In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 139: Kurt Cobain's Death 30 Years Later; Old Country Buffet Memories; Stores That Closed In the 80s & 90s; TV Guide(4-3-2024)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 139

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The death of a Gen-X icon 30 years later. Memories of Old Country Buffet plus tips on how to be a meat carver. Some heavy-hitting stores that closed in the 1980s and 1990s. The legacy of TV Guide magazine.
Episode 139 of the podcast runs the gamut from heavy to light but is filled with nostalgia.
30 years ago this week the world of music, the world of pop culture, and a generation overall, lost a giant. Kurt Cobain, lead singer of Nirvana, was found dead in his home. The moment sent shockwaves through Generation-X and changed the trajectory of Grunge and Alternative music forever. This week we will look at the death of Kurt Cobain and why it was such a massive moment in music history.
On the other end of the spectrum in nostalgia, we go way Back In the Day and reminisce about Old Country Buffet. Not only are we going to share some fun memories of eating until we nearly exploded, but we're also going to review a classic training video that features the ins and outs of being a meat carver at Old Country Buffet.
Giants of business that have faded away will be the topic of this week's Top 5. We will focus in on some famous stores that closed during the 1980s and 1990s.
In a new This Week In History and Time Capsule we will look back at the creation and legacy of TV Guide magazine.
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Speaker 02:

