Episode 5: A Lost Lighthouse, Chatham Ma., New Year's Rockin' Eve, This Week In History (12-31-2020)

The New Year's Eve episode of the podcast begins with a little look back at the less-than-stellar year that was 2020 and the things that helped me get through it.
We'll take a Road Trip to the elbow of Cape Cod, Chatham, Massachusetts.  It is historical, quaint, and filled with shopping.  Chatham has tremendous beaches including one in front of Chatham Lighthouse.  There is the iconic Chatham Bars Inn, Chatham Squire, and so much more.  Get a crash course in what makes it so popular with visitors and locals alike.
Next is the story of a lost Cape Cod lighthouse.  For decades a lighthouse watched over Wellfleet Harbor at Mayo Beach.  It was decommissioned and sold.  What happened to it after it was sold is amazing.  Find out In Their Footsteps.
We go way Back In the Day to reminisce about the days of watching Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve.  For kids of the 1980s through today, New Year's Eve is a chance to get to stay up late, which is always fun.
This Week In History explores when three lighthouses were built on the Eastham coast on Cape Cod.  The Endangered Species Act helps to protect animals in danger of extinction.  Thomas Edison unveils his incandescent light bulb to the masses, and the O.G. of children's television makes its debut.
All of this and more is here in Episode 5, so come and take a walk!

Check out Episode 4 here.

Transcript

00:00 Intro

Hello world and happy New Year's Eve welcome to the In My Footsteps Podcast this is episode 5 for December 31, 2020 my name is Christopher Setterlund. Well everyone we've made it, we've made it to the end of what might be the worst year in our lifetimes 2020. It's literally like a horror movie where you keep thinking things have ended and then the villain pops up and there's more bad stuff that keeps going on. Wow this year is like 10 years worth of horribleness all wrapped into 1. This podcast I created, well it became an idea back in September, and it was supposed to be an escape for me and for any of you that are listening from the terrible year that is and was 2020 and I was actually debating not doing kind of a year in review for this podcast but then I was thinking. Many years from now when kids are learning about this year in school I want to have something that if someone wants to listen to this it's kind of a time capsule also where you're living history right now so I figured why not drop a little bit of how my 2020 was and then maybe any of you that are listening you can shoot me an email. christophersetterlund@gmail.com let me know if your 2020 was as great as mine I'm sure I'm sure it was. 

Starting up this will tell you this will sum up 2020 really quick so in full disclosure I'm also a personal trainer I worked in gyms for a few years and I wasn't getting enough hours so it became kind of a problem financially so I started doing in home training but as I was building the in home training clientele I also needed a full time job so I got a job doing 5 days a week and that kind of made it difficult to also do training and do writing and such which I really enjoy. For 2019 I was basically working 3 jobs which is not good for not getting burned out so when 2019 ended I decided I would try to cut back on my work my full time job so I could focus more on the training and more on the writing. And so I got a new job which was cut back hours wise. I started there the first week of February this year and within one month COVID-19 broke out and I couldn't train anyone in home and the world went to hell that was a good way to start a new job. 

And obviously all of us we've paid attention we know how bad this pandemic is banned my grandmother who's 92 years old she's been living in a local nursing home for a little over a year and she's been exposed to the virus 5 times and she's tested negative every time because she's Italian and she's just stronger than most people but that's stressful, every now and then it's like oh she's gonna get tested again because she's been exposed again and it's just it's rough. That's just a commonality now.  I've got friends and people that I've known you know that 6 degrees of separation people that have had the virus and it's terrible and it sucks and obviously this this year there is it feels like time has stood still but it's also sped by. 

I can't believe that it's new year's eve it feels like just last week I was taking my new camera out and doing some night time photography going around and taking these really cool shots and feeling like all this is going to be something great for the summer and then nope. This summer was spent hunkered down but that leads to one of the highlights of the year which has been the binge watching and finding new things to watch on YouTube. If I can give you a 1 suggestion of something to watch it would be the Buzzfeed Unsolved channel on YouTube Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej those guys are great they do true crime they also do some supernatural stuff those are really fun you go down the rabbit hole I watched like 100 videos of theirs and they also have a a side channel called Watcher and those are fun to I can't recommend them enough.

