Episode 18 begins with the unique Storyland amusement park that stood where the Cape Cod Mall currently stands. A beloved fixture of the 1950's and 1960's this Mother Goose inspired attraction was a destination before Hyannis became the hub of the Cape.
In the picturesque beauty of Northern Vermont, placed perfectly between Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains is the town of Middlebury. A college town filled with history and natural attractions this quaint New England classic should be a destination.
Playing some sort of organized baseball is a right of passage for most young boys in America. Little League or Tee-Ball are most common, in New England in the 1980's though there was something between those called Farm League. Enjoy some of my memories of playing baseball as a child Back In the Day.
Take a journey back in time with This Week In History. This includes the Hindenburg disaster, Louisiana Purchase, a new Time Capsule and more!
Also be sure to check out my livestreams called Without A Map Friday's at 8pm on Instagram which serve as a sort of postgame show for the podcast. Find them on IGTV and YouTube after they've finished.
Helpful Links from this Episode
Listen to Episode 17 here.
Episode 18 begins with the unique Storyland amusement park that stood where the Cape Cod Mall currently stands. A beloved fixture of the 1950's and 1960's this Mother Goose inspired attraction was a destination before Hyannis became the hub of the Cape.
In the picturesque beauty of Northern Vermont, placed perfectly between Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains is the town of Middlebury. A college town filled with history and natural attractions this quaint New England classic should be a destination.
Playing some sort of organized baseball is a right of passage for most young boys in America. Little League or Tee-Ball are most common, in New England in the 1980's though there was something between those called Farm League. Enjoy some of my memories of playing baseball as a child Back In the Day.
Take a journey back in time with This Week In History. This includes the Hindenburg disaster, Louisiana Purchase, a new Time Capsule and more!
Also be sure to check out my livestreams called Without A Map Friday's at 8pm on Instagram which serve as a sort of postgame show for the podcast. Find them on IGTV and YouTube after they've finished.
Helpful Links from this Episode
Listen to Episode 17 here.
Intro
Hello, world. Welcome to Episode 18 of the in my footsteps podcast, I am your host, Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, but representing all six states of the New England region, from northern Maine, down to Connecticut, right there up against New York City. So thank you all for tuning in. I hope you've been enjoying these podcasts. I keep trying to give content that's entertaining and insightful and things like that, as I get on towards six months of doing this podcast, I'm always trying to grow and evolve the podcast and make it where more and more eyes and ears are on it. So I'd love to as I always say, I'd love to hear from you what you've liked what you've not liked. So far through the first 18 episodes. I've started trying Facebook ads for the podcast to see if I can get people that aren't in my circle. And who don't know about it to check it out. It's worked. I've gotten a couple so that's pretty good. As anyone else out there used Facebook ads, how do you set those up, I also started a buy me a coffee page, go to buy me a coffee.com and look for the in my footsteps podcast. I've had a couple of supporters so far. And I'm actually using their donations for the Facebook ads. It's sort of like reinvesting in the podcast. Just a reminder that on Monday, May 24. My sixth book, iconic hotels and motels of Cape Cod is going to be released through the history press Arcadia Publishing. And on that night, I'm going to be doing a live stream a special one on Instagram, because I can't do an actual book launch event, like I've been doing for all the other books. So I figured the next best thing is to kind of do a simulation where all of you can come to the live stream. And I'll share some stories of the book photos. Hopefully, there'll be some q&a. I can't force q&a, but I try to engage in conversation with the people in the chat. In conjunction with the podcast. I've resurrected a blog series I was doing three or four years ago just called Child of the 80s. It kind of goes hand in hand with some of my nostalgia that I share on the podcast. It's through the in my footsteps blog at blogger.com. So obviously, if you go there, you'll start seeing these older blogs being recycled because I don't think a lot of people saw them they were through a smaller blog I was doing. In my research, I've seen that a lot of people that listen to podcast enjoy the stories and the conversation. So I'm trying to do that add more of a conversational feel, even when I do things like this week in history and the road trips, but especially with the nostalgia and the lifestyle topics that are more personal to me. And you'll see a little of that this week. So episode 18 of the podcast, I did a poll on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, between two topics that you folks wanted to hear talked about as far as Cape Cod history. We're going to do the winner of that which was the Storyland amusement park, which stood where the Cape Cod mall now stands. That's a pretty fascinating chapter in Cape Cod history. We're going to take a road trip 200 miles northwest of Boston to the little town of Middlebury, Vermont, I'm going to bring you back over 30 years to my experiences playing baseball so it'll be little league. And then before Little League what we had here Well, after t ball, there was something called farm League. So I'm going to share some funny stories with my experiences with baseball. Of course, there's this week in history, including the Hindenburg disaster, and a new time capsule. All that and more coming up right now in front of you. Thank you all for tuning in. Let's get started with the in my footsteps podcast. Let's go take a walk.
