In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 155: Visiting the County Fair, 'And Then It Happened' Bus Safety Short Film Review, 1970s Teen Movies, Summer Jam Music Festival(7-31-2024)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 155

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Memories of visiting local county fairs. The 1970s teach you about bus safety. Some classic 1970s teen movies.
Episode 155 of the podcast is making a pit stop in the swinging 70s.
It all starts with the history and memories of county fairs. On Cape Cod, the Barnstable County Fair has been a summer staple for well over 150 years. What makes a classic county fair? Food? Rides? Music? We'll go into all of it.
Bus safety is hugely important. Children of the 1970s likely remember being scarred by the infamous and somewhat impractical short film ...and Then It Happened. We go way Back In the Day to try to figure out just how every possible bad behavior happened on a single bus ride.
What is considered a 'teen movie' grows and evolves over time. This week's Top 5 takes a look at some of the most well-known 1970s teen movies. Some make sense while others might not fit the typical mold of a teen movie.
There is also a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule centered around the historic Summer Jam music festival in New York in 1973.
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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 155. July is ending, it's almost the beginning of August, it's still the dog days of summer, and I've got a lot of nostalgia to unleash upon you all right here. Because it's that time of year, we're going to kick off the show with a look at the classic county fairs along with some history of the Barnstable County Fair, which I am quite familiar with and I'm sure a lot of you from Cape Cod are as well. We're going to go way, way back in the day and have another educational short film review. This is the bus driving safety film called And Then It Happened. We'll see how that goes. There will be a brand new top five that are the top five 1970s teen movies and there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule centered around the gigantic famous Summer Jam concert in upstate New York. All of that and more is coming up right now on episode 155 of the In My Footsteps podcast. So what are we going to talk about this week? about how July is ending when this podcast goes live. It's July 31st. Tomorrow is August. I don't know how 2024 has flown by so fast. I don't know about you. It's been a great year for me. A lot of successes, a lot of personal growth, a lot of good stuff like that. I set out on New Year's Day 2024 to make this year more like 2017 because that was the year that I last felt most like myself. Without getting too deep into details, I did a couple of bonus podcasts on the free tier of Patreon, and you can go and check those out, especially the one about my comeback race in May. That really goes over why I consider 2024 such a success and a monumental year. Speaking of Patreon, I wanted to thank my Patreon subscribers, Laurie, Mary Lou, Ashley, Kevin, And my newest Patreon subscriber, Marguerite, thank you so much for coming aboard. I hope you enjoy all of the bonus content over there. Dropping tomorrow from when this podcast goes live will be the newest monthly bonus episode of the podcast. I do a deep dive into an old blog that I used to do called Initial Impressions that was meant to be a sister blog to my In My Footsteps travel blog. And at times it was, but mostly it was a wacky slice of life with cryptic posts and oddball predictions. For those that are curious, here's a little clip from the episode that's dropping tomorrow about a visit to a small town in Maine on a trip that I made up there in 2010. But then we get a quote that would be perfect for a postcard for Gardner, where I say an old lady on Water Street who was just hanging around outside her apartment actually came up to me and said it would be busier if there was something fun to do in Gardner. That's a nice endorsement for your town. You just have that picture of the main street empty. Have the quote, Gardner, I wish there was something fun to do here. So yeah, the bonus podcast episodes, it's a lot of that type of stuff. Although this month's one is way more travel centric. So it's actually what it was intended to be. And I'm trying to add more free content to Patreon. I just did a bonus podcast episode about my second race of my comeback. I called it my flu game race. You can go and listen to that. It's about 20 minutes long. Thank you for watching. But it takes you, the listeners, to actually bring more people in. It's that spider web. And doing it now, this year, as I've switched over this podcast to mainly nostalgia, it makes me feel good that I made a good choice. Because a nostalgia-based podcast for Gen X, my age group, or people older and younger, you don't have to be Gen X, but that's got a lot more staying power and a lot more legs to it. So thank you again for listening, sharing, telling others, because the podcast seems to be growing and getting even more of a foothold as I get close to four years into this. So thank you all so much. And of course, I said I've switched this over to mostly nostalgia. And here we go. We're going to kick it off with something that'll be kind of Cape Cod-centric, but not quite. As we look at the county fair and memories for those of us that went to the county fair, a county fair, wherever you are. So let's buy our tickets and enter through the main gate and look at the county fair and its history. Coming up right now on episode 155 of the In My Footsteps podcast. There's a fair in the air, or at least there was a little bit before this podcast went live. County fairs are a quintessential part of American culture. They blend agricultural traditions, local community pride, a festive atmosphere into an event that draws millions of visitors to the various ones all across the country each year. Where I'm from, where I grew up on Cape Cod, we've had the Barnstable