Hello world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 139. There's going to be a lot of 90s nostalgia this week. We're going to start it off with a look back at the death of Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain that happened 30 years ago this week and the impact that it had, not just in music, but for Generation X and fans of Nirvana in general. There'll be a little more in the humor department as we go way, way back in the day. And I will review an old country buffet training video from the 1990s, as well as give some of my own experiences from going to the world famous old country buffet. There'll be a brand new top five that are the top five stores that went out of business in the 1980s and 90s. There's a lot of heavy hitters that ended their tenure during these times. And there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time capsule looking back at the first issue of TV Guide and the legacy of TV Guide itself. All of that and more coming up right now on episode 139 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Welcome to April, everybody. Does it feel like spring where you are? I know that on Cape Cod, as soon as it hit spring, our weather got immediately colder. It's like it went from spring back to January, which is par for the course when living on Cape Cod. I mean, at least the sunsets are at 7 o'clock now, so I guess we've got that, even if the weather is still in the low 30s at night. I want to start off by shouting out and thanking my Patreon subscribers, Leo, Laurie, Mary Lou, and Ashley. Thank you so much for believing in my work enough to contribute. If you want to become a subscriber on Patreon, there's a link in the description of the podcast. It's patreon.com slash inmyfootstepspodcast. $5 a month gets you access to bonus podcast episodes, including one that just went up. They go up on the first of the month, and it's me reviewing my old Initial Impressions blog, which is a look into the wackiness of my everyday life. And for those that enjoy them, I resurrected that blog a couple of months ago, Initial Impressions 2.0, very creative name. And you can find a link to that in the description of the podcast as well. But Patreon also gives you early access to the main podcast show, early access to YouTube videos that are going up, and it also helps to support me and my work because I have a full-time day job in addition to trying to be a content creator, podcaster, YouTube video maker, blogger, author, all this other stuff that I have to find time for. It's definitely fun and worth it, though, doing all this stuff. It's flexing my creative muscle. That's really what I've wanted to do since I was eight years old. But I have a bunch of projects that are kind of backed up right now. So just as a heads up, there will be no new podcast episode next week. There'll be one the week after. But I've got four or five things I'm trying to work on and finish. So I figured I would skip a week of the podcast and try to catch up on all of those rather than spending five or ten minutes a day on each project and not getting anywhere. In that episode 140 that'll be in two weeks, that's when I will do the segment about Sears family portraits and child portraits and going to stores for portraits in general back in the 80s. I made a switch on this week's show because I totally forgot that this week is the 30th anniversary of the death of Kurt Cobain. And being such a huge part of my teenage years and becoming a writer, I wanted to spend some time talking about him and his legacy and how he influenced me. It is funny though that I say how much he influenced me and then I forgot that this was the 30th anniversary of his death. But that's all right. Sears' cheesy family portraits can wait until episode 140. Right now, let's look back 30 years and look at the legacy of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana on the 30th anniversary of his death. Every generation has these seminal moments, typically bad ones, that change the course of history in some way. For this segment, I'm going to be looking strictly at music. I was three years old when John Lennon was murdered, so I have little in the way of memories of John Lennon being a living person. My first memories of music in general... are these vague memories of John Lennon's Double Fantasy album, which was his last album he released before he was killed. And a decade earlier, you had Jim Morrison, who died, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix. In between, there was Elvis Presley, who actually died a few months before I was born. These were all musical artists that had such a huge fan base and a huge impact on music in general in their time. And their losses were felt, are felt, still to this day. Those of you out there listening who grew up with The Doors, The Beatles, Hendrix, Elvis, those of you that were huge fans of them, how did you feel after the loss of these people? And the reason I'm saying this is because this is how I feel and felt about the death of Kurt Cobain. Those of you out there that aren't my age, my generation, don't have to know Nirvana or like their music or know Kurt Cobain, but you can understand that feeling of loss and the importance of that person through your own experiences with whoever made you feel that way in music. I often try so hard to not become the old man that doesn't understand the current generation, and I use my own past experiences to understand today's music, much like I'm asking you who are older, 50s, 60s, to understand mine. For example, I'm not a fan, per se, of Taylor Swift's music, but her overwhelming popularity, I understand because I grew up when Michael Jackson's thriller, Michael Jackson was the biggest star on the planet, so I understand that, but I don't want to go too far off on a tangent. 