Storyland Amusement Park
A couple of weeks ago, I put up a poll on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, I gave a couple of choices of things that you might want to hear me talk about on the podcast as far as Cape Cod history goes. I always make the joke that even though there are two choices and one has to be a winner I'll end up covering both at some point. But the overwhelming winner was the Storyland amusement park in Hyannis and this it's a fascinating tale if you enjoy learn Think about what used to be on Cape Cod and New England in general because obviously, route 132 route 28 and Hyannis are so developed now, but that wasn't always the case. Cape Cod mall has always been there through my life. But my parents, my grandparents, they told me there was a time when it was different. In the middle of the 20th century, route 132, which is now one of the busiest areas on all of Cape Cod was actually a rural road with lots of trees and very few stores. And where the Cape Cod mall now stands was a place called Storyland. Amusement Park. The idea for this amusement park came from the mind of a man named George Spalt. He was a summer resident of Cape Cod. He used to live in Loudonville, New York. While working as a contractor in Albany, he saw several of these small children's amusement parks during vacations up to the Adirondack Mountains in the 1950s, specifically one called Story Town USA, which opened in 1954. Spalt wanted to create such an amusement park on Cape Cod, and it's ironic now when you think about the area where the mall currently stands was just trees. Basically, there were very few buildings there. So in March 1955, 34 year old Spalt purchased a nine-acre lot of the land that would become the mall eventually, and he started to create his Storyland. The Storyland Park was based around the Mother Goose nursery rhymes, he built 30 structures that were scattered around the nine acres, which made it like you had to walk through an enchanted forest to get to these. Imagine that these places where they walked are now long corridors of stores in the mall. All in all, the design of Storyland only took three months, but it cost Spalt about $40,000, which equates to about $400,000 today, and the park opened in June of 1955. Between a Sunoco gas station, and the top of the mourn motel on route 132. And from the get go, it was a huge success. The nursery rhyme characters like the big bad wolf, the three bears old woman who lived in a shoe, the house that Jack built, they were all there to be seen by children, and many of them had large, colorful buildings and figures along with them. And these were the work of Matthew Cobb, who was a talented artist, his great-great grandfather, Daniel Cobb, and run a general store in Barnstable around the turn of the 19th century. So this guy was deeply connected to Cape Cod. And much like Disneyland and Disney World, there were actors playing characters like Little Red Riding Hood. Other figures were mechanical, like the Big Bad Wolf, who was voiced by unseen actors, including Cape league baseball player, Frank Burleson, in 1955. And of course, there were candy booths, gift shops, and a barnyard to where you could feed the farm animals. They were ponies even a duck pond. All of this was on the land where the Cape Cod mall now stands. That's what makes it fascinating to me. Because my whole life it's been the Cape Cod mall, just a giant mashup of stores and parking lot as far as you can see, but 60 years ago, it was this fairy tale land amusement park. During its first few years, nothing really changed about the area around route 132 and route 28. It remained pretty rural. So much so that in 1957, when the locusts returned, you could hear their hum as you drove along Route 132. But times change and that area of Hyannis. It seems like it was always destined to become the hub of business on Cape Cod, and that started in 1961. Plans began for the All Cape shopping center, which would be located on 40 acres of land right at the airport rotary centered around picture pond, the property would end up becoming Cape Cod's largest shopping center, and the land east of Storyland, which is now the Christmas tree shop Plaza. That land got bulldozed and the first business to be erected on the property was Abercrombie and Fitch, which went up in April 1963. Ironically, that Plaza never materialized. The plans were there, but it fell through unfortunately, but what it did do was kind of put in motion the plans for eventual shopping centers which set in motion the plans for the Cape Cod Mall. Storyland remained basically unchanged through the first half of the 1960s although many golf courses restaurants, hotels, they began to spring up around the area. So it was kinda like the writing was on the wall. George Spalt, the creator he didn't stop at story land. Based on its success. He developed Adventure Land in Newburyport, Massachusetts, as well as Ella's cowboy town in Plainville, Massachusetts. Despite those additions to his empire story lands rain was coming to an end. In July 1968. Negotiations were completed that basically it sold the Storyland property for what would become the Cape Cod Mall. Even before the groundbreaking went in, they already had announced the anchor stores for the Cape Cod mall and it was Sears