Episode 8: Cape Cod's TV Channel 58; Lincoln, NH; 1991 Year In Music; This Week In History (1-28-2021)

Episode 8 of the podcast shines a light on Cape Cod's own television station.  Back in the 1980's WCVX TV-58 carved out its own niche with local programming and rerunning national shows.  Though it only lasted a handful of years it is still remembered fondly by many 3 decades after it went dark.
Central New Hampshire is a perfect place for a Road Trip. This episode we take a look at the spectacular little town of Lincoln.  It is home to Flume Gorge, Franconia Notch, the Kancamagus Highway, and was even the setting for one of the earliest suspected UFO abductions.
The year 1991 is where we go Back In the Day to run through some of the music that makes this the best year for music in my lifetime in my opinion.  With the Grunge scene bursting through bringing the likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and the Smashing Pumpkins to the mainstream that would be enough.  However add to that seminal albums from Metallica, U2, REM, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and more and it will be easy to see why I think so highly of 1991 in music.
This Week In History begins with the sinking of the RMS Republic off the coast of Nantucket and its purported highly valuable treasure.  Tragedy struck with the shocking explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986.  Assassin Charles Guiteau is sentenced to death for the murder of President James Garfield in 1882.  Finally The Beatles close the 1960's with their iconic rooftop performance in London.
All of this and more is here in Episode 8, so come on and take a walk!

Check out Episode 7 here. 

Transcript

00:00 Intro

Hello world! How is everybody doing out there? This is the In My Footsteps Podcast. I am coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts. My name is Christopher Setterlund and this is episode 8.

So how's everybody doing out there this week? How's everyone doing on their new year's resolutions? We're nearing the end of January.  I know this is about the time of the year that people will go back on them. You know once you hit that first snag that first bump in the road. My resolution or at least 1 of them was to drop the Covid 15, it's been tough, not tough like I'm giving up, tough like it's hard to stay focused on these goals changing your diet especially when you like to eat like I do. It's terrible.  I've added a lot more greens, salads, veggies.  I threw away my salt just like coach K. O. told me to do, it went right in the trash. The other way we can lose weight is by exercising more.  I train people I love doing that, sometimes though it's hard to separate training others and working on their health and fitness, and training yourself. That's 1 thing I'm trying to get better at, or get back to doing in 2021. In these days of Covid where it's still going on I know a lot of people are worried about going to the gym so I wanted to give a little I guess review. So I go to a Planet Fitness gym, they have a thing where it's called 'crowd meter' you have their app and you can go on it and you can see how full the gym is based on I guess CDC recommendations on how many people are allowed in the gym. So if you feel worried about going there with a lot of people around you can wait for a time where there is less. I like going later in the morning or early to mid afternoon to avoid the crowds. When you go there everybody is masked up, they've done a good job with that. There's still tons of sanitation stations with the spray and paper towels. There are machines that are off limits to keep the social distancing up and so far I have found no issues with anything like that. I mean you may have a problem if you go on the cardio machines and you're trying to run hardcore or do the elliptical hardcore and you have to keep your mask on. That maybe a little bit tough for you, luckily I haven't been running hardcore in a couple of years so that hasn't been a problem. Like Koach KO Kaylin Orr like she said a couple of episodes ago in her interview it's good to find a buddy someone to hold you accountable and motivate you to go to the gym. She has her boyfriend Chris.  I sometimes find my motivation comes from my Uncle Steve and I saw him recently at the gym and he is someone that has inspired me to work on my own fitness for a long time. He became a marathon runner in his 50's and he has since run the Boston Marathon more than 10 times and done well for his age group and he's someone that when I see him he's always so full of positive energy he knows what to say to get that fire going in me whether it has to do with the actual gym and training or working on this podcast. He was so excited to hear I was doing this that it got me motivated to add some more to it which is something that'll be coming up for the next episode.  I'm not going to switch up my format that quickly but not to leave you hanging it has something to do with this week in history segment that's all I'll say. You'll have to tune in to episode 9 but yeah I wanted to give a little bit of a shout out to my Uncle Steve for giving me that positive energy and positive reinforcement but also give a little bit of a shout out to the Planet Fitness gyms that have done such a good job with their sanitation and cleanliness making sure these people have masks on making sure that the machines you can work out safely spaced out from everyone. Just in case anyone is thinking of going back to the gym or wants to go back to the gym to kind of add to any fitness or weight loss goals for the new year I just wanted to make sure I kind of told you because I'm doing it. Like I said at the top this is episode 8 of the In My Footsteps Podcast I wanted to first give a big thank you to everyone who is listened to all the episodes, any of them. Leading up to this my last 4 episodes in a row have each become my most downloaded in its first week and it's it's a really great feeling. It's an upward trajectory and I'm really enjoying creating this content for all of you and obviously if you have any ideas, suggestions, comments, compliments are always good too, but you can always shoot me an email ChristopherSetterlund@gmail.com, you can find me on all my social media platforms.  I'd love to hear what people think of what this is, the downloads are great, people sharing it word of mouth that kind of makes me feel like people are enjoying it, but I don't know specifics if you know if you have anything specific definitely give me a shout. So this week's episode we're going to take a look back at WCVX TV-58 Cape Cod's own television station. We're gonna take a road trip up north to the little beautiful town of Lincoln, New Hampshire.  I'm going to actually do my 1991, 30 years ago, year in music review that I had promised to do a couple of episodes ago but my Vegas story sounded funnier at the time, and we've got this week in history including the Beatles famed rooftop concert. So everyone enjoy, whatever you're doing, if you're taking a walk, if you're sitting on your couch, if you're cooking dinner, enjoy this episode of the In My Footsteps Podcast and come on let's go take a walk.