30 years ago this week, Kurt Cobain was found dead in a room above his garage in Seattle. He was actually found three days after he died. So his death was April 5th, 1994. He was found April 8th. Still to this day, I can remember where I was when I heard the news. April 8th, 1994 was a Friday. I was a sophomore in high school, so I got home from school ready for the weekend. I walked in through the front door, put my bag down, stepped over our little gate that kept our dogs out of the living room, walked through the kitchen, and then we had this kind of sunroom that was also called the dog room because that's where the dogs basically lived. Back then, there was a couch, which I'm sure was covered in dog hair. But there was a TV, a smaller TV, where us kids, one of us five, could pretty much watch whatever we wanted, whenever. And I turned the TV on and flipped to MTV, back when it actually played music. And there was Kurt Loder. For those of Generation X, you know Kurt Loder, the MTV News host. And he was talking about a body being found... In the upstairs at Kurt Cobain's house. At that point they still didn't know who it was. So me being 16. I'm holding out hope that it's in some morbid way. That it's just somebody else that was dead up there. Which is a weird thought to have. But it didn't take long for them to identify the body as that of Kurt Cobain. And I remember it being this feeling of definitely shock. kind of numbness, a little bit of sadness, but also there was this little bit of me that was not surprised. Maybe that's the Generation X. It's that almost feeling of indifference. The reason I say that is because the month prior to Kurt Cobain's death, there were a lot of things going on. The overdose, March 3rd, 1994, where he took a lot of that ropinol, which I think today is known as the date rape drug. I think that's what it is. But he OD'd on that and he was in a coma. Nirvana's European tour had to be stopped. And then Kurt ended up going to rehab, but then leaving rehab and no one knew where he was. There was this trail of breadcrumbs leading to April 5th and his death by suicide. It wasn't like John Lennon, where someone just showed up and murdered him. There was this... sense that somebody needed to step in and help him, but he was, you know, too busy running away from it. There were other issues with the band Nirvana. Now looking back, having more information that they were basically breaking up. There were rumors that Kurt Cobain's marriage to Courtney Love was also breaking up. I look back at that time and selfishly, my first concert that I was ever going to go to, my plan... was Lollapalooza 1994, where Nirvana was going to be the headliner. That was my plan. Dip my toe into concerts by seeing the band that influenced my life the most in this festival atmosphere. But it wasn't to be. Way back in episode 38, I did a whole bonus episode of the podcast about Nirvana's Nevermind album, which back then it was 30 years after it was released. and the impact that the music had on me at age 13, 14. I'll never forget the first time that Smells Like Teen Spirit came on this little alarm clock radio in the bedroom with my friend Matt. It should have been a movie moment, like you could hear a narrator, me in the future, saying, my life would never be the same again after hearing that song. I fully embraced the grunge lifestyle, the flannel shirts, the torn jeans, the airwalk shoes or vans, depending on what you liked. Kurt Cobain was the symbol of Generation X, the teenage angst that we all felt. He spoke for us, even if not everyone was fans of the music. The message was there. It's funny because the songs still resonate with me Even all these years later, there hasn't been a new Nirvana song in 30 years. I am almost 20 years older than Kurt Cobain was when he died, so you would think his message being more towards people of that age group wouldn't resonate with me now, but here we are. There's even a B-side Nirvana song called Old Age that he probably wrote when he was 25, but I listen to it now thinking that he wrote it for me at this point in time. The immediate aftermath of the death of Kurt Cobain, it slowly killed grunge music. But interestingly, if you look at 1994 as a whole, a lot of those grunge bands had their most successful period as far as sales go during that year. Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, then later on Alice in Chains and Smashing Pumpkins released new albums that were huge successes. It's almost like the loss of Nirvana as a band left all of the grunge fans scrambling, looking to grab onto any of the other bands that were still there. The lasting effect of the untimely death of Kurt Cobain at 27, it's made him almost this mythical figure. I see so many people that have t-shirts with Kurt Cobain's face on them. There's one. There's a black and white photo I can see in my head right now of his face. And I see that on shirts. And it just reminds me of people that have the John Lennon shirts. Or Beatles in general. Or Doors shirts with Morrison's face on it. These people that cross over from just music to become these cultural icons. And I know that during the time that they were a band, Kurt Cobain wasn't a big fan of the overwhelming success. It's like he wanted to make his music, but also be kind of anonymous. And now in his death, he is so more famous than he was then. I started really diving into my writing as far as song lyrics and poetry went in the years after his death, trying to capture that teenage angst that he had so perfectly gotten down in these three-minute songs. I wanted badly to hold on to that feeling, even as his time on Earth faded further into the background. I mean, when I had my camcorder in the mid-90s, my friends and I did dozens of music videos that were Nirvana songs. They were fun, they were a little cheesy... But it was us trying to show our love for this person that influenced us so much and this band that influenced us so much. When I talk about Kurt Cobain, the music, the influence on me, it gets hard to sum it up, to keep on point. Like when doing this segment for a podcast, I can't just ramble for an hour. I mean, I can. But I want to try to keep it on point, targeted with a through line so that you can see what I'm talking about because I'm getting ideas of other things I want to bring into the conversation. When you're a teenager, it's hard to sometimes know who you are, who you want to be, what you're supposed to be. I mean, it's still that hard now in my 40s. Maybe that's just midlife crisis speaking. But when you find somebody in your teenage years that you feel comfortable speaks to you, speaks for you, you gravitate towards them. And it can be hard when those people that you gravitate towards you find are just very flawed human beings that just happen to be good at something that you appreciate. Kurt Cobain got hooked on drugs to deal with crippling stomach pain. And in the end, it was those drugs that caused his downfall. And suicide, it's not the answer. But even with all of those things, especially at the end of his life, all these red flags, I can easily look at the music and still feel that sense of belonging that I felt when I would listen to Nirvana. Ironically, I don't listen to Nirvana all that often now. And it might sound dumb, but it's almost like I don't want that music to lose the magic of For example, if you have, think of a favorite food, whatever it is, your absolute favorite food. If you were to eat that day after day, two, three times a day, eventually