I said that 1 of my MVPs of 2020. Another one of my MVPs of this year. Is my little niece Sylvie who she's not even 2 years old yet. My sister Ashley one of my sister she's a preschool teacher and lucky for her she gets to teach and keep an eye on my little niece Sylvie who is the daughter of my brother Matt and his wife Erin and after work sometimes my sister will bring her to my mother's house and wait for Erin to come and pick her up and I found that out so now I make it a point to be over there every week to spend some time with her because she's the youngest of my nieces and nephews and having a little dose of cuteness and sweetness in your life for a year that is just awful and terrible that's the kind of stuff that stands out and I'm sure all of you have that to dealing with this crap year there's got to be something in there the silver lining where it makes it where you can just get through another day and just looking for the light at the end of the tunnel and for me one of those is little Sylvie so I wanted to make sure I mention that so that she hears this when she gets older and knows how much fun I had spending time with her. 

So 2020 is ending at midnight tonight I have pretty high hopes that 2021 will be better than this year I don't know how it could get much worse but you know that's always knock on wood hopefully that's not true but I'm so glad that you folks have come and join me for episode 5 of the In My Footsteps Podcast thank you so much to everyone who has listened to and downloaded and shared the first 4 episodes. Episode 4 was my most downloaded episode in its first week which really makes me excited that this is starting to gain traction and I've got a lot of great ideas coming up for 2021. The first plan is going to be more episodes obviously I've been doing every other week here trying to get a feel for how much work goes into these and it is a good decent amount but for 2021 my plan is to do 3 weeks on 1 week off and that'll start in 2 weeks time 1/14/2021 with the first of this new format but enough about that.

So today episode 5 we're going to learn the story of a lost lighthouse on Cape Cod we're gonna spend some time at the elbow of the Cape in Chatham Massachusetts we're gonna stay up until midnight and wait for the ball to drop with Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin Eve and what it was like to watch that as a kid. And they'll be this week in history including finding out that it was finally Howdy Doody time among other things this is episode 5 of the In My Footsteps Podcast and come on let's go take the last walk of 2020.

08:13 Road Trip: Chatham, MA

It's road trip time again. It'sNew Year's Eve we're gonna take a road trip to one of the crown jewels of my home Cape Cod Massachusetts we're going to be going to the town of Chatham the elbow of the Cape. I chose Chatham for this episode of the podcast coinciding with new year's eve because as far as celebrations on the Cape go Chatham was always the 1 that has the best first night festivities. Granted in 2020 it's not going to be the same but I figured it's a perfect excuse to talk about 1 of my favorite places not just on the Capebut New England in general.

Chatham is a perfect mixture of history and recreation and shopping and culture and everything that you want in a place that you would visit on a vacation for me if I was going to be going here I would start with Chatham lighthouse it is easily my most photographed spot on earth. Now granted I haven't been that many places on earth but I have hundreds and hundreds of photographs of Chatham lighthouse. Originally there were 2 Chatham lighthouses. They were wooden ones and do a rotation on the cliffs the first 2 lighthouses collapsed and they were just allowed him to fall into the water. They were replaced in the 1880's with 2 cast iron towers that's what I mentioned earlier in the Mayo Beach piece, cast iron towers they were the common ones back then. And there were 2 of these cast iron towers surrounding a Coast Guard station in 1923 one of these lighthouses was dismantled and shipped up to Eastham where it now resides as Nauset Lighthouse. 

Chatham light faces lighthouse beach and lighthouse beach is an excellent place to go for sunrises or sunsets. The sun will rise over the Atlantic Ocean and it's great because the fishing boats that head out the pass right under the sun as it rises they come from the area right up the road to Chatham fishing pier that's another spot you go there the seals and sea gulls are everywhere. Seals wait for the fishing boats to come back and catch any cast offs that may be tossed off of the boats. The Chatham fish pier besides being a a tourist destination to take pictures of the seals and see the boats it's also the Chatham fish pier is a market where they sell fresh seafood and that's another destination. 

In Chatham it's on shore road which I think is 1 of the best drives on Cape Cod as far as the scenery it's got these rolling hills and on the left if you're heading north there are these big homes that face the water and on the right is the water itself 1 of the crown jewels of Cape Cod is the Chatham Bars Inn which is also on Shore Road it sits at 297 Shore Road and was first opened in 1914. It's 1 of the destinations as far as luxury resorts go on the Cape it's an excellent place to visit also. You don't have to stay there they've got restaurants but if you do stay they've got a private beach tennis courts it's everything you could want. 