filings and Woolworth. During the 1968 season, George Spalt started looking for areas to move his Storyland amusement park, he didn't want to just lose it. And as luck would have it, he did he found a replacement spot in Orleans near the Orleans rotary January 1969. They took all of the structures down from Hyannis moved it out to a filled in Cranberry Bog near the Orleans Rotary, and it was ready. So Storyland reopened in Orleans for the 1969 season. That chapter of story lands existence was not as successful. By 1974 Storyland was closed in Orleans and it sat vacant for several years. Eventually, everything was bulldozed and it became the Stop and Shop plaza that is there. Now. As for the Cape Cod mall, the skeleton structure began to rise from the ground during the summer of 1969. With the first section of the mall actually opening to the public on August 4 1970 28, stores would open that day, which brought to culmination of four and a half years from the planning of the mall to the completion. And today, the Cape Cod mall is over 800,000 square feet, they just added target and Dick's Sporting Goods last year. And for those visiting, it seems like it's always been there. Like you couldn't imagine a time where it was all trees and there was this fairy tale amusement park there. But it was there's a lot of photos. So if you go to the imaginary world.com There's a whole section of photos of Storyland. I got a lot of photos from Flickr, you can find them there. And it seems like there's no way it could have been real that this actually existed. But Cape Cod was so much different 60, 70 years ago than it is now. I'll throw a link in the description of the podcast to the imaginary world if you want to check out photos of Storyland. Otherwise for you longtime Cape cutters or visitors next time you pull into the mall, just close your eyes and imagine Mother Goose are the big bad wolf. These buildings were the woman who lived in a shoe, that was reality. 60 years ago when Storyland Amusement Park became the first business on the Cape Cod mall property.
Sponsor: Wear Your Wish
Before we go on, I wanted to make sure to mention to go to visit where your wishes.com checkout where your wish to the new clothing and apparel company run by Katie marks, it's been going strong for two months now they have sold out of a lot of great products. So if you go to where your wishes.com and you see some of the new arrivals, the T tread tote bag, the Celie t-shirt, the represent trucker cap and you notice that they're sold out either shoot an email to the site or just wait because these things have been selling strong. It's all high-quality merchandise. They've got stickers, they've got hats, they've got t shirts, they've gotten hoodies, as I said, they've got totes, and it's all from the mind, the heart the soul of Katy marks. It's been a great several months since the launch. And it's been an inspirational story as well go to wear your wishes.com click on the About Us link and learn all about Katie's story or you can go to Episode 11 of the podcast and hear my interview with her. Go sign up for the newsletter and see why where your wish has been doing so well right off the bat. So check them out where your wishes.com.
Road Trip: Middlebury, Vermont
New England is home to some of the most well-known and most beloved cities and towns in all of America. And doing these road trips. It's easy to focus on some of these ones, Boston, Providence Hartford, up in Gloucester, Maine, you've got Portland, Manchester, New Hampshire, Concord, New Hampshire, Montpelier, Vermont, but the real fun and exciting part of doing these road trips for you for the podcast is getting to shine a light on smaller and I guess you would say lesser known cities and towns in New England. Amazing hidden gems and crown jewels that don't get the recognition that they should get and deserve to get. And this week for the road trip is going To be one such place, we're going to take a trip 200 miles northwest of Boston, we're going to visit the little town of Middlebury, Vermont. And I guess when I say little town, it's not little, like tiny where I'm from on Cape Cod. The Town of Truro. I mean, they might have 1000 people there in the wintertime. So, Middlebury is bigger than that. As of 2018, the population was 6860 people. So you'd be the judge on how small of a town it is. It was at the forefront, the beginning of the colonial era in New England in America, chartered in 1761, and located in between Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains of Vermont, so you are close to kind of the best of both worlds. They are the Shire town of Addison County in Vermont. And Shire town is kind of the center of the government or the court system of the district. In case you were wondering, I had to look up what Shire town meant, that sounds like a British term. So I had to make sure that I knew what it was. It was named Middlebury, because it was the midpoint between the towns of Salisbury and New Haven, Vermont. As I said, it's 200 miles northwest of Boston, Massachusetts. It's also just under 70 miles south of the Canadian border. So it's way up there in northern Vermont. And a lot of these towns in northern Vermont and New Hampshire and Maine can be seen as kind of throwback, quintessential New England