it wouldn't be your favorite food anymore. It would be just another thing. You'd get sick of it. That's kind of how I see Nirvana's music. I don't want it to ever become just another band because then it would cheapen everything it meant to me going through teenage years. I don't know if that makes sense to any of you out there. It's hard to believe that it's been 30 years, especially I described I can remember that day when I first heard about it. But a lot of times now, at this point in my life, I find myself saying I can't believe blank was that long ago. I often wonder what Kurt Cobain would be doing today if he was still alive. He'd be going on 57 years old. The rumors were he wanted to get more into kind of folk acoustic music. He was supposed to do some recordings with Michael Stipe from R.E.M. I could have easily seen Nirvana break up, Kurt Cobain make a few solo albums that were totally different than what the grunge sound was, being more like Neil Young. But then coming back around and having this big reunion tour, whether it's 10 years down the road, and just having this amazing resurgence. Look at what Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam has done. His solo work he does is so different from Pearl Jam. So I could kind of see Kurt Cobain being of that same ilk. But those of you that were Nirvana fans, that are Nirvana fans, that grew up then, do you remember that when Kurt Cobain died? And what do you think he would be doing today if he was still around? I think maybe today I will actually go on Spotify and play my Nirvana playlist just in honor of Kurt Cobain. And maybe I'll get some inspiration to write some new music. Not teenage angst, but midlife crisis angst. This week in history, we are going back 71 years ago to April 3rd, 1953 and the debut issue of TV Guide magazine. That first issue of TV Guide had a picture of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's baby on the cover with the caption, Lucy's $50 million baby. which referred to the marketing value of Lucille Ball's pregnancy on the I Love Lucy show. There are very few publications that have had as much influence and nostalgia as TV Guide. It came out right in the infancy of television and evolved alongside it, so they're considered forever linked like that. The magazine... played a pivotal role in shaping how Americans watch TV, what they looked for, but also reflected on just the cultural landscape of the nation. The magazine itself was the brainchild of Lee Wagner, who was a prominent advertising executive, and a man named Harry Warner Jr., who was the son of one of the founders of Warner Brothers Studios. And that first issue with Lucy and Desi's baby on the cover... kind of set the tone for the magazine's blend of program listings, just generic TV listings, but also celebrity profiles. As TV got more popular, TV Guide got more popular. By the 60s, it was a national publication. It was indispensable for millions of American households. This was long before TV listings that could be on your television were Do you remember the guide channels? I think there are still those that would just scroll what was on TV. Now on the smart TVs, you can just pull up what's playing on the channels currently. But back then, you needed either the newspaper listings or TV Guide. But TV Guide's significance extended beyond its role as just a programming guide. It was a cultural touchstone, chronicling the rise of television as the dominant form of entertainment. There were always insightful articles and interviews, behind the scenes features, so it was more than just what's on TV tonight. It was all encompassing. TV Guide, even more so, it became sort of a time capsule, capturing the zeitgeist of each era that it was sharing the TV listings with. During the 60s, it reflected the tumultuous social and political landscapes. In the 70s and 80s, it embraced the era of the sitcom, classic dramas, MASH, Dallas, All in the Family, Cosby Show. And these articles and such, they shaped how Americans consumed television. If TV Guide had an article behind the scenes about some new show, people were more likely to... give it a chance and you never know, it becomes a hit thanks to TV Guide's exposure. But as television changed, so did TV Guide. In 2005, the magazine underwent a significant transformation. It shifted from just the traditional listings to more in-depth articles and features. Naturally, as the internet rose, TV Guide had its own website. And then in 2008, TV Guide ceased the print edition of the magazine and went more to digital format. Have no fear though, TV Guide is still around. You can go to tvguide.com. I'll link to it in the description of the podcast if you want a dose of nostalgia. It's an amazing testament to TV Guide that despite the evolution of television and media consumption, TV Guide is still there. Sure, part of it is a symbol of a bygone era, a simpler time. but it's also managed to adapt and stay around for 70 years. TV Guide magazine stands as a monument to the golden age of television, and it's a cherished artifact of American pop culture. And that very first issue of TV Guide, with Lucy and Desi's baby on the cover, came out 71 years ago this week in history. Now it's time for a brand new time capsule. We're going to go back 30 years ago this week to April 5th, 1994, the day that Kurt Cobain passed away. Let's find out what was going on in the world of pop culture on that day. The number one song was Bump and Grind by R. Kelly. Boy, that hasn't aged well. This was off of the singer's 12-play album. Interestingly... It bumped Ace of Bases' song The Sign from number one, and then itself got bumped from number one by Ace of Bases' song The Sign. So it's like the meat in a The Sign sandwich. The 12-play album was a big hit, selling well over 6 million copies. The number one movie was D2 The Mighty Ducks, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing $4.08. This is the sequel to the original Mighty Ducks movie that then spawned an actual professional hockey team, the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, or the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. Yeesh. It starred Emilio Estevez as the coach of a junior hockey team. The film made over $45 million, but much like the original Mighty Ducks, it had a lot of negative reviews. It's 20% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. But for a lot of people that grew up at that time, it has a special place in everyone's heart. The number one TV show was Home Improvement. This is the show about Tim the Toolman Taylor, played by Tim Allen. The show was on for eight seasons from 1991 to 1999, with 204 episodes. I