County Fair forever. Dating all the way back to October of 1844, when it was then known as the Barnstable Agricultural Fair and Show, and it was held for two days midweek on the lawn of the Barnstable Courthouse. The concept of fairs in general, they date back thousands of years. The earliest known fairs were in the Roman Empire and they were primarily trade events. Merchants would gather and sell their goods. The first official county fair, agricultural fair in the United States was not that far relatively from me in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1811. It was organized by Elkanah Watson, who was a prominent farmer and businessman. He envisioned a gathering where farmers could showcase their livestock, crops, farming techniques. And that vision caught on and it evolved into what we've got today. I'm assuming that the vast majority of you listening to this are familiar with and have probably gone to county fairs. But county fairs are typically held in rural or semi-rural areas, reflecting the agricultural origins. So if you live in a city or even a suburb, you may not have them, especially a city. There's no way you could put a county fair on, unless maybe Central Park in New York, maybe. The vast majority of county fairs are held in late summer, early fall. The Barnstable County Fair now as it is, is held in late July for a week. For those that go to the Barnstable County Fair now or in the last 20, 30 years, it's a very stable location and setup. You kind of know what you're getting. There's no real big deviation from the plan. When the county fair first started on Cape Cod, they tried to make it a Cape-wide event. 1851, it was held in Orleans. 1852, it was moved to Sandwich. Before ultimately going back to Barnstable in 1853 and being in front of the courthouse, which is now the business district of Barnstable Village. It's interesting to imagine there being dozens and dozens of acres of county fair land there. Back in the mid-19th century when these fairs were starting, those were far different than what you'd expect today with food and rides and music. Back then it was agricultural, and that was pretty much it. And it was an interesting dichotomy back then because the initial county fairs in Barnstable were seen as a success despite there being lackluster attendance because it was the advances in agriculture that helped local farms improve, which helps society in general. But that didn't really draw people if you weren't interested in that. Think about it. If you were going to a county fair and you were expecting rides and food and music, but it was all farm equipment, agricultural innovations, would you go? Back then, and even to this day with agricultural fairs, it's farmers bringing their best livestock, crops, other agricultural products to compete for ribbons and prizes. These county fairs kept plugging along, though, in the 1800s. In Barnstable by the 1860s, the county fair had grown in popularity, enticing people from as far away as Boston, Providence, and New York. So you know it had to be good because there were no cars back then, and the fair was still being held in October. So coming to Cape Cod in October from Boston, New York, or Providence, you must have had a winner on your hand then. That could only last so long, though. In the Barnstable County Fair, the 1870s, 1880s, the attendance dwindled more with local newspaper articles suggesting that changes were needed as the fair was not what it used to be, that the idea of it just being agricultural was starting to get stale and repetitive. I can only speak for the Barnstable County Fair and my research on it, but it seems that the change to the more modern idea of what the county fair is occurred in the first decade of the 20th century. They started to loosen up on what exactly were the attractions. The 1905 Barnstable County Fair had attractions like hot air balloons, parachute jumpers. And this being coupled with the innovation of the automobile and it becoming more accessible to more Americans made it where people could come from further away. So drives from New York to Cape Cod weren't quite as bad. In the years following World War I, the county fairs really caught their stride. This is where you started to get rides, the new innovation of the Ferris wheel, merry-go-rounds. There's roller coasters today. Today, there's newer, more adventurous rides, ones that I can't go on because I get the issues with equilibrium. Roller coasters make me sick. I'd end up being one that would have to ride one of those little kid roller coasters with the teacups or something like that. Feel real good about myself. And of course, there's the midway with the games that may or may not be rigged, but are likely rigged. I can't really dive deep into all these games and such. I would need a whole different segment on the podcast. But they got the things like the skeeball or the basketball or darts to pop balloons. the water rifles to fill up the balloon in the clown's head, things like that, where you win prizes that you could spend 50 cents and get it at a dollar store, but you end up spending 10 bucks in tickets on it. Of course, the food is my biggest thing. That's where I kind of take the restraints off as far as what I can eat. When you think of county fair food, likely the first thing you think of is fried dough. I bet you can smell it right now. Fried dough, corn dogs, funnel cakes, cotton candy, deep fried everything, Oreos, Twinkies. I remember going to the county fair in probably 2013 and getting an alligator sausage. and everybody else in my family being grossed out except for my nephew Liam, and he was probably six years old, maybe seven at the most, and he was willing to share my alligator sausage with me. Despite it seeming... stable and popular to this day. The Barnstable County Fair actually was shut down at one point in 1931. The profits weren't there. The attendance wasn't there. So after 87 years, the original Barnstable County Fair was shut down. There were attempts to revive it, 1932, 1939, but it just didn't happen. It seemed like there wasn't