06:27 - WCVX TV-58

Growing up on Cape Cod as a child of the 80's there were a lot of things that were going on, happening as background noise. As I got older, you know I didn't appreciate things when I was younger, the history of Cape Cod, history of my family, the history of New England. My grandmother especially my Nana she was the 1 that would always share how deeply connected we were to Cape Cod and I didn't care until I got much older and I started researching the family to give her some more information about our family tree. It was more for her than me and then I got into it.  I started enjoying reading and researching as I got older.  I started doing writing for different outlets especially Cape Cod.com.  I started doing Cape Cod history pieces and I was writing about things I was interested in things that I wanted to learn about like the old Cape Cod Coliseum that I'll talk about it some point, old restaurants and nightclubs and events. 1 thing that always reminded me of my Nana in those days when I would go to visit her Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, usually a couple days a week we went there for dinner we would watch TV and watch the news but instead of watching the news from Boston we would usually watch the news from Cape Cod. I don't know how many of you know that back in the day we had our own television station the station was WCVX and this is its story.

So on Monday 1/16/1984 the station began. the call letters originally were WA5880 and it was a 12000 watt outlet on Vineyard Haven on Martha's Vineyard. That's the night that Cape news 58 was first anchored by Francis Broadhurst and Mike Gwynn. The station itself was owned by WQRC owner Don Moore. He had been working for years to try to get a low power television station on Cape Cod. Don Moore was really committed to getting this off the ground in fact he was forced to sell WQRC due to the FCC regulations that stated individuals cannot own television and radio stations in the same market. So he sold WQRC and WF58 went dark for a week is it changed its format from at 12000 watt low power station to a 1.2 million watt station with the signal strength roughly equal to WLVI TV-56 and WSBK TV-38 out of Boston.

The new WCVX debuted on 7/19/1985, the signal remained assigned to Vineyard Haven although the main operations will begin to take place out of Hyannis and actually started with reruns of classic TV shows like Mary Tyler Moore, the Fugitive, the Bob Newhart show, and half hour blocks of CNN news but there was original programming too. So back when it first came out WCVX had shows like Senior Forum hosted by Dr James Pease. There was a business show called Common Cents with sense spelled 'cents.' Good Morning Cape Cod which was broadcast live from the Cape Cod mall every Wednesday.  I would have loved to have been there to see that.  I can't find any videos of it. Then there was Cape 11 Alive news that was kind of the 1 that I became most known with as a kid having dinner at my Nana's house. Watching Cape 11 alive those people some of the ones on the station at the time were like Dave Read who is a huge name in Cape Cod radio. Mark Mumford was 1 of the main hosts of Cape 11 alive. Other future big name people came out of WCVX like Doug Meehan and Bob Halloran that both went on to work in Boston Dave Read was only on the station for a short time but I remember speaking with him once and he said that he was on there just long enough that he would be noticed at Stop &Shop the people recognized him.  Bob Halloran took over the sports desk at Channel 58 when Mike Gwynn went to work at Channel 12 in Providence.

There were some big events on Cape Cod that got covered back then during the Channel 58 days. Hurricane Gloria that hit in September of 85 that was a big 1 there was president George H. W. Bush coming to Cape Cod in 1990 they covered him landing at Otis Air National Guard base. There were also the first run Cape Cod commercials. Now children of the 80's and people that are my age and older might remember certain ones. The 1 that I always remember was the Tiki Port commercial. You can find that still on YouTube, it's a classic slice of 80's Cape Cod. You've got to go find that on YouTube just put in Tiki Port commercial and you'll find it and I know you'll remember. 