towns. Middlebury is kind of both because it's also a college town. Middlebury College is a private liberal arts college. It was chartered in 1800. So it's over 200 years old. And it's noted for its summer bread loaf Writers Conference. It's the oldest Writers Conference in America, having started in 1920. This year's conference is held from August 11, through the 21st, and it's in the town of Ripton, which is the next town east over from Middlebury. So there's that arts and culture of a college town. But it's also that northern New England vintage kind of town. I don't know how to explain it, where if you've lived in this area, or you visited this area, New England in general, there are just towns and maybe not entire towns, but stretches of roads and village downtown's that just look like something you'd see out of a Saturday Evening Post old magazine, or an illustration of what people think quintessential New England looks like those places actually do exist. And Middlebury Vermont is one of those places. Their downtown village area is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Naturally, they're home to covered bridges. That's sort of a staple of Vermont, New Hampshire, their home to the helping covered bridge, but also the pulp mill covered bridge, which is the oldest in Vermont. It was completed in 1820. And it spans across otter Creek. Otter Creek is actually the longest river which is entirely contained within the state limits of Vermont. It's 112 miles long and it empties into Lake Champlain. It passes through Middlebury and there's actually otter creek falls there, which is a great place to just stand and watch the rushing water. waterfalls are actually a lot of fun to just stand there and watch and listen to and kind of lose yourself in. In being in northern Vermont. There's a lot of natural things to see the foliage in the fall is incredible. And otter Creek and the falls. That's a great thing. But there's more than that. As a college town, there's a lot of art and culture. There's the Town Hall Theatre at 68 South Pleasant Street. It's currently closed due to the pandemic which is still not over yet. But when it's open, it does local acts, opera broadcasts some movie screenings. It's a fun place to just get together as a town. For gifts. You can go to the Vermont soap factory outlet Museum at 616 Exchange street just off of Route seven. You can learn more at Vermont soap.com. They've been around since 1992. So they must be doing something right to be around 30 years. Also go and check out Danforth pewter at 52 Seymour street. They do handcrafted gifts, jewelry, Christmas ornaments. You can even go into their workshop, like they'll show you how it's done. I think that's part of the magic is you see the finished product but then you can actually go and see them making it and it's all local people making it locally done. So if you go and visit there, that's definitely a gift to get from Middlebury that actually says you know the town there. Check them out at Danforth pewter.com. If you want to go up there though and stay, I would recommend the Middlebury Inn at 14 Courthouse Square. They've been open since 1827 and have 71 guest rooms. You can stay there and you can also get a meal or a drink at Morgan's tavern. And the building's awesome. It's that brick that kind of speaks to you from the early part of the 19th century, check out Middlebury Inn.com and look at some of the photos you'll know what I mean it's hard to describe, but there's more places to go to eat at in Middlebury you can check out American flatbread at 137 Maple Street, American flatbread has three locations. Besides Middlebury, there's Burlington and Waitsfield. It's been around since 1985. And they have those big hearth ovens to cook the flatbread pizzas. And they even sell their frozen flatbreads in some stores. They're in Shaw's and Stop and Shop, I was able to actually find them in my local ones. So they're everywhere. It was a pleasant surprise, because just because I hadn't heard of them before doing this podcast didn't mean that they weren't a big deal. And they are. So definitely check out their shop and Middlebury or go to American flatbread.com. And if you're still on the fence about going to check out Middlebury saying, Oh, it's way up in northern Vermont, it's a small town, and I don't know anything about it, go to experience middlebury.com. And that'll tell you all you need to know, some of the spots. There's hundreds and hundreds of amazing places in New England, and I haven't been to them all. So when doing my research, these places have to pop, they have to speak to me, for me to want to include them for you to listen to, it can't just be some random place like well, I need to fill space on the podcast. So here's whatever town they have to mean something. And that's Middlebury, it's definitely quintessential New England, but it's also a college town. But it's also an historic town going back to the American Revolution. So go and pay them a visit. And if you go, let me know what you thought of it, because I haven't been I speak of it with passion, because I'm very interested in going there. So I'm curious, let me know what you thought of Middlebury, Vermont, and I'll be back next time for another road trip to another amazing place that New England has to offer.