Circling back Chatham has an excellent main street that's 1 of those you think of main street you get a picture in your head of the early 20th century sort of walking and the shopping and the restaurants and it has that. It's got the Orpheum theater which was built in 1915 and still shows first run movies and if you keep walking you'll find restaurants and bars like the iconic Chatham Squire that's been around for over 50 years you can't go wrong in there what do you want to have a family dining meal or going to the bar that has hundreds of license plates adorning the walls. For more fine dining there's the Wild Goose Tavern which is also on main street. It's a fun section of town to just walk and explore I could go through and name places that are there but they may not be what you're looking for gift shops restaurants bookstores it all depends on your taste you just park along main street walk up and down and you never know what you might find. 

If you go back to the Chatham lighthouse and you head south from there there's a spot down there Morris Island road it leads you to the Monomoy Wildlife Refuge. And that's a great spot to go and hike and you're really, not the middle of nowhere but you're so far removed from society you're at the point of the elbow of Cape Cod and you walk in you get to be kind of one with nature which is something I really enjoy. Monomoy Island used to be attached to Cape Cod and over the years with erosion and the shifting sands of Cape Cod it's now detached from the mainland. One of my last big expeditions something to see on Cape Cod is Monomoy Island lighthouse which is down near the southern tip of Monomoy Island it's well over 5 miles south of Chatham proper. The only problem is you've got to take a boat to get out there.

My buddy Steve he's got a boat that he worked hard on to get fixed up and we actually did a nice road trip across the water to Sandy Neck light house but he said the shoals around Monomoy are so bad that taking a smaller boat there is just like asking to crash so basically I'm looking to do a chartered boat maybe at some point to get out there to see Monomoy lighthouse. 

If beaches are your thing Chatham has a lot of those also there is Harding's Beach which is excellent because Stage Harbor light house is about a mile walk out on the beach and you can walk out there to Stage Harbor light, it doesn't have a lantern so I always call it a headless light house but that's where the entrance to Stage Harbor is and people are always down there fishing. They walk the mile out there to fish because of that tides bring the fish in and out and stage harbor itself is interesting because in 1605 and 1606 French explorer Samuel de Champlain actually docked in Stage Harbor and stayed there for a little while but he had some hostile encounters with the local natives and didn't stay there very long so there's a plaque near Stage Harbor commemorating his arrival there. And that's kind of a hidden gem. You wouldn't know it if you're driving along near Stage Harbor it's a stone next system reads in a little creek but me being someone that likes to walk and explore I found it. There are some other great beaches like Ridgevale beach which is a lesser known spot but has a couple of neat walking bridges over the creek to get to the beach. And there are so many other things to see in Chatham there's too many to mention there's other places to stay like the Chatham Inn. There's off the beaten path places to explore like the Godfrey Windmill there's Kate Gould park which is on Main Street but don't take my word for it obviously if you've never been to Chatham just go there and explore take the time to you can drive around but it's even better to walk or take a bike.

You can go see hidden history like I mentioned Chatham lighthouse there's a monument there for the Pendleton disaster about the ship wreck that occurred in 1952 it was made into a pretty big movie called The Finest Hours and the book was written by Casey Sherman a local author and writer he's actually doing some more interesting stuff coming up that I'm excited about but obviously I wouldn't spoil that but I'm very excited about a project he's got coming up. Hopefully at some point I'll have them on here so he can kind of just chat about his connection to Cape Cod but that's for another day.

First explored by Europeans in 1605/06 and first incorporated as a town in 1712 for centuries Chatham has been in my opinion the crown jewel of Cape Cod but that's just my opinion. Do yourself a favor and take your own road trip to Chatham and see what there is to see their I'll talk to you in 2021 with another road trip who knows where we'll go that time.