But for all of the efforts of channel 58 there was a problem that they weren't being carried in a lot of homes so when the first couple of years that it was out WCVX was only available in about 40% of Cape Cod homes with Cape Cod Cablevision initially refusing to carry it. TV-58 didn't achieve total Cape Cod coverage until 8/10/1987 that's when Campbell Cable which served Bourne and Sandwich added the station. Unfortunately that coverage came a little too late. The station was already in financial peril with Don Moore having spent a lot of his own money to keep that station afloat and when he couldn't find other potential investors that such kind of sealed the deal. On 10/19/87 Moore sold the station to Sentry Federal Savings Bank and the viewership increased somewhat. According to surveys of the time 60% of Cape Cod residents said they tuned in to Channel 58 at least once in a while and although they did a great job with the local reporting and the shows and the commercials the whole problem with Channel 58 came down to money.

In October of 1990 WCVX let 10 employees go in cost-cutting measures they dropped their total number of employees from 45 in 1988 only 8 people and they revamped their news format but it was too little too late. The last gasp of channel 58 came on 7/2/1991 with a showing of the 1955 film Kentucky Rifle starring Chill Wills and after that it went dark and it remained dark for 3 years. Eventually it was bought by Boston University to be rechristened WZBU it was an affiliate of BU's WABU station. In 1999 it was bought by Pax TV which later became Ion TV. Don Moore despite losing a lot of money and having to sell the station landed on his feet. He launched Ocean 104 the radio station in 1994. There was Ed Semprini who had a hugely successful career both before and after Channel 58 he became known as the 'dean of Cape Cod journalists' in addition to being called the 'voice of Cape Cod.' Obviously I mentioned Dave Read he's still on the radio. Doug Meehan has been an anchor on WCVB Channel 5 since 2015 and same with Bob Halloran but the memories remain.

Do any of you out there remember WCVX Channel 58, Cape 11 alive? Were any of you there for Good Morning Cape Cod? I'd love to try to find that. If you go on YouTube and look up WCVX there are several videos, they're mostly outtakes but several videos of film from back then. Even though the station was only on the air for 5 or 6 years I still remember it fondly.  I remember the news, I remember the commercials, I told you the Tiki Port one. You've gotta go find it, go out of your way, but that was the story of Cape cod's own television station that we had for a handful of years back in the 80's and early 90'sWCVX TV-58. Though its run was brief it definitely left an indelible mark on Cape Cod.

14:56 Sponsor - Cape Hook Designs

Before we go on I just wanted to give a special thank you to the sponsor of this week's episode Cape Hook Designs. As I say at the top of the podcast Cape Cod is a popular vacation destination and it is a place filled with so many people that have grown up here, raised their children here, grandchildren here, and now it is possible to show your love of the Cape and take the Cape with you with Cape Hook Designs. Based in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts, Cape Hook Designs is run by locals Brian and Jen Huggins who have grown up here and are raising their family here now. Their clothing and jewelry features an instantly recognizable logo that will show people where you're from. They have bracelets, clothing, hats, decals for your car, and a lot more. They have a deep love and respect for Cape Cod, its residents, its history, and it comes through in their products. They also offer direct to garment printing which is a specialty. Go to their website Cape Hook Designs.com and see some of their wonderful products they have. Featured on the front page is their football bass hoodie, you have to see it, you'll really enjoy it.  I think that's one of their top sellers. In addition to their website you can also find their products in such Cape Cod locations as Just Picked on Willow Street in Yarmouth Port, Port Cargo on Main Street in Hyannis, All Good in the Cape Cod Mall, in the Cape Cod Calling monthly mystery box, and many more. So go to their website, check out where they sell in actual retail stores, and really get a feel for this way for you to show your love for Cape Cod and support a couple from the Cape who've grown up on the Cape. There's beautiful craftsmanship and the designs will be something you will love to show off to people that live on the Cape, visited the Cape, or don't even know about the Cape. Contact Brian and Jen Huggins, let them know you heard about them on the In My Footsteps Podcast I'm sure that will bring a smile to their faces. Cape Hook designs definitely give them a shot.