Back In the Day: Little League Baseball
Springtime means everything's back in bloom, the weather starts to get warm. And after a long, cold winter, you get back out there and you get to enjoy being outside again. When you're a kid going out and playing in the spring, in the summer, there's nothing like it, Hide and Seek and tag and riding your bike and just playing in the woods. Those are things that were great about growing up in the 1980s 1990s. If you knew of someone that had a basketball hoop, you go play there you go play, touch football on the fields anywhere you could go to but one of the big rites of passage, especially if you're a young boy in the 1980s 1990s, and still today is playing baseball, whether it was T ball or little league or anything like that. And I want to get into my experiences with little league. And what came before which back then used to be called farm league baseball. I believe my first year of playing farm League Baseball was 1986. I could be wrong. My memory can kind of fade as we go now. But farm League was different. I think that was I know that little league was up to like 12 or 13 years old. So I'm assuming that farm League was below that. 8, 9, 10 years old you would play and it was way more laid back then even little league would be mean you had uniforms, I guess that had numbers on them and hats, but it was nothing like little league where you would actually get the cleats. stirrups were the things that I couldn't believe about baseball uniforms. That I mean, I guess they looked cool with the White Sox and the black cleats but still, the only time in my life I ever wore stirrups was in Little League. Any of you out there that played I don't know what they call farm League. Now. My nephew Landon has been playing a lot. He's 13 When I was playing farm League, I don't remember how we decided positions to play. I think the coaches just scattered us around and tried us everywhere. And the coach would always have the bag the big I guess it's a hockey bag filled with baseball bats and helmets. And you'd have to go and try to find a helmet that fit your head and a bat that you could actually swing and they were always aluminum I think they had a few wooden but the wooden bats when you swung those and hit the ball the vibrations would hurt because you didn't wear gloves. Eight, nine years old you didn't really have batting gloves and the jumped a little league was a big change. Because there were kids that were actually really good. Not that informally. There weren't but when you're eight eight or nine years old, it's harder to judge talent. In Little League, it was different. And there'd be the kids that would. And I'm sure if you played farm League, Little League, there were kids that obviously got forced to play by their parents, and they had no interest. There was one kid I remember he was terrified of the ball. So the guy would pitch it, and he would dive out of the batter's box. And it's like, what do you do? You can't force him to stay there. In Little League, I found myself usually as first base or catcher. And I hated catcher because one of the kids, the main pitcher on my team, which was the Rams, his name was Tony, he had an awesome fastball, and he had good location. So he would pop that catcher's mitt, and it was on my thumb, every time to the point where I just didn't want to catch. The last time I caught him in a game, we got near the end of the game, and I was just knocking the ball down because My thumb hurts so bad from his fastball hitting the same spot. It made me wish that he had terrible location. Ironically, one of my close friends named was Matt. He had a great fastball too, but we would always practice he grew up diagonally across the street from me, and we would practice we'd either just play catch, but we did one time we played catch with the baseball. And I'll just say that I missed the ball. It hit me right downstairs in the nuts. And I said, I don't ever want to play catch with you with a baseball again. I said, if you want to pitch to me, you gotta throw a tennis ball. Cause I was terrified that he would nail me again. Little League was fun though. My team the Rams we actually had a girl on our team Alicia, she played sports, like all the boys did. And she was good. We had one game where she actually got the game-winning hit. I remember the first game where I ever hit a home run. I had people retrieve the ball for me. And then I had the whole team autograph it like it was something special. And this was 1990 I think. And that ball is in my mother's basement. Still 31 years old. It's all got like a brownish color to it now because it's been sitting in a basement for three decades. But it's got everyone's autograph on it. Another neat thing about Little League was you actually got your own baseball card. And it just told about you your favorite player, your favorite team. Mine has not aged well. So my 1989 Little League card with me on there as 12 years old, I got my favorite team was the Red Sox, for my favorite player was Jose Canseco, because he was the big, you know, the bash brothers with the Oakland A's, and they were the popular team. It's like growing up in the 90s in New England, and yeah, you'd root for the Celtics, but Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls were the cool team. So that's what the Oakland A's were. And that didn't age well with Canseco. And the steroids were it's like the whole team was on steroids. And like that's my favorite player, the steroid guy. I think in baseball, every kid wants to be the pitcher. Just like in football, everyone wants to be the quarterback because you're basically all eyes are on you. And that was the same for me. I always wanted to be the pitcher. And so finally, one day my coach allowed me to be the