an audience for the Barnstable County Fair, which seems crazy to think about today. It did end up making its big comeback in 1954. when they moved the county fair from in front of the Barnstable Courthouse to Alto's Field at the corner of Route 149 and Race Lane in the village of Marston's Mills. For those that are not from Cape Cod, it's a very wide open area. Today, it's actually a golf course. That reopening on August 12, 1954 was a huge success, and that seemed to cement the Barnstable County Fair as being a summer tradition. This is where you started to see the dawning of more modern attractions, demolition derbies, tractor pulls. Some county fairs have talent shows, beauty pageants. I don't think we've ever had a beauty pageant at the Barnstable County Fair, but maybe I've missed it. And there's the main stage with musical acts of varying popularity and success. You get some local acts, but then you might get musical acts that were popular 20, 30, 40 years earlier. I remember years ago, the band Sister Hazel playing the Barnstable County Fair and me being there with my family, sisters and nieces and nephews. They played their biggest hit song, All For You, which I think was 1994. And I went rushing to the stage to record it with my phone. My nieces, Kaylee and Emma, were pretty embarrassed by me. Because this wasn't Jonas Brothers. This wasn't Taylor Swift. This was Sister Hazel 20-something years after they were relevant. And I was acting like it was Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk. It was in 1973 that the renegotiations for the lease of the Barnstable County Fairgrounds and Marston's Mills fell through. And they actually found a larger location on Route 151 in Falmouth. The Cape Cod Fairgrounds have been home to the Barnstable County Fair ever since, now over 50 years. That is the place that if you went to the county fair last week or whenever it was, or have gone to it any time in the last 50 years, that's the place that you've been going to, the Cape Cod Fairgrounds. And appropriately, the former grounds in Marston's Mills were turned into a golf course, as I said. Old Barnstable Fairgrounds Golf Course. Modern county fairs, Barnstable or wherever you may be from, they've evolved significantly since their inception. They're deeply rooted in the agricultural heritage. I mean, you can't walk around the fairgrounds of Barnstable County Fair and not smell like it's animals everywhere. But it's something that it's similar enough. Like if you were from anywhere else in the U.S. and you went to the Barstable County Fair and had never been there, you'd have kind of a good idea of what you would see. But then there's Cape Cod flavors to it. And I don't mean like lobster flavored ice cream, although they do have that. But it's things more akin to what we have here. And it'd be the same wherever you're from. Things that make it special and unique. For me, though, the Barnstable County Fair always brings back memories of childhood, of family, just good times exploring, laughing, lots of laughing, whether at me for my love of Sister Hazel or other things. It harkens back to a simpler time. The rides don't really change. The types of food don't really change. So it's like for a few days out of the year, you can step back into your childhood. Did any of you listening go to the Barnstable County Fair this year? Or wherever you're from, what is your county fair? I know off Cape, we have the Marshfield has a fair. Topsfield has a fair. There's King Richard's Fair, which is slightly different, more medieval. There's no shortage of awesome county fairs. So whether you live in the city or suburbs, you're probably not far from some kind of county fair. So get out there and get some fried dough and corn dogs and maybe an alligator sausage if you're really adventurous. This week in history, we are going back 51 years to July 28th, 1973 and the monumental Summer Jam concert held at Watkins Glen, New York. This was one of those spiritual successors to Woodstock, a giant festival-type concert. It was held at the Grand Prix Raceway in Watkins Glen, New York. All in all, an estimated 600,000 people attended this event, which actually surpassed the attendance of Woodstock. It was organized by Shelly Finkel and Jim Koplik. with Summer Jam featuring three of the era's most celebrated bands. There was the Allman Brothers. They were known for pioneering Southern rock. Despite the tragic passing of Dwayne Allman in 1971, the band continued on under the leadership of Greg Allman and Dickie Betts. At Summer Jam, they had extended cuts of songs like Whipping Post and In Memory of Elizabeth Reed. There was The Band. They were renowned for their distinct blend of rock, folk, and country, with their performance at Summer Jam marked by their normal, tight harmonies, masterful musicianship. They played their hits like The Weight, Up on Crippled Creek, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, and then there was The Grateful Dead. They were famed for their jam sessions, dedicated fan base. They played their hits like Truckin', Sugar Magnolia, and Casey Jones. Summer Jam at Watkins Glen holds a special place in music history, not just for its staggering attendance. Most cities and towns in this country don't have 600,000 people. In fact, the population of Watkins Glen as of 2022 was just over 1,800. More than the attendance, the concerts symbolize the zenith of the countercultural movement of the 60s and early 70s. Music, peace, communal living... It highlighted the power of live music performance, the communal experience of large-scale concerts, and some of the logistical challenges and successes of Summer Jam served as a blueprint for organizing large music events in the years to come. Another event that is intrinsically linked to Summer Jam is the disappearance of Bonnie Bickwit and Mitchell Weiser. They were high school sweethearts. that plan to hitchhike out to Watkins Glen to see this concert, but they never arrived. It's one of the longest cold cases in the country. I did a deep dive into this case and kind of my peripheral