17:11 Back in the Day - 1991 the Year In Music

All right. It's time to go way back in the day. Once again, as we do on each podcast, this episode, I'm going to fulfill the promise that I had from a few weeks ago. I'm going to talk about the year 1991 in music. This is the year that I consider to be the best year of music of my life and maybe that's because it's the year that the music really started to speak to me and kind of form who I was, especially as a teenager, I was 13 when 1991 started. I think that goes for anybody listening, whatever age you are, there's a certain year that becomes kind of a trigger point that like it turns on your consciousness as far as music and the lyrics and the sound meaning more than just background noise on the radio. In full disclosure and I'm sure any of you that have listened to any of the previous episodes of this podcast have heard me say that as a teenager of the 1990s, I gravitated towards the grunge/alternative movement. That meant having torn blue jeans and flannel shirts. I had a red flannel shirt that I wore all the time. It was even in my senior photo, in my yearbook, I'm wearing a red flannel shirt, but for me it was the raw visceral, I guess, all the people that sung the grunge alternative songs, they weren't all teenagers. They were mostly in their 20's, but they kind of gave off that teenage angst feel. That's what I would feel. I don't know why most teenagers you get that, I think kind of angry at the world. You want to do what you want and you still can't do it yet because you're not an 'adult,' but for this, I'm not going to list all the albums in order or anything like that. It's more of just the feelings that I got and just bringing up all of these great albums by great artists that all came out in the same year, that they didn't all change the world and maybe some of them didn't even change the world at the time. But it's incredible for me. I challenge anyone when you talk about best years of music of my lifetime. I can't find one any better than 1991. 

I'll go into greater detail in a future podcast about the Nirvana album, Nevermind and that being the whole genesis of everything, as far as wanting to be a singer songwriter and just a writer in general and the influence Kurt Cobain had on me. But for right now, I'm just going to bring it up. That that was the album that kind of changed everything. It was this seminal moment in music and at the time when it first came out, it didn't really hit that hard. It took a few months for it to kind of gain steam, but then eventually it knocked Michael Jackson's Dangerous album out of the top spot on the Billboard 200 and there was a whole big thing about that. Where not only did Nirvana knock Michael Jackson out, but they basically killed hair metal too, which that wasn't a bad thing. That was the big album for me from when I think 1991 Nirvana's Nevermind comes to the forefront. I actually have a copy of the vinyl album. I don't have a record player so I could never play it, but I have it. I think that's the only vinyl album I currently have. 

You can't talk about Nirvana without talking about Pearl Jam's 10. That was the other real big one. As far as the grunge movement, they both exploded from Seattle at roughly about the same time. Nirvana had Smells Like Teen Spirit was their first big song and Pearl jam their first song that actually came out was Alive, but it was their second one, Jeremy, that the video was wild. It was basically about a school shooting, a kid getting bullied. It was wild. The video, even now looking back, Eddie Vedder looked like he was insane when he was singing and when Nirvana and Pearl jam kind of knocked the door down and the grunge alternative movement came to the mainstream. Well, the mainstream found the movement. It allowed other bands that had actually already been out to get a little bit of a second life.

Soundgarden, their second album, Bad Motorfinger came out in 91, but they actually had an album before that. The Smashing Pumpkins had Gish. That was their debut album, but it didn't break through it wasn't until they had Siamese Dream in 93 that they really broke through. But it's one of those things. You find this new form of music and it's like, it's not just two bands. There's a lot more and their success, Nirvana and Pearl jam allowed a lot of these other bands to kind of break through. Once the door was down, obviously I could go on and on about grunge music and the year 1991 in grunge, but there were so many more albums that came out that year. 

I can't go on without talking about U2AchtungBaby. That album really blew my mind. I knew who U2 was cause they had been around for over 10 years and obviously the Joshua Tree was a huge album, but Achtung Baby I think is almost a perfect album. In my opinion, every song just has a different feel and you can listen to the thing straight through. The song One by U2 has basically been my favorite songs since it debuted in 1991. It's funny. Most people don't know that, they would assume it was Smells Like Teen Spirit, but that's not true. One just speaks to me and the way that I know that it's my favorite is that I don't listen to it that often. So that each time I do, it's kind of a special occasion. You don't want to always eat your favorite food or always watch your favorite movie because then it's not as special. You kind of save it for special occasions. 

Metallica released their black album, which basically that brought them to mainstream. They had been obviously for almost 10 years also Enter Sandman was a pretty great song. The video was kind of creepy with the strobe light and James Hetfield and his long hair. Not as scary as Metallica song One, which the video freaked the hell out of me with the poor guy, the soldier that's in the hospital bed with the mask on his head. I was 11 years old that scared the hell out of me. And then there was Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blood Sugar Sex Magik. I've mentioned before that, when I did the back in the day about the old school clothing brands that I said, the music that the cool kids listened to as far as back like in middle school, it was Red Hot Chili Peppers and Beastie Boys were like, if you listen to them, that was, you were on the cutting edge.  The Chili Peppers had been around for several years before, but it was Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and the song Under the Bridge that really crossed them over. That's kind of the theme with 1991. There are some bands that debuted and crossed over. There's some bands that had been established and finally broke through and that maybe is just my perception of coming of age that year. 