pitcher. And it was my first and last time ever pitching. I'll just sum up my one game pitching with this. I hit a kid in the head twice. He came up to bat once wham, hit him in the head. At least it was the helmet. But then he came up the second time and wham hit him in the helmet again, not intentionally. But he looked at me and he just said, What did I do? Yeah, that was the end. You hit the same kid in the head twice with a pitch and two different at bats. And you're not going to pitch again. But those days were fun playing Little League. We had certain fields, they were next door to an elementary school, John Simpkins Elementary School in South Yarmouth. Next to them. There were a couple of fields so there'd be two games going on at once. There was the snack bar. So if you weren't playing or if it was before your game, you go over there, and there was no real parking so the cars would just be scattered all around fields and behind the center field fence and such the chain link fence. There will be times that foul balls and home runs would hit people's windshields. I don't think windshields ever got broken, but cars definitely got hit, because there was nowhere to park. I never won the championship and Little League though. And once I got too old for a little league, my desire to play baseball kind of waned. Basketball was always my favorite sport. I had a hoop in front of my house on Cherry Lane. So I got more into doing that. But I've got tons of great memories of those springs and early summers playing farm league ball little league ball than any of you out there play baseball growing up, not necessarily the school team, because that's more organized. I liked the town stuff. Farm league is still one that we played on the fields behind Dennis Yarmouth High School, and they didn't even have fences. So you couldn't even hit a home run, you just had to hit the ball and it would just roll forever. So that's how you got your home runs. It was organized well, and it was fun. And a lot of us kids played it some by choice, some not by choice. And you could tell those, like I said, the poor kid that would dive out of the batter's box. Now that it's in my head, I think I might today go take a drive down to those little league fields. I haven't been in there for 30 years. Maybe I'll go hit a couple of balls. I have to get a bat and a ball and a glove. But there's some memories of Little League and farm league baseball for everyone. Hope it brought back some good memories for you too.
Sponsor: The Rail Restaurant
Just in time for spring and for summer. On the way to Nauset beach there is a new restaurant making waves and that is the rail in Orleans breakfast lunch cocktails. The rail is a mixture of everything. It can be a place for business meetings, it can be a place for family get-togethers it can be a place for first dates, with Cameron running the front of the house with more than a decade of experience in restaurants. Tyler running the back of the house. This restaurant is quickly establishing itself as a place to be among Cape Cod spots. Everything you could want for food is here from chicken and waffles to artisan omelets, pancakes, burgers, euros, cheesesteaks, it's all there. They're open 5am to 3pm Seven days a week. Check them out at 222 Main Street in Orleans or go to the rail orleans.com and see for yourself and then go sample the food that everybody is talking about the rail Orleans we'll see you there.
This Week In History
This week in history starts off with one of the weirdest cases that I've researched thus far for the podcast. 131 years ago this week, May 2, 1890. Waterbury, Connecticut, a pair of friends sat in Russell's saloon on Bishop St. Patrick Flanagan and Michael McDermott sharing a couple of pints when Flanagan pulled out a revolver and shot McDermott six times in the face and neck. McDermott was taken to a doctor's office where he died shortly thereafter, Flanagan calmly walked away from the scene did not flee, and he was picked up in front of Canons North End drugstore from the jail cell Flanagan was unmoved by his crime, even admitting that he had no ill will against McDermott, that he was considered his friend, or at least an acquaintance, Thomas Russell, the owner of the bar, where they were drinking said that the two were sharing a beer together when Flanagan literally just pulled out his gun and started shooting him in the face. Within a few days, the coroner had concluded that Flanagan was definitely crazy saying the two were nothing but best of friends, he and McDermott and Flanagan would spend his days in jail, whistling and singing. Flanagan never expressed any remorse for his crime and seemed really indifferent to what he had done. A year later, May 2 1891. He was put on trial and sentenced to death by hanging, which was meant to take place one year later on May 2 1892. Flanagan, though, would die before that of tuberculosis on January 25 1892. He never expressed remorse. There was never any real conclusion as to why he shot McDermott six times after sharing a beer with them. I just thought it was the weirdest most random case to start off this week in history. 