CDs or different tapes and hear what that music was if you were interested in buying it. You had to walk in and hope they were playing something that you were interested in. And if you wanted to buy a cassette, they were stuck in those big rectangular plastic rings. that the cashier would have to use that key to get it out of, obviously to make it so that they couldn't be stolen easily. That would be something you could notice. Even as I got older in my teens, I loved going into KB Toys, seeing what they had for action figures. That place was always packed, especially with little kids with their parents. Later on, there was Suncoast Video. They had cassettes, VHS cassettes. Later on, DVDs. But those really weren't a thing when I was a mall rat. I can't remember if Suncoast had a place where they would play movies. I remember Best Buy did way back that they had almost a mini theater that you could go in and watch a movie on a big screen. So you're still wandering around the mall. If you wanted to get your learn on, you could go to Walden Books. I tried to always get something when I was there on a Friday night. So that I'd have a bag to walk around with so that it looked like I was actually a shopper and not just some rowdy teen looking to cause trouble. Maybe a parent had a birthday, mother had a birthday, you could go to Crabtree and Evelyn or the Hallmark store. For the girls, there was places like Cherry Web and Terrain. Maybe Casual Corner, Tom McCann for shoes, anyone could go there. But walking around with my friends, we didn't dare go into Victoria's Secret. We just looked from afar. One of my favorite things about the old Cape Cod Mall was their business card making machine. Once my friends and I realized that we could make cards just making fun of anybody and put it on a card, we were hooked. There may be some of these business cards hanging around in my mom's basement in one of my old boxes somewhere. But this business card machine was way back in a back corner that I don't think anybody went to. Because who would think of doing that? Hopefully by this time you found some of your friends. At least you could say hi to them. Make fun of your teachers. My friends and I, we never really caused trouble. It was Gen X. We were just there. I think the worst thing I ever did during my mall rat days at the Cape Cod Mall was when Woolworth was going out of business. So everything was being sold. So a lot of the shelves were just empty. And a friend of mine and I, I won't name him and get him in trouble, but we were taking things off the shelves and just throwing them on the ground. Not anything that could break. Clothes, books. I never rode a kayak down an escalator or something like that. There were a lot of fun Friday nights like that at the Cape Cod Mall. It was safe. It was contained. You could wander all over the place and still be inside. And yet it was also like a party scene. You'd bump into friends of yours, wander off into Suncoast or Spencer's or Record Town or maybe even KB and just see what's in there, relive your childhood. I hope this brought back memories for you 80s and 90s kids that might have been mall rats at the time. Did you have any of the same memories? Did you cause trouble when you were in the malls? I know I didn't do much like that. I think I feared getting in trouble too much that somehow my mother would know what I had done. But those mall rat days are long ago. We're looking at 30 years. And sadly now being a mall rat has been replaced by surfing Amazon for hours at a time. And that's really not as much fun. And that's going to wrap up episode 110 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Thank you so much to everyone who tuned in. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. I always have so much fun planning these out and wondering what the regular listeners will think of the topics that I choose to share. If you ever have ideas or questions or comments, you can always shoot me a message, ChristopherSetterlund at gmail.com. You can also find me on Instagram threads, the former Twitter site, X, my YouTube channel, I've got a Facebook fan page for the podcast. No Facebook group page yet. Visit my homepage, ChristopherSetterlin.com. It's got links to all my books, old podcast episodes, my blog, created, maintained, updated by my oldest friend, Barry. You have heard me speak about him at length, especially this month since it's his birthday month. Go check out his craftsmanship. My website is pretty simple and basic. He's got skills that go way beyond that. As I've been saying, coming in September will be subscriptions for the podcast through Buzzsprout and Patreon. I've created the Patreon page. It's just not live yet. They're bothering me to make it go live, but I said, wait, wait, wait. I don't know exactly when it's going to go live. I'm thinking mid-September, so it's probably the week after Labor Day. There'll be bonus content, bonus podcasts, probably other behind-the-scenes stuff, maybe podcast merch. It's all new to me, so I don't know exactly what I'm doing with it, but I just know that it's a great opportunity to increase visibility for the podcast. And that's what I'm doing, like I said at the beginning of the show. I bought theinmyfootstepspodcast.com, so I have this domain name. I'm probably going to do something with it, but nothing's imminent. What is imminent, though, is next week's episode, episode 111-111. I'm really excited about this show. I'm going to start off by sharing something that happened while the podcast was on hiatus, and that was finding my great-grandfather's biological family as he was adopted. It was something I'd been trying to do for years, and it finally happened while the podcast was on hiatus, of course. But we'll dive into that next week. We're going to take a road trip way up north to one of the easternmost points in the U.S., that being the town of Machias, Maine. We're going to go way, way back in the day, and I'm going to tell you all about what were my first must-see TV shows. Children of the 80s, did you watch any of these shows, or am I just in my own world? There'll be a brand new Top 5 as we continue with the Weird Laws series of New England. It will be the Top 5 Weird Connecticut Laws. Again, these get crazier and crazier with each state. I hope you've been enjoying them. It's been a lot of fun to research. And of course, there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule coming up next week on episode 111 of the In My Footsteps podcast. So, summer's just about over. Kids are going back to school. Any of you kids, if you're listening to this, I'm sorry. I feel your pain. I did it. I went through all the years of school. I went through college. Thank you for watching. See you next time. Bye. Me, I said I used to run marathons and half marathons, and now I walk. So all the kids out there, enjoy your youth, because soon enough you'll be me, like Grandpa Simpson, old man yelling at Cloud, or crying that he used to be handsome, but now his looks have withered away like an old piece of fruit. My niece Emma is going back to college for her last semester, finishing up her forensic psychology degree. And I just wanted to let her know how proud I am of her. She's genius level smart, but you've got to put in the work. Hell, I was genius level smart when I was younger. I took my SATs when I was 13. But if you don't put in the work, what's the point? But you all find your way. Everyone finds the path to where they should be. Some people, it takes the scenic route. Other people, it's point A to B. I'm more of a scenic route guy. As you can tell from my road trip segments, I like scenic routes. And there's nothing wrong with that. Take care of your mental health. Your journey is different from everyone else's. Lean into what makes you happy. Hopefully this podcast makes you happy and you keep on coming back. Because I'll be here next week for episode 111. But in the meantime, 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 someday, your looks will be withered away like an old piece of fruit. Thank you all for tuning in. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, and I'll talk to you all again soon.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Christopher Setterlund

Host