Then we've got Guns N Roses who released a double album, Use Your Illusion one and two Use Your illusion One was a red illustration and Use Your illusion two was a blue one and I remember I bought both of the cassettes. That was another big thing. 91 was the first year that I actually started buying CDs. So the funny thing is, boy, the music company got a lot of my money. I had the tapes of Pearl Jam's 10, both the Use Your illusion, albums REM's Out of Time. And then I ended up buying the CDs also. So they got me there. I think I still have Pearl Jam's 10 and Nirvana's Nevermind on CD. And we're talking 30 years ago or almost 30 years ago, depending on the time of year it is. And the CDs have CD rot. It's like, they look like they're pixelated. Like someone started scraping the shine off of them. I don't know if any of you have CDs out there that are that old where now I can't play them even if I wanted to. 
 But when speaking about 1991 in the year in music, I keep coming back to the grunge/alternative movement. That's where it all goes because it opened my eyes, the loud thrashing guitars, pounding drums, the feedback, the screaming, Kurt Cobain was great at that. It opened my eyes and ears and mind.  In the years that followed, you had Stone Temple Pilots. I discovered Alice In Chains the next year, I discovered Smashing Pumpkins in 93. And still later on, I would discover bands like Live and Green Day. The funny thing about Green Day is their Dookie album from 1994. I was 16 when it came out and my niece, Emma actually was the same age, 16 listening to that album that I listened to when I was 16, which just, it's a fun, little full circle and shows that I kind of corrupted her taste in music a little. 

But what year do you consider the best in music of your lifetime? I'm sure some of you might say 91, but everyone's taste is different. What was it about that year that made it the best? Was it just the music or was it something in your life? Kind of at the time that, you know, the music kind of influenced the life experiences and they kind of flow one into the other that helped out for me as well. I was in 7th grade during 1991 and I often find myself gravitating back towards that music in these days, looking for that same drive, it was like you were motivated by that music. And I look for that still sometimes these days, but I hope you enjoyed going back in the day, at least back in my day, 1991, the year in music, that was a quick little trip through that year. I'll be doing more on some of those albums as we go along for 30th anniversaries and such. But yeah, go flip on some of that music, go on Spotify or Pandora, find some of those songs and kind of close your eyes. Imagine teenage me going crazy as my eyes were opened to this new wave of music. 

27:19 - Road Trip: Lincoln, NH

It's road trip time again this is the part of the podcast where I showcase 1 of the hundreds and hundreds of amazing towns and cities that New England has to offer.  I give a little bit of history, but it's more of why you should go what you can see things you can do there and I'll tell you the vast vast majority of these places that I'm going to share as we go along on the podcast are all places that I've been to, and you can tell when I talk about them that I'm trying to persuade you to go and I swear they're not paying me to say it I just really enjoy them but as we go every now and then they'll be a place and I'll throw in that I haven't been to and it's going to be like I'm trying to persuade myself to go there. So speaking of persuading you to go places this week I wanted to talk about a spot that I really love it so much fun up in central New Hampshire is a town called Lincoln.

A little town ski town, hiking town, there's so much to see there it's 2 hours north of Boston and about 60 or so miles south of the Canadian border so it's it's up there, but it's not too bad. It's not way way up like if you were to go to northern Maine where it seems like you're at the North Pole. As of 2019 the population in Lincoln is only 1762 people, it's small. When you drive up that far to New Hampshire, the highway you get to the point where exits are 20 miles in between sometimes and you get kind of a warning like last exit for a million miles. The main highway up there is I-93 but there's also Route 3 that kind of parallels it and when I went up there this was in 2012 I went up to stay there and, I'll get on to why I was up there, but I stayed at a place called the Pemi cabins at 460 Route 3 in Lincoln. These cabins are right on the Pemigewasset River and I loved it. There was a little screened in porch that was right over the water and you can just sit out there in the dark with the water rushing by and I when I stayed there and there's a lot of stuff right around there, centrally located.

Now I went up there because I was a runner.  I'm not a runner anymore from injury purposes, but I was a runner and I thought it would be cool to run the Kancamagus highway. The Kancamagus highway is reason enough to go up there. It's over 34 miles long and it goes along Route 112, it starts in Lincoln and ends in North Conway it goes through the White Mountains and the highest peak in there is just under 3000 feet high. So what I did was I drove out to Kancamagus pass the highest point parked my car and then decided to run.  I ran 4 miles east and then I ran 4 miles back west so east was going downhill west was going uphill. My idea was it's going to be like running a mountain which it was and maybe I'll see a bear maybe I'll see a moose but being smart I did it with headphones on. So here I am running along this very very secluded road there's no gas stations, restaurants, hotels, no cell service out there and I'm hoping to see a bear or moose because I'm super smart and didn't think ahead.