involvement with what's going on with it back in episode 114. About a year ago, Eric Greenberg, who's a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine, wrote an article about Summer Jam and the connection of the Mitchell and Bonnie case. He's got deep roots and deep connections to this case. But in the years since, nothing has happened. Even though the New York governor said they were going to open the case, kind of warm up the cold case, nothing has happened. So Eric Greenberg has revisited this story. And I got interviewed by him. I'm trying to help as best I can, kind of turning over stones that maybe he missed. I'll have more information about the Rolling Stone magazine article that's going to be coming out that I'm a part of. And if anything comes up with the case of Mitchell Weiser and Bonnie Bickwit, obviously I'll share it on the podcast. Summer Jam concert at Watkins Glen, it remains a landmark event in the annals of rock history with Allman Brothers, the band, the Grateful Dead, hundreds of thousands of people. and even an underlying mystery. And that famed concert with 600,000 people happened 51 years ago this week in history. Oh, it's time for a brand new time capsule. We're going to stick with the date of Summer Jam, July 28th, 1973. Let's see what was going on in the world of pop culture back then. The number one song was The Morning After by Maureen McGovern. The song was actually written for the movie The Poseidon Adventure and won an Oscar for Best Original Song. Based on that success, Maureen McGovern recorded a single version of it, and that went to number one, staying there for two weeks. McGovern's success as a singer seems to be tied to movies and television. Like I said, the Poseidon Adventure for The Morning After, We May Never Love Like This Again from The Towering Inferno in 1974, and different worlds for the television show Angie. The number one movie was Enter the Dragon, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing $1.77. Famed martial artist and actor Bruce Lee had died just over a week before this time capsule. He was only 32 years old. Enter the Dragon is Bruce Lee's most well-known film. It's the most successful martial arts movie ever. It grossed $400 million on a budget of $850,000 when adjusted for inflation to 2024. This movie is definitely one I was super excited to be able to talk about. It's kind of a rite of passage movie for all young boys growing up to see Bruce Lee and Enter the Dragon. The number one TV show was the Major League Baseball All-Star Game. The National League All-Stars defeated the American League All-Stars 7-1, with the game being held at Royals Stadium in Kansas City. The big heroes for the National League were Johnny Bench and Bobby Bond, who each hit home runs. Rick Wise would be the winning pitcher for the National League side, with the American League side seeing Hall of Fame pitchers Burt Bleileven and Nolan Ryan both get smacked around by the National League All-Stars. And if you were around back then, July 28th, 1973, you're out at the movie theater watching Enter the Dragon. Well, who's going to answer your phone if you're not there? You need an answering machine. So why not get yourself a phone mate answering machine at Jordan Marsh? Yes, I was surprised too that they had answering machines in 1973. I thought that was more of an 80s thing. The phone mate is the typical answering machine. record your message, have a regular sized audio cassette in there. It'll only cost you $129.95 or $919.53 when adjusted for inflation. Could you ever imagine paying over $900 for an answering machine? I think you could pay someone less money to sit at your house and answer the phones for you when you weren't home. That'll wrap up another time capsule, another This Week in History. We're going to stick with the 70s, though, a lot of 70s this week, as the new top five is going to look at some of the best 1970s teen movies. So you out there that grew up in the 70s, let's see if we can bring back some more memories for you. It's interesting doing my research for this top five segment and seeing what others considered a teen movie in the 1970s and how it kind of differs from teen movies of the 80s, 90s, 2000s. Back in episode 133, I did a segment on the top five 1980s teen movies. So if you want to go check out what was on that list, you can. I had a few movies in mind when I started making this list. I mean, I was born in the late 70s, so I don't have any memories of these when these movies came out. But I think you'll agree at least most of these you'll have a lot of memories of. There are a couple movies specifically in the honorable mentions that when I saw people refer to them as teen movies, I said, you got to be kidding me. No way. And then I did more research and more thinking. And I said, you know, you're actually kind of right. As with most of these top five lists, there are honorable mentions, and the list itself is in no particular order, so let's just jump right in without further ado. The honorable mentions for 1970s teen movies include Saturday Night Fever, which came out in 1977, Rock and Roll High School, which came out in 1979, Cooley High, which came out in 1975, and is not the inspiration for Boyz II Men's album Cooley High Harmony, which I thought at first. The last two honorable mentions are the ones that I couldn't believe they thought were teen movies, and that's Carrie, which came out in 1976, and Halloween, which came out in 1978. But when you think about it, high school prom and Carrie, high school friends, babysitters and Halloween, they're teens. So it actually, when you think about it, Halloween and Carrie actually are 70s teen movies. I don't know. I guess I just don't see horror movies as being teen movies, at least back then, but I guess so. So those were the honorable mentions. Let's get into the actual top five. I have a feeling you'll at least have heard of all of these, if not seen them once or several times. We'll start it off with an all-time classic. Number one is Grease. This is a classic 1978 musical romantic comedy