17:21 Sponsor: Pleasant Lake Pizza Shark

Recording a podcast is hard work. It tires out and sometimes when you're done recording a podcast you need something to eat to fuel your back up and what better to have to eat then pizza, and sure there's places this chains that have been serving the same old thing 20,30,40 years. What's better than a chain? How about a local place run by local people that is changing the game in pizza on Cape Cod. Located right on the Cape Cod rail trail at 403 Pleasant Lake Avenue in Harwich is Pleasant Lake Pizza Shark. They may be the new kids on the block when it comes to restaurants in Cape Cod but they're slinging the pizza like they've been at it for 50 years. Owners Sarah Scannevin, Josh Koopman, and Todd Montgomery have all grown up in Cape Cod, they all live in Brewster and they're dedicated and passionate about serving Cape Cod the best pizza possible. All 3 of them have restaurant experience and their passion about going the extra mile to form relationships with the customers really shows and they maintain a high standard for the food and that comes through in the throngs of satisfied customers that come back and tell people then just increase the spider web of people that are going there.

They have taken the lower Cape by storm adding a new chapter to the long history of the Pleasant Lake General Store that sits along the Cape Cod Rail Trail. All the toppings for their pizzas are made in house like their own meatballs roasting their own mushrooms peppers. They're family focused serving ice cream, that was kind of their first thing was the ice cream during the summer which is excellent, Gifford's ice cream and trying to preserve the integrity of the store while also adding a new chapter to the history of it. The menu may be small to start but that sure is that it's fresh every single time.

They've got some incredible pizzas that play on the pizza shark name like the great white pizza with olive oil garlic ricotta buffalo mozzarella and Basil, and you can have that shark style with a drizzle of Calabria and chili oil. There's the tiger shark pizza which is a buffalo sauce based topped with mozzarella blue cheese crumbles and fresh roasted chopped chicken and there's my favorite the Megalodon which is the meat lovers pizza. You'll enjoy the names of the pizzas almost as much as the pizzas themselves. In addition to being right on the bike trail and stopping in for ice cream or pizza they deliver also and there's very few places in that area that deliver around the Pleasant Lake area Brewster, Harwich, Orleans you can call you can order online. You've got to see what it's all about they're making waves it's excellent, they even have penny candy. They're open daily 10:00 AM to 9:00 PM that's even in winter time even now. 403 Pleasant Lake Avenue in Harwich give them a call 508-432-6060 you can order via phone via online at Pleasant Lake Pizza Shark.com however you get there just go there and try the pizza, try the chicken wings they've got now, ice cream. Tell Sarah, Josh, and Todd that you heard it on the In My Footsteps Podcast. Pleasant Lake Pizza Shark give them a shot they're really making waves on Cape they're awesome check them out.

20:55 In Their Footsteps: Cape Cod's Lost Lighthouse

A couple of weeks ago I put up a poll on Twitter and Instagram. And I basically had 2 choices as to what people wanted to hear about as far as the next in their footsteps history topic. So this is the winning topic. I don't want to give away what the other one was that didn't win because I'll probably end up doing that one anyway in the future. Let's get on this topic though this is a really interesting one that I wasn't aware of.

I used to do articles for Cape Cod.com which is a local website.  I did a lot of history pieces for that and so in doing that I had to come up with interesting topics that readers would want to hear about and this one was one that I I had no idea about but enough about kind of the anticipation let's get into it. 

People misplace things all the time you can misplace your wallet your keys you can misplace a photo album, clothing, something like that where you've totally forget where it was and then days months years down the road it it shows back up and you can't believe that, oh my god I can't believe that I didn't remember where I'd put this object. So this subject today is maybe 1 of the largest misplaced objects that you could possibly have and that's a lighthouse this is a story of how a light house could be misplaced for decades while actually residing alive and well somewhere far far away.

In 1838 a lighthouse station was established at Mayo beach in Wellfleet. Mayo beach is on the bay side of the Cape right next to Wellfleet harbor. It was named Mayo beach for the Mayo family which helped to settle Wellfleet in the mid seventeenth century. The lighthouse station was designated there because people thought it would be useful in the fishing and whaling industry and helping guide vessels into the harbor. This was the second lighthouse station in Wellfleet, the first one was the one on Billingsgate island which I spoke about in episode 2, so if you want to go back and hear about the first lighthouse in Wellfleet check out podcast episode 2 and Cape cod's Atlantis.