didn't really watch this show, but I remember it a lot for Jonathan Taylor Thomas being on the cover of so many teen girl magazines, me having three younger sisters. But it was a rating smash, finishing in the top 10 ratings all eight seasons. And if you were around back then, April 5th, 1994, you're into gaming... While there's lots of fun stuff you could possibly get, you've got to grab the Spring catalog from Electronics Boutique. You could get the 64-bit Atari Jaguar console for $249.99. I'm sure that console did well. There's all kinds of specialty controllers for different machines. Fighter Stick. SG Program Pad. But the highlight of this for me... is the state-of-the-art IMSI mouse. I-M-S-I. I don't know what that company is. This state-of-the-art mouse went for the cool price of $52.99 or about $111 when adjusted for inflation to 2024. Could you imagine paying over $100 for a mouse for your computer? Well, there you go. You can go do that at Electronics Boutique. Shout out to John for all the times that we spent hanging out there in the mall. But that'll wrap up another time capsule, another This Week in History. Speaking of stores that went out of business in the 90s, well, I don't know if Electronics Boutique went out of business then. But what we're going to do now is jump into the top five stores that went out of business in the 80s and 90s. Let's see all the warm and fuzzy memories and sadness this list will bring up. There are some stores, some companies that are so big that you could never imagine them going out of business. But changes in the landscape of shopping in the world, increasing competition, unforeseen circumstances, any of these things could come up out of nowhere and end the reign of a once giant company. We're going to be focusing this week on the top five on stores that went out of business in the 1980s and 90s. There'll be a lot of familiar names here, especially in the honorable mentions, because several of those were included in episode 129. That was my look at classic mall stores of the 70s, 80s, and 90s part one. That being said, the actual top five, I worked hard to make sure there wasn't a lot of crossover there. So let's get the memories going as we look at stores that went out of business in the 80s and 90s. As with all these top five lists, I've got some honorable mentions, and the top five itself is in no particular order. Honorable mentions for stores that went out of business in the 80s and 90s include County Seat, which was a clothing store founded in 1973, where at its peak it had more than 740 locations. They closed in 1999. There was Chess King, which was a men's clothing retail store. Founded in 1968 and grew to more than 500 locations. They went out of business in 1995. There was Kinney Shoes, which obviously was a shoe store. At its peak, it was the largest shoe retailer in the country. It was founded in 1894 and at its peak had more than 330 locations. And they closed in 1998. There was Photomat. which was a photo film development little kiosks. I did a whole segment on Photomat back in episode 37. They were founded in 1965, with at their peak having more than 4,000 of these kiosks in the United States. They were basically gone by the late 90s. And the final honorable mention is Tom McCann. They were a shoe store found a lot in malls. Founded in 1922, they had hundreds of locations around the country. They closed in 1996, but their shoes are still available either online through Amazon or at Walmart. You remember any of those stores? Did you go to any of those stores? Well, let's get into the actual top five, starting with number one, Zare. Zare was a discount retail store Mostly in the eastern half of the United States, which is why I remember them. We had a location in Hyannis on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. And ironically, that was the first Zayer ever. It was opened in 1956. Discount retail store. I mean, you kind of get the idea of what it is. Bradley's, Kmart, Woolworth. I don't know if it was quite like Job Lot, but that type of store. These stores were big. They were averaging up to 70,000 square feet. I don't remember offhand how big the one in Hyannis was. It was right near Main Street for those that are from Cape Cod. An interesting little subplot when it comes to Zare is that they technically are still around because in 1977, they also, the parent company, also opened a store called TJ Maxx. Increasing competition led to Zare's downfall. And ironically, in 1989, Zare merged with the TJ Maxx company. By 1990, all of these Zare locations had either been closed or rebranded as TJ Maxx. So it is interesting that Zare kind of still exists in the guise of TJ Maxx, which is still doing well today. Number two is Jordan Marsh. Here's another classic mall store, department store. When you think of mall stores of the 70s, 80s, 90s, Jordan Marsh is right up there. They actually weren't in my episode I did a few months ago. They're going to be in the part two. So this is kind of a preview. Jordan Marsh was founded all the way back in 1841. Eben Dyer Jordan and Benjamin Marsh. They were the ones that formed it in Boston. And think about that. Jordan Marsh went out of business in 1996. They were around for over 150 years. It was Jordan Marsh that established the department store shopping, being able to go in and shop for so many different things in different departments. It started as silk and linen and dry goods and evolved into what we who grew up then knew as the department store concept. Clothing, accessories, jewelry, shoes, usually toys, maybe home goods. All the way into the 70s and 80s, they expanded. There's the Enchanted Village that they used to do, which Jordan's Furniture, which is in New England, they still do. Jordan Marsh sadly got bought up by this larger company. They became part of this Allied Stores group, and that company got saddled with a lot of debt. which ended up leading to Jordan Marsh getting shut down. The Jordan Marsh brand was purchased by Macy's, with most of the Jordan Marsh stores being converted into Macy's in 96 and beyond. But you can still find their famous blueberry muffins, and the recipe survives all over online. I mean, we even made them at the restaurant that I worked at 10 years ago, Jordan Marsh Muffins. Number three is Gimble's. We just mentioned Macy's buying out Jordan Marsh. Gimble's was the rival to Macy's for decades. They were another department store that originally opened in 1842, so the year after Jordan Marsh. They survived until 1987. Adam Gimble was the man who began Gimble's. They started in Indiana and eventually at their peak expanded to more than 50 locations. They are credited