I'll never forget this so I did my run got back to my car I was sore my hip flexors were sore from running straight uphill for 4 miles I didn't see any wild animals at all. The next morning I went to this awesome little breakfast place called Flapjacks that's located at 149 Main Street. I'm sitting there at the counter I got my flapjacks just like you should with if you go there and people come in there's a couple of truckers and they're talking about they heard that that morning someone had hit a moose with their semi on the Kancamagus highway not far from where I was. As much as I would have liked to have seen a moose I would not want to have seen a moose get hit by a 18 Wheeler. Definitely drive the Kancamagus highway though if you get a chance if you're up in Lincoln.

Another reason to go up there well there's several if you're a skier you can go to Loon mountain or you can go to the Hobo Railroad and Clark's Bears and Whales Tale amusement park, those are more summer things I went up there for the Kancamagus highway I also went up there to go to Flume Gorge. When I was a kid, I'd say 11 years old, my Aunt Kelly took me up to Flume Gorge. I was the oldest well I'm still the oldest kid and I was allowed to go on these cool adventures with her and her then husband Mark and I remember the rest of the kids in the family were jealous because I would get to go off and do these things and they couldn't yet and we went to the Flume and I got to see the Old Man in the Mountain if you're not familiar with the Old Man in the mountain unfortunately I'll tell you it's not there anymore. It's basically a rock formation that looked like an old man's face. It's a series of ledges in the side of Cannon mountain when you would go and gaze upon it it was really neat it looked like an old man's face. It was first noted in 1805 and collapsed in 2003 so I was lucky that I got to go see it. If you go now they have these sticks or poles that have an outline of the face on it and you can kind of step back and it'll line up to where the Old Man of the Mountain used to be so you can kinda go and it's the best you can do. Flume gorge is located at 852 Daniel Webster highway in Lincoln it's a natural gorge that extends 800 feet from the base of Mount Liberty and it's got walls up the sides. As you walk there's walkways and stairways to kind of get you as close to the top as you can but the walls extend between 70 and 90 feet high up along side you and it's really neat the walls are sometimes only 12 to 20 feet apart it's like you're in this little hallway of granite. There is a cool covered bridge that goes over the river there it takes it's like an hour hour and 1/2 to do the whole walk around flume gorge but that's definitely worth it especially in summer.

If you've been a listener to the podcast before you'll know that in episode 6 I did a story about Betty and Barney Hill and their UFO abduction that took place right around Lincoln. It's funny I when I went up there in 2012 it was the night first night I was there at the Pemi cabins and I needed you know snacks at the store and there was a convenience store you know 1/4 mile down the road. It was an Irving gas station.  I went there to get some stuff and there's a mural next to the entrance way of the convenience store and it depicts this little grey alien. There's a spaceship behind him and it says the abduction of Betty and Barney Hill and it gives the date 1961.  I took a picture of it not thinking anything of it and then when I started doing this podcast and I was looking for ideas of things to talk about around New England I was going through my old photos and I pulled up this photo of the mural with the alien and that's how I discovered to Betty and Barney Hill. The mural is still there.  I believe it's protected with plexiglass now, it wasn't when I was there, but I don't know if people started drawing on it because that's what they tend to do.  Franconia Notch state park is the spot where the Old Man of the Mountain was located I thought I might give you the address there too so you're not just driving around although that's fine too it's 260 Tramway Drive and it's on the Lincoln/Franconia border that still counts as Lincoln.

It's great for skiing, it's great for hiking, it's great for stargazing.  I mean when you're up there in northern New Hampshire at night there's not a lot of ambient light to distract you from the stars. It's got the Kancamagus highway, it's got a museum and parks in the summer, skiing in the winter.  Lincoln, New Hampshire you can go there anytime, well maybe not right now, once the pandemic is over go up there and visit, take pictures of the mural for Betty and Barney Hill and just explore northern New Hampshire. It's incredible just make sure that you have a full tank of gas because the exits like I said sometimes are few and far between 2 hours north of Boston about 3.5 hours north of Hartford, Connecticut. It's definitely worth the visit Lincoln, New Hampshire.  I loved it I can't wait to go back there and I hope that I've tempted you just enough to go and give them a shot. For more information check out Lincoln NH.org that'll help you. Join me again for another road trip where I'm gonna find another incredible city or town in New England to share with all of you.