starring John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John. It centers around Travolta, who's a greaser, and Olivia Newton-John, who's an Australian transfer student that develop a summer romance. The movie itself made $396 million in 1978 on a budget of $6 million. It was nominated for five Golden Globe Awards and is a movie that I know all too well from having three younger sisters that love the soundtrack. I think I've seen Grease all the way through once. But the fact that I had three sisters meant that I saw bits and pieces of the movie or heard songs from the movie hundreds and hundreds of times, which is why it was the first movie I thought of with 1970s teen movies. There was a 1982 sequel, Grease 2, that was not as successful. and is widely seen as one of the worst sequels ever made in history. It's like Jaws the Revenge, terrible, just with singing and not people getting eaten. Speaking of getting eaten, number two is Meatballs. This is a 1979 comedy. It was the first major starring role for Bill Murray. Bill Murray plays a counselor named Tripper. He's the head counselor at a budget summer camp called Camp North Star, but he is the classic young at heart, barely more mature than the campers that come to the Camp North Star. The movie made $70 million on a budget of just over $1 million, and for a time it was the highest grossing Canadian film in the United States ever. It was also directed by Ivan Reitman, and this movie led to the collaboration of Reitman and Bill Murray on Stripes and Ghostbusters. So you have meatballs to thank for that. Number three is American Graffiti. This is a 1973 film based in 1962. And it's the last day of summer vacation in California, and three friends are cruising around listening to Wolfman Jack. Well, he's not called that, but the DJ on the radio. It stars Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Harrison Ford's in it. It was directed by George Lucas and produced by Francis Ford Coppola. So, I mean, you talk about heavy hitters in this movie. It's 95% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. The soundtrack for the movie was a rare double album with 41 songs on it. All these classic late 50s songs. The movie made $140 million and obviously made stars out of Richard Dreyfuss. Ron Howard was already kind of one. Harrison Ford. That led kind of to his inclusion in the original Star Wars series. And so much of that started right here. Number four is Freaky Friday. This is a 1976 comedy starring Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris as a mother and daughter that switch bodies on Friday the 13th. Back then, this was a novel idea for movies, but as you know, in Hollywood, anything original gets overdone. So there have been so many movies about body swapping or young people that get old or old people that get young. This Walt Disney production had a lot of good kind of fish out of water comedy, but it's where both the mother and daughter realize the problems that each other goes through in their daily lives. So it makes them appreciate each other more. The concept, though, of Freaky Friday has been done so much now since then that you can Google search body swap comedies and they actually have a listing for it. So that's how much it's been done. Like Father, Like Son, The Hot Chick, Change Up, remakes of Freaky Friday, 18 Again, Dream a Little Dream, and so forth. And finally, number five on the list of top five 1970s teen movies, one that is near and dear to my heart, and that is Animal House. This is a 1978 comedy, one of the best comedies ever, at least in my opinion. John Belushi stars in it as Bluto. Tim Matheson, Kevin Bacon. It's about two freshmen in college pledging to the more snooty elitist fraternity and getting rejected, but getting accepted by the lower class fraternity and the shenanigans that occur between the two fraternities. An interesting point is that this movie was also based in the 1960s, 1962. So that means three of the top five I had here were movies in the 70s based in the 60s or 50s. Animal House has so many classic scenes, classic lines. When it comes to my own childhood, Animal House is the first movie where I ever saw nudity in it. There's a scene where John Belushi's on the ladder, looking in a window at a girl in there, and he kind of turns to the camera and does the eyebrows. I was probably 11 years old. I'm trying to remember who the friend was where we watched the movie, and I don't want to name names if it's the wrong person. And being 10, 11, 12 years old, again, it goes back to the time I grew up in. I was able to rent horror movies. Somehow I was able to rent Animal House. That movie was a huge success, a big part of my lingo in 5th, 6th grade. And that'll also wrap up the top five 1970s teen movies. Have you seen any of these or all of these? Grease, Meatballs, American Graffiti, Freaky Friday, Animal House. I'll be honest, I've never seen Freaky Friday, the original. But since I've seen enough body swap comedies, I get the gist of what it's all about. Let's go from 1970s teen movies to another 1970s educational short film as I review And Then It Happened coming up right now. A favorite new addition of mine to the podcast in the last year has been the short film reviews, whether educational short films or funny and odd employee training videos. Both of these are such unique, niche type topics with the employee training videos being things that likely none of you have seen, so it's all brand new. But the educational short films might be something you're familiar with from school, growing up in the 60s, 70s, 80s. What we're going to do for this latest installment of educational short film reviews is check out the 1972 short film, And Then It Happened. It's an 18-minute school bus safety film written and directed by Gene Starbecker. In the description of this video, it ominously says that the film follows the last bus rides given by two of the safest bus drivers, Wally Vega and Emma Hammer. So what makes this their last ride and what makes up bus safety in 1972? Well, let's check out And Then It Happened.