with starting the original Thanksgiving Day parade that Macy's now does. Gimbel's started it first in 1920. Gimbel's was acquired in 1973 by Brown and Williamson, a subsidiary of British American Tobacco. And by the mid-80s, Gimbel's was seen as not profitable enough by this new company, so they decided to shut them down. Number four. is S.S. Kresge. Now, if that doesn't sound familiar to you, you may know the other store that's associated with the man S.S. Kresge, and that would be his Kmart stores. Sebastian Spirin Kresge opened his first Kresge's discount store in 1899. By the time he incorporated the S.S. Kresge company in 1912, that was 85 locations for that store. This Five and Dime store, they sold everything. If you're familiar with those, it's sort of like a dollar store is today. At its peak in 1940, there were 682 S.S. Kresge stores. In 1961, though, they opened the first Kmart store, and so S.S. Kresge started to lose its value. By 1987, there were only 76 Kresge stores left, and they all got sold off and were basically closed right after that. And finally, number five on the list of stores that went out of business in the 80s and 90s is one we have covered before, and that is Woolworth. The OG giant of five and dime stores. Every mall had one, it seemed, up until the early 90s. Woolworth was founded in 1879 by Frank Winfield Woolworth. Five and dime store, just like I said about Kresge's, kind of similar to Zayer. They sold a little bit of everything at very affordable prices, and they grew huge. By Woolworth's 100th anniversary in 1979, they were the largest retailer in the United States. And this is a time when there was Target, Walmart, Kmart, Sears. But of course, those other ones grew, continued to grow, while Woolworth's started to trend downward in the 80s. That rise in competition led to Woolworth being out of business in 1997. But the irony is, they opened the Foot Locker brand kind of under the umbrella of the Woolworth company, and Foot Locker is still around. So much like TJ Maxx with Zayer, Foot Locker is kind of a spiritual successor to Woolworth. But that's the top five. Stores that went out of business in the 80s and 90s. Do you remember those? Out of all of them, I don't remember Gimbels. We didn't have them in New England, or at least not on Cape Cod or Massachusetts. S.S. Kresge, I didn't really know. Obviously, Kmart was everywhere by the time I was growing up. But it's amazing to look at some of these stores that lasted over 100 years to just be gone. It just shows you that some stores are never too big to fail. Going out to eat is always a fun experience. Not having to do the cooking or the cleaning up after, trying different foods you might not normally try. Going out and getting a meal at a restaurant is all well and good, but nothing can compare to going to a buffet-style restaurant and getting several meals worth of food at once. For me, growing up on Cape Cod, we had the Old Country Buffet restaurant. One was located in Hyannis, and that was kind of a destination as a kid for a family meal, and then even later in through college to go there to eat as much as possible for one price. What I'm going to do for this Back in the Day segment is wax nostalgic a little bit about Old Country Buffet and my experiences there, but also review this training video that I found to give you a deeper appreciation for the carving station of Old Country Buffet. Old Country Buffet dates back to 1983. At its peak, there were about 370 locations in 36 states. The one in Hyannis on Cape Cod closed in 2010. If you go back on Google Maps to the oldest date you can find on there for that location, you can see the old country buffet. So it's recent enough that it's been captured on Google Maps. The parent company is Buffets Incorporated. That's the parent company. I guess it's appropriate. They filed for bankruptcy in 2008, which then started the downslide of how many locations there were. I don't know currently how many locations there are left of Old Country Buffet. An article from October of last year said there were 17. I'm looking, I don't see any. Although when I looked, I just found an Old Country Buffet with it spelled O-L-D-E, like it's a new franchise, with locations in South Carolina and expanding from there. Those of you familiar with old country buffet, do you remember you'd walk in, how many there were in your party, you'd have to go to the front desk there to whoever the host was. You would typically be seated, and then you were kind of left to your own devices. Even as a kid in my early teenage years going to country buffet, I knew not to waste my empty stomach on bread or salad. But it was a wonderland for a kid. There were all these counters with the steam trays in them with all different kinds of foods. And buffets are self-serve, so you had to show some kind of discipline to go up there, get a fresh plate, fill it with as much as you could fit. For me, typically it was the first two plates worth of food I could just whip through. Then your brain starts to catch up to your stomach. I think that's how it goes. You eat faster than you would normally eat. So you're full before your brain realizes it. My all-time favorite food there was the country fried steak. I'd stack those like poker chips on my plate. Smothered in that white gravy. Oh man. I can remember it being a family type restaurant. So you'd go in there. and eat at your table, your booth. But there'd be kids screaming everywhere, parents yelling. But it was a relatively affordable idea going to a buffet restaurant and hopefully feeding your kids so much that they'd be in a food coma so you'd get some free time at home. There was all the usual sides there. Mashed, coleslaw, mac and cheese. Does anyone remember, did they have baked potatoes, whole ones? different soups, like I said, salad, which I always skipped, different types of bread, rolls. The only thing you really couldn't control was the meat from the carving station. There you were left at the discretion of whoever was working at that station. You'd have to go and ask them, please, can I have some beef or ham? You'd have to listen to them tell you what they think would be enough for you. If you ever went to Country Buffet and were annoyed at the carving station people and their portion sizes, don't blame them, because this training video that I found explains it all. The video that I found is part of what must be a larger video, because it's just under 11 minutes long, and it basically cuts off in the middle of this person talking, but it also starts at what is said to be segment 3. This looks like it's early 90s, 92, 93, and it's focused on the carving station.