36:33 This Week In History

 It is time. Once again, for this week in history, we're going to go and check out four different stories, local national world, and pop culture. Give you a little idea of what was going on on this planet in this week, in the past. So let's jump right in and get started this week in history, 112 years ago on January 23rd, 1909, the RMS Republic sank off the coast of Nantucket. The Republic was built in 1903 was 570 feet long and considered to be much like later on the Titanic to be unsinkable. The big thing here that connects it to the area here, Cape Cod and New England is that this ship was equipped with the wireless transmitter that connected it to the Marconi station. The Republic struck another ship called the Florida about 50 miles off the coast of Nantucket. And this put the wireless transmitter into play.  A man named John Robbins became the first to send out the CQD distress signal and this signal picked up at the Marconi station in Wellfleet helped to assist the ship and rescue the lot of the passengers. A lot of which were transferred over to the Florida ship, which was less damaged. They were then transferred to another ship and towed away to safety. However, the Republic did not last the next day, it actually sank in the waters, 50 miles off of Nantucket. Now why this is important is because of what went down with the ship. None of the people did, but since the ship was seen as unsinkable, when the passengers all got removed from the ship, none of the cargo did, and this was a rich ship, a lot of wealthy people on it. So in other words, what went down with the ship was supposedly legend has it a big time cash flow that included a secret shipment of gold consigned to the Czar of Russia, along with a five ton shipment of American Eagle gold coins. If all of this is true and people have said that it is the treasure that is down there off of Nantucket is worth today over a billion dollars. In 1981, Martin Beyerle who owned a scuba diving shop on the Island of Martha's Vineyard, spearheaded the efforts to locate the Republic in 1987, after raising $2.5 million for his efforts, he actually spent 74 days down there looking around the wreckage of the Republic. The main things he found were badly damaged, bottles of champagne and some China, thus far, he has not found any of the supposedly $1 billion treasure, but in 2011, the Massachusetts court confirmed that Beyerle has the rights to salvage to the Republic. So in other words, if the treasure is there, he's going to be the one that's going to get it. But on this day, this week in history, 112 years ago, the RMS Republic became the first ship to use the distress signal wireless and actually rescued all of the people off the ship, but not the treasure. 

This week in history, 35 years ago, January 28th, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral in Florida, it killed all seven crew members, including teacher Christa McAuliffe, who was going to teach lessons while in space. This was the second shuttle ever to reach space and it was actually its 10th launch. The first shuttle to ever go into space was the Columbia, which launched April 12th, 1981. The night before the temperature dipped below freezing, which degraded the seal on the rocket boosters, which most believe contributed to the explosion, which was seen live on television. It was a big deal that a civilian, a teacher, Christa McAuliffe was going to be going into space. Christa McAuliffe was important for two reasons. First she's from New England. She was born in Concord, New Hampshire. And for me, I was in second grade when this occurred. So it was important to see a teacher go into space. Now, granted, I didn't get to see it live. We weren't able to get a TV into the classroom, but I do remember that shortly after noon. So the Challenger exploded around 11:40 AM, but shortly after noon principal, Mr. MacArthur at South Yarmouth Elementary school came on the PA system to alert us as best he could, that the shuttle Challenger had exploded. It had to be hard to try to explain it to kids that, I mean, I was eight years old, but try to explain it and have kids process it. I don't know if I processed it at the time. I saw the explosion when I got home on CNN, but it was one of those seminal moments in history for the 1980s, if you were alive. And you could remember everyone remembers what happened when the shuttle challenger exploded. So NASA shut down the space shuttle program after that to figure out what went wrong and it took until September of 1988 for space shuttle travel to continue. And that was the shuttle discovery. Unfortunately, this wouldn't be the last space shuttle disaster. In February, 2003 the space shuttle Columbia would also explode as it disintegrated when it reentered the atmosphere. This week in history, 35 years ago, the space shuttle Challenger disaster happened and changed the space program forever. 

This week in history, 139 years ago, January 25th, 1882 Charles Guiteau was found guilty and sentenced to death for the assassination of President James Garfield. Guiteau was a 41 year old mentally unstable lawyer and he had actually been stalking Garfield for months before shooting him at the Baltimore and Potomac railroad station in Washington, DC on July 2nd, 1881. So Guiteau's problem was he was a lawyer. He was crazy, but he started doing political speeches. He believed that he had played an important part in the election of James Garfield. He made speeches to very small crowds, but his insanity and his narcissistic personality made him believe that he had contributed and when his opinion of Garfield soured as the months went on, he decided that the only way to make things right was to eliminate Garfield and elevate Chester A Arthur to president. He shot Garfield twice, but Garfield hung on for six and a half months.  It's possible that he developed an infection from all these doctors trying to fish into the wound and get the bullet out with unwashed hands, which is gross. And when you hear about how President Garfield suffered through the months of, as he slowly died, it's really, uh. So Guiteau defended himself in court naturally because he was a lawyer obviously that didn't help. He was found guilty, sentenced to death, and he was hanged on June 30th, 1882, sadly presidents back then, you know, Garfield he didn't have any real protection. Abraham Lincoln, before he died, had signed into law the secret service in 1865. But in reality, the secret service didn't actually come around to protect presidents until 1894. So a lot of these presidents, it was just a normal person walking around. You might have body guards, but obviously as seen here, it wasn't enough protection. And this week in history, 139 years ago, Charles Guiteau was found guilty of the assassination of President Garfield and sentenced to death. 