Speaker 01:

Is my mom's name Matt?

Speaker 02:

film has got that classic slightly faded gritty early 70s look and it's kids on a bus talking singing the bus is going down kind of a rural road it's so rural that they're beeping the horn to get a kid to come running out from behind a farm playing with cows And the kid tries to get on the bus and he immediately gets yelled at by the bus driver because he didn't wipe his feet before getting on the bus. So there's the first bus safety tip and rule. Wipe your feet.

Speaker 01:

Hey, hey, you want to wipe your feet? Come on, wipe your feet. Don't take a shortcut through the cow pass, kid. I didn't finish my chores in town, okay? You make me late every day. Go sit down. I'm sorry.

Speaker 02:

The kid gets yelled at by the bus driver more, which says, you make me late every day, and kids on the bus are throwing papers at him. Well, this is starting off feeling real good. And this is where narrator Richard Fonda comes in to tell the story of Wally Vega, the bus driver, who's a jerk to the kids, but for some reason he's the safest driver. This is the part where the narrator says ominously that during this bus ride, five of the students will cause an accident that will injure 10 students. So you know something bad's coming. As Wally heads to the back of the bus to yell at kids for smoking. Wally yelling at the kids is spliced in with an ambulance and a fire engine on the road. So you know this is foreshadowing. For being considered the safest bus driver, Wally gives off the air of being kind of a comedy caricature that you would see in the movies. He's younger, he's probably in his mid-30s, and he's got this checkered hat on like he's going hunting. And as Wally picks up more kids and yells at more kids, he seems to yell at every kid that gets on the bus. But the narrator again comes on ominously saying that innocent horseplay is going to lead to an accident. The more I listened to Richard Fonda, the narrator, the more I thought he sounded familiar, like he did voiceovers for horror movie trailers in the 1970s and 80s. So I stopped and looked it up. Richard Fonda is not that guy. It's a guy named Don LaFontaine. So if you go and play the original Friday the 13th or Part 2 or 3, the voice behind those, that's who I thought this Richard Fonda was, but it's not.

Speaker 00:

Friday the 13th. You may only see it once, but that will be enough.

Speaker 02:

They go around the bus and the kids are all talking about different things. And it's a very slice of life from the time, the early 70s. They're all dressed like you would expect teenagers in the 70s to be dressed. They go around and one of the kids got a switchblade. So it goes from innocent talking to someone's got a knife. They've been smoking on the bus. They had Playboy magazine on the bus. This is where the narrator comes on and talks about that problems kids have at home can lead to them acting up when they're together and on the bus. Because you've got one kid talking about her parents might get a divorce and it's like they trip some kid going down the aisle. We get more shots of the ambulance driving down the street. At this point, I can't tell if it's one of the kids that's in the stretcher or not. We flash back to the bus and now Wally's back yelling at the kids because somehow there's a dog on the bus, which you never saw during this film at all. And suddenly there's just a dog there. Like on one hand, it's very serious and very ominous. And on the other hand, it's like a low budget comedy movie that's super random. Then the moment of truth happens. Two kids are fighting over a Walkman playing music. And there's another girl that's mad because one kid's playing his music super loud. So she then yells, I can play mine loud. So now the bus is filled with loud music. And that's when a whole rumble breaks out. including the kid that has the switchblade pulling it on someone. And Wally's distracted. And this is where the bus gets broadsided by the ambulance and its slow motion of kids flying through the air. The narrator blames several of the students for what they did to cause this accident because Wally couldn't hear the siren. And now the bus is on its side. There's kids with blood. It's very serious now. The narrator gives all the statistics about school bus accidents and how it's going to get worse. And that's layered over kids getting pulled from the bus. The original Walkman that started everything is laying on the ground playing music and there's just a hand hanging above it, which is pretty creepy. So that ends the first half of this short film. Then we open up on the bus yard where all the buses are. Emma, the other bus driver now, pulls up and she's surprised that the students dedicated the yearbook to her, which is definitely weird to dedicate your yearbook to a bus driver. Now the narrator switches to talking about how school bus drivers, when they're polled annually, say that behavior on buses gets worse every year. My sister Kate was a bus driver for a few years. Maybe she can attest to that. I know she said She would have most of her students were great, but there were a few that were troublemakers. But I think that's how it is everywhere. I remember my school buses being the same way when I was riding them, not driving them. This now we're getting introduced to kids leaving school and getting on Emma's school bus. And we're seeing the ones that will likely cause problems on the bus ride, including the super cool kids that go right to the back seat. That would have been me. Either the regular seat or the one that was on the right side of the bus that was the one or two seater. Emma is definitely a much more friendly bus driver, although she does have to yell at a kid who's getting dragged out of one of the windows. There are points in this film that it feels like they took every worst case scenario horror story of what kids could do on a bus and they put it all into one film. Like that's how it always is. Like they have the kids getting on the bus, filling up the bus, and then suddenly someone opens the back door from the outside trying to get into the bus that way. Like any of you that ever rode the bus remember any student doing that ever? But yet it's right here in the film where Emma, the bus driver, has to go run and yell at them. And then kids are trying to steal the keys of the bus, but she was smart enough to take them with her. Again, this is like the worst case scenario stuff in every moment of this movie. The kid that was trying to come in the back of the bus has to come around the front. And when he gets on the bus, all the kids have this song they're singing to him. And he's just shoving people as he goes by. See? Now as all the buses get ready to leave, there's dangerous music playing for the first time. As they're showing the kids on the bus as they're driving, you can tell that the vast majority of them are not high school age kids. Some of them look like they're late 20s. Especially the ones that are passing out pills in the back of the bus. Then we get these idiot kids that go up to the front of the bus and stand there because they think it's like a town bus. They tell the driver to open the door because they want to get off here and just walk. It just turns out that these two kids are likely boyfriend and girlfriend and want to go walk in the woods to make out, but the bus driver ruins it because the boy gets mad and says she spoils everything. It's like people that talk about young people today and problems on the bus. This is stuff in the 70s that they were saying was common or at least happened a little bit. Now we've got two kids making out on the bus and Emma the bus driver is yelling at them that she's going to tell the girl's mother. But then the narrator gets real serious because shoving starts and he says, see if you can tell what's going to start a chain of events that leads to Emma's death.

Speaker 01:

Watch now and see if you can detect the seemingly innocent factors that will cause Emma's death.

Speaker 02:

The bus ride continues, though, and then Emma gets the alert from one of the other kids that those ones that were sharing the pills in the back of the bus, one of them is ODing on the bus. Luckily, a cop that she knows is passing by, so she flags down the cop to try to help. So the cop comes aboard and takes the kid off the bus through the back that had been taking the pills. He gets put in the back of the police car. But then the real trouble happens. Kids are looking at nudie magazines standing up. And there's a box with a little animal in it. It ends up being a little white mouse. And then that gets free. So now everyone's freaking out. And one of the kids grabs the white mouse and brings it up to Emma and puts it in front of her and she faints while driving and the bus is just careening all over the road.

Speaker 01:

What could possibly be causing all that riot?

Speaker 02:

bus ends up going off the road and rolling down a hill. And as the bus is rolling in slow motion, kids are flying around and the narrator is now naming all of the kids that contributed to this problem. This one's way more serious because the bus ends up inside a body of water, a lake, a river. They're It ends with the police saying they were lucky that most of the kids were able to get out on their own. But Emma, the bus driver who had passed out, she did not make it. And it ends really creepy. It's almost like the end of Psycho. They're towing the bus out of the water like when they were towing the car out of the swamp.

Speaker 01:

Check it out! We're lucky most of them were able to get out.