Speaker 00:

We'll begin with your second shift duty, greeting and serving guests. Good evening.

Speaker 01:

Fine enough to eat today? Boy, I'll say. Well, that's great. Would you care for some ham or beef? A little of both, I think. All right.

Speaker 02:

The man at the center of this carving video, his name tag says Fred. The neat thing about this... is that this Fred the Carving Guy has his own YouTube channel, which has this video on it. I don't know how long this total training video is. The segment that's uploaded, like I said, it's less than 11 minutes. The Carving Guy on his YouTube channel from 2021 said that he has the whole thing, and once he can get it I guess digitized, he's going to upload it. But that's over three years ago and it's not there yet. So I can only review what they have. The video, at least where it picks up, starts with a very friendly narrator telling the carver how to greet guests, including having Fred the carver say specific things that probably were ingrained into carvers at all the country buffets. Say these exact lines like this.

Speaker 00:

You might ask something like this. Is it still

Speaker 01:

hot out there? Or this. Did you catch a game last night? Or this. Have you tried the lasagna? It's my favorite.

Speaker 02:

And it explains how to start conversations with people, how to start conversations with kids. There's this little girl there holding her plate, looking just so awkward. They probably said, stand there and just smile. For those that went to Country Buffet, this video, it's a good slice of nostalgia because the carving guy, he's got his back to the mirrors and he's standing in front of his carving station with those golden heat lamps. When you see it, you'll remember it from going there. You also learn from the narrator that you're supposed to slice your meat dime thickness. Now, if you have a dime, turn it on its side. That's what they're supposed to slice and then tell you that it's more tender that way. Like they're going to fool you. But the narrator also says that if the guest insists on a thicker slice or tons of slices of meat, you have to give it to them. So Fred the Carver could say, I could cut you a thinner slice. Would you like that? And if you say, no, I want 15 inch thick meat. Just half the roast. Give it to me. They would have to do it. It's funny, in this video, there's these cutaways where it's like they either pause the video or slow the video down, so Fred the Carver is just staring at people. There is a lot of good, useful stuff in it. It explains how to use the steel to sharpen your knife, which anyone that's ever worked in a restaurant, you know that if you need to sharpen a knife, it can be kind of a pain. Literally, if you do it wrong and then slice yourself with a dull knife. Naturally, in the training video, they tell you to keep your station clean, clean it all the time, keep your trash can where people can't see it, because I know, who would want to see a full trash can next to the food or dirty rags? They go way into detail of how to make the illusion that you've given people more food than they have, depending on how much is on their plate, where to lay the meat to cover the most plate. I guess these are the tricks of the trade for country buffet. I

Speaker 00:

think

Speaker 02:

when I got sliced meat, I just basically went with whatever they said was enough. I wasn't looking to cause trouble there. They sum up this training video by saying it's all of your duties as a carver besides carving meat. including helping the other lines, setting them up if they need food, if you're not busy, how to clean your knife, sharpen your knife, clean the floor. The main point of being a carver or being an employee at Country Buffet, it says, is doing whatever it takes to make the guests happy.

Speaker 00:

Your final shift duty is doing whatever it takes to take care of the guests. At Old Country Buffet, serving guests is our number one priority.

Speaker 02:

I'm assuming that means within reason. I don't know what the limits would have been for satisfying the guests. Like I said, if I went up and requested half of the roast beef for myself, I don't know if they'd give it. They'd probably ask their manager to throw me out. The training video from Country Buffet, like I said, it's probably 92 or 93. And this segment of it, it's 11 minutes almost of Fred the Carver going through his daily duties. He's on camera the whole time. I am hoping that he uploads the rest of this. Maybe I'll have to message him on YouTube because I want to see the rest of Country Buffet, not just the carving station. That was where I spent the least amount of time. And it is funny because it literally cuts off with the narrator in mid-sentence.

Speaker 00:

Be aware at all times of where the guests' hands are. Without realizing it, guests may move their hands in the path of your knife. Keep an eye out for this.

Speaker 02:

So I do know there's at least a part after and had to be a part before. So if I find those, we'll revisit this in the future. In my college years, I remember Country Buffet being Kind of a meeting place for me and my friend Barry. You've heard about him a ton on this podcast, but he and I would go there. It was cheap and we could get tons of food, but we could claim a booth and we'd sit there and eat. Yes, but we would just talk and we'd go on these random tangents of this funny, foolish stuff that only he and I would understand. Okay, so I'll give you an example. So forgive me because most of you probably will wonder what the hell I'm talking about. There was a point in time that Old Country Buffet had a mascot, OCB. It was literally a big bee with the giant head. It had to be for kids. It sure wasn't for me. But there was one point, I was probably the one that started this up because I'm the crazier of Barry and I, but I made the joke. I said, I wonder who's under the bee head. Like if it's someone out on parole where they're looking to get back in the workforce and they said, you can go wear this bee costume in Old Country Buffet. So they're walking around Country Buffet in this bee costume and there's kids yelling and screaming, spilling drinks on them, maybe throwing food at them, drawing on them with crayons. And all the while under the head, this person is getting madder and madder until eventually they just snap and start throwing stuff. And Barry and I are sitting in this booth at Country Buffet and we're just telling this story of this Old Country Buffet mascot just going psychotic on everyone in there. It was one of those times we had so many times where we would just be in tears laughing at just the foolishness that we would come up with. Just each of us one-upping the other. Those are the lasting memories I have of Old Country Buffet. Are Barry and I there laughing during our college years? And the country fried steak, naturally. But more just the fun times. There were three total bankruptcies by Buffets Incorporated, with the last one being in 2016. There was also a 2010 salmonella issue at a Wyoming location, which, yeah, that's real good for PR. And there was a lawsuit and just such bad PR for Old Country Buffet in general. And as the 2010s went on, there was more of a concern about obesity. It's such a horrible problem in the world. You know, a third of people in this country, in the world, are so overweight. And buffets don't help. Believe me, when I went there, I would eat two, three plates worth of food that was enough for probably six people. And then the final straw really was COVID. A, because it just shut restaurants down in general. But B, even when they reopened, the idea of everyone sharing utensils, even though it was, I guess, as sanitary as it could be, Buffet restaurants have just started to fade away. They're not gone, but places like Old Country Buffet definitely are. I'll still remember the good times. Tons of food with family, foolish jokes and fun with Barry, and now this training video with Fred the Carving Man. I'll link to the video and his channel in the description to the podcast. And I'll let you know if in the future, if I reach out to him, if he uploads the rest of that training video, we'll have to have a part two of a visit to Country Buffet. But until next time, that will wrap up episode 139 of the podcast. Thank you so much to everybody for tuning in, for checking out my YouTube channel. I post segments from the podcast up there. I try to do one per week, a good video with lots of animations and such. I also do the full length podcast episodes. They're in video form, but it's just the audio with place cards for each segment. Anyone who used to use Google Podcasts to listen to the show, you can migrate over to YouTube Music. Wherever you listen to the podcast, I appreciate it. As always, if you want to become a subscriber on Patreon, you can do that. The link is in the description of the podcast, but it's patreon.com slash inmyfootstepspodcast. $5 a month gives you access to bonus podcast episodes, including the one that went up April 1st, early access to YouTube videos, early access to the main podcast. But if becoming a subscriber... isn't feasible for you, there's so much you can do to help spread the word of my work, my content. Just sharing the podcast, leaving reviews, ratings, wherever you listen to it. There's nothing better than having people who listen to your show, recommend it to others, review it, say it's worth checking out. Because I could always say that, and I'm going to say that. But it sounds better coming from neutral parties and not from me. Like I said at the top of the show, there won't be a new episode next week because I've got several projects I'm trying to wrap up. But there'll be a new show in two weeks, episode 140. That will be where I talk about Sears family portraits and the childhood portraits that I had that are definitely a slice of life from back in the early 80s. And I'll also be looking at the one of the most unlikely comebacks that's out there. That is the comeback of the Ames department stores. Not anything imminent within the next year, but they're supposed to be relaunching a few dozen brick and mortar Ames department stores within the next couple of years. So I'll give the story of Ames for those of you that don't remember that store. They went under over 20 years ago, so it's a whole generation that don't know what AIMS was. But all of that and more will be coming up in two weeks on episode 140 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Find me all over social media. Like I said, subscribe to my YouTube channel. I'm starting to do more YouTube shorts. They're basically, I'm doing Cape Cod Minutes. where I am filming with my phone just a video a minute from a location on Cape Cod and sharing it. It's so easy, but they're getting a lot of views, which is nice. It's always good when you can do content that doesn't take a lot of work. So go and check those out. Follow me all over social media. Coming up in a few weeks, April 20th, that's a Saturday at 11 a.m., I'll be speaking at the Dennis Public Library. It's an event for my Searching for the Lady of the Dunes book. So if you're interested in the book or the case itself, come on out and hear me talk about it. It's a great presentation with tons of information. I should know I have pages of notes to make sure I get everything right. And as more book events come around, as the summer gets into play, I'll keep you all updated if you're going to be on Cape Cod or in that area to come out to some of these book events. I know I say it at the end of pretty much every episode of this show, now 139 in, but make sure to take care of your mental health. Always look after yourself. I can only speak for me. There are times now here as I'm in my mid-40s that life feels like it's off the rails, out of control. Like I don't know who I should be at this point or who I am or where I should be going, etc. And it can get overwhelming. At times you feel like there's nobody to talk to, nobody who listens. In those times, that's when I lean into the things that make me happy. A lot of YouTube videos, a lot of nostalgia in the warm weather, a lot of just calming music and walking the bike trail. Boy, that's really old man stuff, but that's the stuff I lean into. And sure, you can say, yeah, everybody's got problems in life that they're going through. But just because everybody's got their own issues doesn't make yours any less important. Don't forget that. Don't minimize your feelings, your experiences to satisfy someone else or to not be a burden to someone else because you matter too. That's a big reason why I keep doing this podcast. It's my happy place. I hope it brings you some joy, some escape. And I'll keep on pumping out the content all across social media as much as I can with the time that I have available to me. But until next time, 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. Thanks again, everybody, for listening to the show. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, but you already knew that. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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