This week in history, 52 years ago, January 30th, 1969, the Beatles held their famous rooftop performance on the top of the Apple Corp headquarters during the early production of their Let it Be album. This performance is extremely famous in the world of music and pop culture. It turned out to be the Beatles' last performance ever with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr also performing with Billy Preston. The 42 minutes set included takes of five songs from the upcoming Let it Be album. They included Get Back, I've Got a Feeling, One After 909, Don't Let Me Down, and Dig a Pony. Naturally it caused some chaos for people that were walking by or people out on their lunch break, hearing live Beatles music. It must have been wild to hear that and then see them up there performing. And they were bundled up. It's cold it's England in January, but after just over 40 minutes of playing the metropolitan police eventually came and told them to turn it down, which put an end to the impromptu concert. The performance would become a big part of the Let it Be film.  They thought it would be an interesting idea to kind of use a hidden camera to see people's reactions as the Beatles started playing the performance ended with John Lennon saying, 'I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope that we've passed the audition.'  It would be the last Beatles performance ever. Let it Be would be released in 1970, Abbey Road actually came out before it, even though it was recorded technically after Let it Be. By the end of 1969, the Beatles were officially disbanded and all four went on to have very successful solo careers. But this week in history, 52 years ago, the iconic rooftop performance occurred with the Beatles playing their last concert. 

And that'll do it for this week in history, very eventful week Beatles, a presidential assassination, a sad space shuttle disaster, and a treasure off the coast of Nantucket that may or may not be there tune in again next week we're and I'll have some more interesting history topics for you who knows what'll happen.

47:37 Closing/Next Episode Preview

And that's gonna do it for episode 8 of the In My Footsteps Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, I hope that you enjoyed this one. This was the end of my 3 week run of doing consecutive weekly podcast, so there won't be one next week. There will be one the week after.  I'm trying to see you know like I said the workload what it takes to do this podcast I have to research it obviously, record it, edit it, I also take one of the segments and turn them into a YouTube video which I then share. You can go over and subscribe to my videos on YouTube. Once it gets warmer I'll be doing more of the 4KNew England videos. It's not as much fun going out and shooting videos across New England when it's winter and everything's bare unless there's snow on stuff, that looks pretty good, and after doing all of that the YouTube video I get to transcribe the podcast. If you've never tried transcribing something from talk to text it's super fun it's essentially everything I say here will then be loaded into a single document and it's like one long run on sentence.  I think the one I did for episode 7 was 10,000 words, so it's a 10,000 word sentence with a lot of misspellings because the AI can sometimes miss hear things. It never gets my last name Setterlund right it's always wrong. It's a lot of work the podcasting so there's a lot that goes into it but it's a lot of fun I really enjoy it so I hope that you'll stick around and come back for episode 9 that'll be in 2 weeks. We're going to talk about one of the most famous storms in the history of New England the Blizzard of 78.  I'm going to share part 2 of my living in Las Vegas story like I said I would it's going to be the bus trip from Vegas back to Hyannis that's appointment listening and will do this week in history with a little twist like I said at the top of the podcast I don't wanna spoil it it'll be something fun it's a fun addition that's all I'll say. 

So find me on social media I've got a Facebook page In My Footsteps Podcast.  Twitter Chris Setterlund is my handle. You can find me on Instagram, either my personal account Christopher Setterlund or the In My Footsteps Podcast account either or. Go to my blog on Blogger the In My Footsteps blog, the most recent article that I posted was about the Hangar tea room in Falmouth heights which was a tea room that also doubled as a speakeasy during prohibition. So that's pretty fun. Visit my personal website Christopher Setterlund.com it has all 5 of my current books and when books 6 is available at the end of May that'll be tossed up there. You can also find the books on Amazon, you can find them at Schiffer publishing and the History Press also if you want to get them from the actual publisher. Check out my Zazzle store as I mentioned before it's called Cape Cod Living. It has some podcast merch.  I mean we're talking bumper sticker, keychain, my Uncle Steve has recently said that maybe I should come up with something new maybe a winter hat or a T shirt or something like that. Is that something that would interest anybody? I'm not gonna just make all these products with the logo of the podcast on and have them just sit there and not get sold that's sad.

Special thanks again to my sponsor for the episode Cape Hook Designs. You can find Jen and Bryan's clothing, bracelets, hats, and more at Cape Hook designs.com. Everybody stay safe out there, vaccinations are starting to roll in as far as Covid goes, we're getting closer, winter is almost half over. Hopefully in the spring things will start to look up but remember in life don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment that you can on this journey. Take care and I'll talk to you guys again soon.