Despite the best intentions the lighthouse and the keeper's house the whole situation was a disaster. Essentially the lighthouse and the home would constantly flood. Despite that terrible conditions the lighthouse remained virtually unchanged for over 40 years eventually though it was rebuilt in 1881. It was a classic cast iron tower and a new house a more adequate house to replace the 1 that was below sea level. Cast iron lighthouse towers are basically the norm now the ones that aren't that are either granite or stone those are seen as more unique but for the most part cast iron towers are kind of what you see that was from this era of the 1880's to the end of the 19th century. The 2nd incarnation of Mayo beach light remained in service for another 4 decades but eventually it was decommissioned in 1922. There were bids put in on the lighthouse itself which was won by Captain Harry Capron. So he won the bidding at auction for the lighthouse and the lighthouse was dismantled and basically that was the end of the story as far as it went on Cape Cod. Here the lighthouse was dismantled and it's gone that's it Mayo beach light is no more. Incredibly for 80 years for more than 80 years that was the belief that Mayo beach lighthouse had been purchased dismantled and just disposed of. That was far from the reality though.

Incredibly in 2008 a woman named Colleen MacNeney. Parents Bob and Sandra Shankland had photographed every lighthouse in the country they were she was working on digitally archiving the photographs in the U. S. Coast Guard historian's office and she came across a strangely captioned old photo the photo was dated 1927 and the caption read 'this tower formally used that male beach second district.' What was the location of that lighthouse? A place called Yerba Buena, California more commonly known as San Francisco. Unbelievably shocking Mayo beach lighthouse had not only been dismantled back in the 20's on Cape Cod but it'd been shipped from Wellfleet to the west coast and reassembled and it is still standing today. Today it's called Point Montero lighthouse. 

Point Montero lighthouse formerly Mayo beach lighthouse was erected in 1928 and replaced a skeleton tower that had been built out there on the cliffs in 1912. In a funny round about way basically Montero which lies 20 miles south of San Francisco, so it's like a suburb when I say San Francisco it's like suburbs of Boston around here so it's not really San Francisco but anyway, the town of Montero and Wellfleet there like parents they got divorced and they have custody of a child except this child is a lighthouse. There's a keeper's house next to Point Montero light house it's a 50 bed youth hostel and is visited by thousands of people yearly if you didn't know the story you look at that lighthouse and it's no different than any of the other hundreds and hundreds of lighthouses in America and the thousands in the world. 

Back on Cape Cod though in Wellfleet the keeper's house that was rebuilt in 1881 that still stands you can actually go there's postcards of Mayo beach lighthouse from back then you can go get a similar photo from the similar vantage point and it all looks the same except the tower isn't there anymore and sadly Mayo beach light and Billingsgate island light are both gone and there's really nothing left of them. You couple that with the famed Chequesset Inn which stood about a half mile from Mayo beach light house and there were these 3 giant pieces of Wellfleet history that are all lost and they all have interesting stories Billingsgate island, Mayo beach lighthouse, Chequesset Inn. It's incredible what used to be on Cape Cod and that's why I find history so interesting is there are these things you walk these places Mayo beach still exists if you didn't know the story you wouldn't know there was a lighthouse there ever it's just a nice beach it faces Great Island and Jeremy Point. 

Cape Cod and places in New England a lot of them have sister cities across the pond in the United Kingdom, Barnstable, Falmouth, Yarmouth, they're all named after places in England and I find it interesting that this little town of Montero is actually in a round about way a sister city of Wellfleet because they share mail beach light Point Montero light they're the same thing just on opposite coasts of America. If you want to learn a little more about Point Montero light you can get some info from Lighthouse Friends.com that's a pretty good site, HI USA.org. That's more of a hostel site so you can see the youth hostel and it's got some photos of the lighthouse if you go there's a site called Digital Commonwealth and that's run by the state of Massachusetts, Boston Public Library they have incredible old photos that has photos of Mayo beach light house from when it was in Wellfleet also on Digital Commonwealth is a site you can just go as I call it well everyone calls it go 'down the rabbit hole.' You start looking for one thing it brings up suggestions and before you know you've spent a couple hours looking at old photos from Massachusetts from the last couple of hundred years but that's the story of Mayo beach lighthouse the lighthouse that was lost technically for 80 years although it existed 3000 miles away near San Francisco California. Join me again in 2021 I'll have plenty more of these. New England history stories for your listening pleasure.