218 years ago, this week in history, May 2 1803, the Louisiana Purchase is completed. This land purchase brought into the United States about 828,000 square miles of territory purchased from France, basically doubling the size of the United States. Known as the Louisiana Territory, it stretched from the Mississippi River in the East all the way to the Rocky Mountains, from the Gulf of Mexico all the way up to the Canadian border, and part or all of 15 states would be eventually created from this land deal. It's considered to be one of the most important achievements of Thomas Jefferson's presidency, the land of the Louisiana Territory was originally owned by France, then it was ceded to Spain, and eventually given back to France in 1801. So pretty much nobody could hold on to the land until the United States got it. It is said that the failure of France to put down a slave revolution in Haiti and their impending war with England and the possible British naval blockade of France all these things combined could have prompted Napoleon to offer Louisiana for sale to the United States. So how much did the Louisiana Purchase cost the United States In 1803? It was $11.25 million, or about $263.7 million today for 828,000 square miles of land. Can you imagine what a deal and it's basically doubled the size of the country, and that occurred 218 years ago this week. 84 years ago this week, May 6 1937, the Hindenburg disaster occurs. The Hindenburg was a German dirigible, an airship Zeppelin sort of like a blimp, except it was used for travel. It was the pride of Nazi Germany. And in short, it burst into flames upon touching its mooring mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 36 passengers and crew members. And it's very famous. There's newsreel footage of the disaster actually happening. It's one of those first things that you could go to the movie theater and see the newsreel, archive and see this actually happening. And there's the famous radio broadcast of the man commentating on it and the oh the humanity. That's where that line comes from. And it's awful to see, because these dirigibles were filled with hydrogen, which obviously it's highly flammable, so any sort of little spark could have been the disaster. The Hindenburg was 804 feet in length, and this journey it made was from Frankfurt, Germany, and was landing at Lakehurst Navy Air Base. While attempting to more the dirigible suddenly burst into flames. It's assumed it was a spark ignited in its hydrogen core, and the ship it didn't take very long. It was a matter of seconds for it to burst into flames and just fall 200 feet to the ground. The man who was doing the broadcast for voice-over for the NBC News Reel was named herb Morrison. He's the one who said Oh, the humanity and after this disaster being so visible worldwide with the footage lighter than air dirigibles for passenger transport rapidly fell out of favor and by the end of World War Two, that was kind of the end. Now you just see them today like the blimp like the Goodyear blimp, that's all that's left of those 84 years ago. This week, the Hindenburg disaster happened 39 years ago this weekend, a little bit of lighter news, May 2 1982, the Weather Channel debuts the idea of an all-weather cable channel was the brainchild of John Coleman, who was the chief meteorologist at WLS TV in Chicago and forecaster on Good Morning America. It had really never been seen before the time a station that had weather from all parts of the country. And then eventually, you know, they would touch on all parts of the world. They had the local on the eights forecast, which they still have with that nice elevator music that would play and the robot voice-over that would tell you the current forecast and things like that. The station was founded in Atlanta July 18 1980, but didn't go on the air until May 2 1982. It started at 8pm. Anchored by meteorologist Bruce Edwards and Andre Bernier. Originally, the Weather Channel gathered its national and regional forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA and the local forecasts were from the National Weather Service all their local outlets. And in the nearly four decades since the Weather Channel has just become a part of American society. They've obviously got their website, they've got an app for your phone. In March 2018 Byron Allen's entertainment studios acquired the Weather Channel from NBC Universal for reported $300 million. So go and celebrate the anniversary of the Weather Channel by watching some local on the eights grab the app and check the weather 39 years ago this week it came into existence the Weather Channel. And let's jump in start digging and open up a new time capsule. So we're gonna go back to Cinco De mayo may 5 1999 22 years ago, the number one song in America was livin la vida loca by Ricky Martin. It was Martin's biggest hit in America spending five weeks at number one, he had been in the boy band Menudo in the 1980s and this song was off his English language debut album, and it was a monster hit. That self-titled album would go on to sell 15 million copies. The number one movie was the mummy starring Brendan Fraser and racial wife. It made $416 million in America on a budget of 80 million and has a 61% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But I really enjoy the film. So I'm biased and I would tell you to go see it if you hadn't, it's a remake of the 1932 Mummy film. And I think it's actually been remade sense, which is crazy. But you know, Hollywood, they just recycle stuff until it loses its meaning. The number one TV show was er. And the irony is, I think I did a time capsule a few episodes ago from years earlier. And I think er was number one, then two. So that will tell you how big of a show this was. But as a quick recap, it was on the air for 15 seasons 1994 to 2009 331 episodes, it received 124 Emmy nominations during its run as a TV show. So that'll just tell you how big of a show it was. And if you were going to celebrate Cinco De mayo, May 5 1999, the average cost of a six pack of beer was $6.12. So there you go. I don't know what kind of beer, it was just the average. I'm sure there were some much, much cheaper ones that you could get. But $6.12 will get you a six pack on average. And that'll seal up another time capsule. That'll do it for this week in history. With each episode. I hope I make history a little more palatable, a little more interesting for you all.