Speaker 02:

This one actually has some credits at the end where it shows the schools that they were filming from, all in the Washington, D.C. area. It's definitely an effective film, although I could see being a kid in school, especially at the time, loving seeing all the troublemaking kids and maybe not being as affected by the accidents, because you figure it's not going to actually happen to you. I don't ever remember having any incidents with my bus riding days in school. The worst we would have was the drills on how to get off the bus, climbing out the back. A couple of kids would help, and the driver would help lower people down out of the back door. But this film here, and then it happened. It's nowhere near as graphic as Red Asphalt was, but there is some blood that I could see being a bit much for kids if they're 11, 12 years old, especially back then in the 70s. If you like this type of nostalgia, you should go check out the full film. It's about 18 minutes, 1972. So in a shocking turn of events, I went on to IMDb to look up the actors that played Wally and Emma the bus drivers. Josh Mostel, who played Wally, later on was in Billy Madison. He was the principal that was also formerly a wrestler. So now you can watch this film with whole new eyes. He's got 69 acting credits, and it starts with And Then It Happened, the bus safety short film. Peggy Pope, who played Emma the bus driver, she has 70 acting credits, including 9 to 5, The Last Starfighter, So there you go. Actors that went on to at least have successful careers and a film that's definitely fun to check out, a fun slice of life, and to see all of these worst case scenario things that could happen on a bus all being in the same short film. That is And Then It Happened. But until next time, that'll wrap up episode 155 of the podcast. I say it all the time, but I mean it. Thank you so much to everyone who listens, who shares, telling others to come and check out my work. That's the way you get more eyes on it. Content creators rely so much on their viewers. I can promote my show until I'm blue in the face, and I do, and all other content creators do or should. But having their listeners tell others, you need to check out this thing because I think it's good, that does more than anything. And I'll keep pumping out the content. Next week is episode 156. We're going to look back 30 years at Woodstock 94. We're going to go way, way back in the day and look at the very first reality TV show, Candid Camera. There'll be a brand new top five of the weirdest Atari games ever released, and there are some weird ones. So all of that's coming up next week on episode 156 of the In My Footsteps podcast. The day before that podcast goes live, August 7th. On August 6th, I'll be speaking at the Payamette Theater in Truro, Tuesdays under the tent. I'll be speaking about the history of Cape Cod music. It's a morning event. I think it's 10 a.m. So if you're in the area, come and check it out. I'm going to have books for sale. This is a brand new presentation they asked me to do. So it was kind of like a homework assignment, but it came out really well and I can't wait to share it. So that's Tuesday, August 6th, 10 a.m. Pay him at Theater in Truro. Come on out. If you're interested in any of my nine books, visit my website, ChristopherSetterlin.com. It's got links to all the books. You can also visit TheLadyOfTheDunes.com. Last week's podcast was the 50-year anniversary week of The Lady of the Dunes murder mystery murder case. And if you're unfamiliar with it, go check out that podcast last week or visit theladyofthedoons.com. It's got Frank Durant's amazing documentary. It's got a link to buy my book, Searching for the Lady of the Dunes, and all kinds of information about the case itself. I wanted to take a few moments to wish a special 40th birthday to my twin sisters, Lindsay and Ashley. They are twins. They're not my twins. It's amazing how time goes by, and even if you take the time and make the time to have all these memories and times with people, friends, family, time still goes by. I put together a video for them that I shared on Facebook, and I went through so many photos, videos, memories to put together, and there are just so many times with me, with Lindsay, Ashley, with our sister Kate, That's always been the home team throughout all this. I always knew I could count on my three sisters. And they knew they could count on me. And I hope they could count on each other. You know, my mother used to say to us when we were young, because we'd fight all the time. She would say, at some point, you're going to be all each other has. And I think of that as I get older, as I lose grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends. How right my mother was. And here, as it's their 40th birthday, it's a reminder to not let stupid, petty things divide people. The old don't go to bed angry line. Because when I say you never know what tomorrow brings, you don't. So being angry over stupid crap, it's just not worth it. So happy birthday. I love you both. I'm there for you both. Like you're there for each other. Like we are there for our sister, Kate. It's part reality, part willing it into existence. But I hope that year 40 is the best one yet for you both. As for the rest of you listening, it's the same thing. Make time, lean into what makes you happy. Friends and family, whether it's in-person visits or they got FaceTime or email or something. Always focus more on things that make you happy rather than dwelling on stupid crap that just drags you down. Worrying is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere. But thank you again for tuning into the In My Footsteps podcast. Remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path. And enjoy every moment you can on this journey, because like I said, you never know what tomorrow brings. I am Christopher Setterlund, and you already knew that. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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