29:59 Back In the Day: New Year's Rockin' Eve

That there is Auld Lang Syne. That's a song usually here as the ball drops or after the ball drops for new year's. It's a public domain song now but the words were from a Scottish language poem written by Robert Burns in 1788. It doesn't always have to be new year's eve but that's usually where you hear it the title Auld Lang Syne essentially loosely translated means 'for the sake of old times' and it kind of rings in the new year that's 1 of those things that is most synonymous with new year's especially as a kid growing up. The other thing that was synonymous with it was Dick Clark's new year's Rockin eve as on December 31 you would as a kid be allowed to stay up that late and naturally as a kid if you got to stay up that late you need to take advantage of it because that wasn't gonna happen that often. My parents wouldn't let me stay up till after midnight when I was 8, 9, 10 years old so I got to enjoy Dick Clark's new year's Rockin eve.

So for those who don't know who Dick Clark was he basically rose to fame in the 1950's he was a host of a music program called American Bandstand which debuted in 1952 and he actually hosted it from 1956 until it went off the air in 1989.Dick Clark even when I was growing up in the 1980's always had a very youthful look he was kind of referred to as the world's oldest teenager. But when he started hosting American Bandstand he was in his late 20's then so when he was doing new year's Rockin eve he was getting close to 60 in the 1980's when I was watching it. 

The first new year's Rockin eve was December 31,1972 and it was seen on NBC kind of as a younger skewing competitor to a big band broadcast on CBS that was hosted by a man named Guy Lombardo and even though it was known as Dick Clark's new year's Rockin eve, and that's what I always think of it as, the first 2 years he actually wasn't the host. The first year was a band called 3 Dog Night they had a song called 'Joy to the World' that was kind of their big 1 back in the 70's even though Dick Clark did the countdown for the ball drop the first 2 years the second year was George Carlin that hosted it and I couldn't imagine if you know George Carlin 1 of the greatest standup comedians ever. Imagine him as the host maybe trying to watch is language as the ball dropped.

After the first 2 seasons or episodes in1974 it got moved to ABC and then Dick Clark basically became the host and he would remain the host until 2004 when he had a stroke so Ryan Seacrest had to take over. Dick Clark would continue to kind of show up a little bit up until his death in 2012 since then it's been Seacrest and Jenny McCarthy and it's still Dick Clark's new year's Rockin eve. It became the standard for the new year's eve festivities once Guy Lombardo, the 1 I mentioned before, once he passed away in 1977. He had been doing new year's eve broadcast for 48 years starting on the radio in 1928 so he was basically the man when it came to new year's eve festivities but once he died Dick Clark took the mantle. When he became that person the shows that Dick Clark put together were they youthful alternative and they had all the big name bands and artists all through the years and it continues to be that way they would all perform and kind of get you hyped up to keep you awake until 11:59 when they would start the countdown with the ball drop in Times Square. It's like if you think of new year's eve you think of the song Auld Lang Syne you think of well I think of Dick Clark's new year's Rockin eve and I think of the ball drop and then I think of all the celebration in Times Square with the confetti in people dancing and drinking and then for me within a few minutes I was ready to pass out.

The irony is now that I'm an adult I rarely stay up until after midnight on New year's eve. I'm usually just like yeah I've seen enough new years now I'd rather sleep than stay up. When I was a kid I would camp in front of that TV usually we still had the Christmas tree up too so bathed in Christmas light. Then you just watch bands perform you might have hot chocolate you might have some kind of a snack maybe Jeno's pizza rolls or Bagel Bites or something from the day like that a bag of Doritos for me and it was just a fun time. 

It was the anticipation for wiping the slate clean for a new year and it's like a new chapter in a book and every year kind of went off without a hitch the only year that was worrisome was 1999 when it went into Y2K and you're watching the countdown waiting for something horrible to happen I guess it just became kind of the background noise of the night when I think back on new year's eve experiences as a kid growing up. There was never a special moment it was just the whole night was just unique and it was a chance to stay up late that was another thing and as I got older I went out a couple times for new year's eves you know at the local bar. Oliver's is a local bar that's down in Yarmouth Port that was usually the hang out go there. You'd have the champagne and the noise makers.