Closing
So we're just about near the end here of episode 18 of the podcast. Before we wrap things up, I wanted to make sure that I sent some special shout-outs as Sunday is Mother's Day. And I wanted to make sure that I wished Happy Mother's Day to all the special mothers in my family and in my inner circle, starting with my mom Laurie, who has been my biggest fan and biggest supporter all throughout my life. And so much of what I've done and what I do as far as career stuff goes is hoping that I make her proud and then just who I am as a human also, I always say I was raised right by my mother. So I want to wish her a happy Mother's Day. But it goes beyond that. Want to wish you a Happy Mother's Day to my sisters Kate and Lindsay and my sister in law Aaron who have given me my six pack of nieces and nephews. Happy Mother's Day to my aunts Kelly, Susan and Emma, and Happy Mother's Day to friends such as Amy, Shayna and Dawn and crystal, Jen, Lisa and Mary formerly all Clark's but now different married names. And last but not least, Happy Mother's days up in heaven to my Nina Rosemarie, my Nana Doris, I'll see you guys again someday to wish you Happy Mother's Day face to face. And to all of you out there. Make sure you do something nice for Mother's Day for your mother, grandmother, mother of your child sisters, cousins, aunts, any of them. Happy Mother's Day to all of you. So we're wrapping up episode 18 Here. Thank you so much to all of you for tuning in. I appreciate all of the support people listening to the episodes, checking out the live streams, finding me on Instagram subscribing on YouTube. All this content creation is done as a passion project but also as a hope that this would end up being some sort of a career because I really love doing this more than anything else that I could be doing in the world right now. As I said find me Fridays at 8pm my live stream called without a map on Instagram. Check out my in my footsteps podcast blog. I've resurrected my child of the 80s blogs to kind of go along with the retro segments on the podcast. I'm adding some new topics there but you can go check out the old ones to keep on the lookout for my sixth book, iconic hotels and motels of Cape Cod through the history press. You can preorder it now through the history press. But it is also going to be released May 24. It'll be in stores, all the local ones on the cape and Amazon and Barnes and Noble etc. I'll be doing a special book launch livestream on Instagram Monday, May 24 7:30pm. That should be fun. We'll see how that goes. Since I can't do a traditional book launch in person. If you want to support the podcast I opened up a buy me a coffee account page just go to buy me a coffee.com look for in my footsteps podcast. The same logo that you see on all when you download it. It's got I do a special one for each episode. So like this one is a team with the baseballs in the holes of the eighth just look for that if you want to. If it persuades you a little more I have been using any donations I get on buy me a coffee to use for Facebook and Instagram ads something kinda reinvesting in myself. So it's not like you donate and I take that money and go buy Chinese food, I'm actually using it to promote the podcast. Come back next Thursday for episode 19 of the podcast. I'm so excited, I'm going to be introducing a new segment, I'm going to just call restaurant story time, where I will be sharing some of the wild and unbelievable yet true stories of my nearly two decades working in the restaurant industry. These you will have to hear to believe but they're all 100% True. We're going to take a road trip and do a double dip of Rockland and owls head Maine, I'll be sharing this awesome trip I did up there a long time ago, as part of that road trip. We're gonna go way, way back in the day to some of the first picture books and children's books that I can remember, it kind of goes hand in hand with that child of the 80s blog that I told you, I've been resurrecting. So you can actually get ahead on it if you go and read that article. But I'll be speaking about them in the next episode. All that and of course this week in history and a new time capsule with that, I hope you enjoy those before then, you know, make sure take some time for yourself, your mental health and getting through this pandemic that is still not totally over is the most important thing. being burned out from all this is natural. I've been burned out. Only recently have I started to feel like myself again. So just take a little time to focus on your own happiness, your own mental health, and do what you got to do to get by what makes you happy. That's the main thing and tune in to me. Hopefully I give you a little bit of happiness with my crazy trip around my head that I do in these podcasts. Remember, though, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps, create your own path on this journey, and enjoy every moment you can because you never know. Never know when that last step might occur. So thank you all so much for tuning in to Episode 18. I'll see you next week for episode 19 And I'll talk to you again real soon