Other than that it's just another night seemingly now wake up the next morning and start your plans for the year or for some it's just another day. Does anyone else feel like that? Kinda like it not that new year's loses its wonder but you get older you there's everything you've seen you just kind of want to get going. Especially for 2021 this year it's like you want to just get going and make it better than 2020 which that's a pretty low bar. That's some reflections from me on new year's eve it was Dick Clark's new year's Rockin eve. Anyone else watch any other shows out there? Or do you have different memories of new year's eve? Some special festivities that maybe your family did that kind of made it stand out more? For me it was just me and the siblings just staying up and watching or just trying not to fight sometimes but it was always fun. Send me an email if there if you have any other new year's eve traditions that you had or that you do have.  I'm always into hearing about other people especially those that grew up in my generation, but have a happy and safe new years whatever you're doing now there tonight.

37:51 This Week In History

It's time once again for this week in history the last 1 of 2020. We're gonna be looking at 4 stories which occurred during the last week of the year last week of December in years gone by so let's just jump right into it. 

This week in history 12/28/1837,183 years ago the original 3 sisters lighthouses were approved to be built in Eastham. So the 3 lighthouses were built as a way to differentiate Eastham from the single lighthouse that was Highland lighthouse to the north in Truro and the twin lighthouses that were to the south in Chatham. The idea of the 3 lights was actually that of Captain Mad Jack Percival. So they were 15 foot tall brick structures placed 150 feet apart on the shore, or on the cliffs, of Eastham. These lighthouses only took 38 days in total to complete with legend having it that the construction and layout was rushed and careless. These beacons were seen as being too much on the site even referred to as 'shiftless and costly' by legendary author Henry David Thoreau. They got the nickname the 3 sisters because legend had it that vessels passing by remarked that they resembled 3 ladies in white dresses wearing black hats up on the beach. Erosion is been a bad thing on Cape Cod and all around the world and so the erosion eventually got the best of the original 3 sisters and those were allowed to just fall into the sea and they were replaced in 1892 by 3 new lighthouses standing 22 feet tall also still 150 feet apart and these were wooden ones with brick foundations but even though they built these lighthouses back from the shore the shore just kept creeping in and it was decided in 1911 that the 3 sisters would be decommissioned. The shoreline was only 8 yards away from the north most tower so only the center tower remained and it was a solo beacon. The 2 other sisters were sold off and they actually eventually became part of a cottage and eventually in 1923 the remaining lighthouse was removed and replaced by 1 of the twin lights from Chatham and became the Nauset light that's still there today. That's a cliff notes version of that story that's going to be something I will revisit in the future podcast because the story of the 3 sisters is just fascinating. 

This week in history 47 years ago on 12/28/1973 president Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act which provided extra protection to species around the world that were deemed threatened with extinction. As of 2020 there are 41,415 species on the red list of threatened species from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and of those 16,306 of them are endangered species threatened with extinction. And according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature in the past decade 467 species have been declared extinct. Though in all fairness they may have gone extinct in the decades prior. In the last 40 years some of the species that have gone extinct include the Yangzi river dolphin, northern white rhino, and the golden toad. According to the World Wildlife Fund the earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years and with climate change in the way that just the world is there are so many species that are right on the brink so even though this Endangered Species Act was signed 47 years ago this week there's still so much that has to be done to protect wildlife. When you look at just things like Tigers and rhinos and those types of animals that are on the brink. Not of going extinct but they're really close and you always go back to the 1660's and the dodo bird that is now kind of the poster child of extinct species and you wonder which of these ones that we see every day is gonna be the next one to follow in its footsteps. There's a lot of work to be done when that comes but at least this Endangered Species Act brought some eyeballs to the problem and who knows hopefully something will change in the near future. 

This week in history 141 years ago 12/31/1879 Thomas Edison gives his first demonstration of the incandescent light bulb. This occurred when the inventor lit up a street in the town of Menlo Park, New Jersey that was also the place where he had his lab. This bulb was first created by Edison in January of 1879 and it worked by passing electricity through a platinum filament inside a glass vacuum bulb and that was what delayed the filament from melting. Even then the let the light bulb only burn for a few hours. In leading up to creating this incandescent bulb Edison tested carbonized filaments of basically every kind of wood imaginable including baywood, boxwood, hickory, cedar, flax, and even bamboo. Eventually he found cotton if turned into a filament would burn for up to 15 hours and so that kind of got the ball rolling. The next year in 1880 his Edison lamp was patented and some of the antiques from back in the day then still work so obviously his his quality of his craftsmanship was pretty good if these lamps still work 140 years after they were first invented. But soon electric lights were everywhere and Edison's name was everywhere and it was just 1 of his hundreds and hundreds of inventions but this week 141 years ago he first demonstrated the incandescent light bulb. 

And finally this week in history 73 years ago 12/27/1947 Howdy Doody premiered on NBC it was the first major children's television show. It also starred Buffalo Bob Smith kind of as the human host Howdy Doody was a puppet, a cowboy puppet, and he would you know do puppet things. The kids that were there in the audience were the 'peanut gallery' also known as Doodyville. It would go on to run 2543 episodes during its run which ended on 9/24/1960.The show just set the mold for everything in children's television that came after, famous shows like Mister Rogers and Captain Kangaroo and other ones like that. Even local ones like Bozo the Clown that my Uncle Bob was on back in the early 1960's they all got their start from Howdy Doody. It's hard to imagine a children's television show having that big of an effect on culture as it did but Howdy Doody was a phenomenon. The only other children show I can think of that had that big of an effect would probably be Sesame Street and that's from my generation and just for comparison Sesame Street is up to 4561 episodes so it's lasted a pretty long time too.73 years ago this week Howdy Doody premiered on NBC and changed children's television made children's television really.

46:51 Closing/Next Episode Preview

That's gonna do it for episode 5 of the In My Footsteps Podcast the last 1 of 2020. Thank you so much to everyone who has listened to any of the first podcasts I really appreciate it and hopefully each 1 will get better as time goes on. That's my goal is to make each 1 appointment listening. As always you can follow me on Instagram I have 2 accounts a personal 1 Christopher Setterlund, that is my regular photography and then the In My Footsteps Podcast 1 which is mainly photos ads things like that for the podcast to kind of get you amped to go check it out. 

Check me out on Twitter at Chris Setterlund that's my handle you can also find me on Facebook I have an author page Christopher Setterlund In My Footsteps they're all easy to find they have the same logo as the podcast doesn't all the platforms where you find it the great logo that was created by Amy Keller Jump. For more content, in my footsteps content, you can check out the blog In My Footsteps blog at Blogger.com. I believe the last post I put up there was in their footsteps the story of Edward Rowe Snow who was the Flying Santa. There's a lot I have hundreds of blog posts up there having to do with New England travel and history. Go and become a subscriber on YouTube.  I've got a lot of videos up there too a lot of 4K New England videos and what I've been doing now is some of the segments from the podcast become kind of visual clips I use a lot of cool photos and animations and stuff. That will continue in the future but as we go into 2021 my goal is to do more podcasts so we're looking at probably 3 weeks on 1 week off. Needless to say that it's going to give me a little bit less time to do that in my footsteps blogs and the 4Ktravel videos but you can go and check out the old ones too.

If you feel like supporting the podcast if you're listening through Buzzsprout you can click on the donate link that's always appreciated too, but if you're not, if you're on any of the other platforms: iTunes, Pandora, Spotify share the podcast wherever you can. Eyes on it is always good. That's more valuable than donations is more people listening and that's what I'm hoping is to pump out the content in 2021 and kind of hit my stride. Once again special thanks to the sponsor of this week's episode Pleasant Lake Pizza Shark. Check them out at 403 Pleasant Lake Avenue in Harwich right on the bike trail. They're also on Facebook and Pleasant Lake Pizza Shark.com. 

Tune in for the first episode of 2021 we're gonna discuss a UFO abduction, look back 30 years at the music of 1991, check out this week in history including the great Boston molasses flood and we'll be debuting a new segment, an interview segment. A special for the new year will be fitness in the new year with a great trainer Kaylin Orr, Koach KO. We're gonna pick her brain about how to get fit for the new year get that resolution started and keep it. So that's going to be a lot of fun she's a great person so I can't wait for you all to get to hear her. As for tonight new year's eve whatever you're doing make sure you're responsible stay safe and I'll see you all in 2021. Remember don't follow in anyone's footsteps create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life. Take care and I'll take a walk with you guys again soon.