Side note: I bought a quilted eyeglass case at an Amish market years ago. Wish I could’ve afforded something more expensive!
Back in play: The Amish are named after Jakob Ammann, their Swiss founder.
John Sutter, the owner of Sutter’s Mill where gold was discovered in California, was born in Switzerland.
The first non-indigenous community in California’s Central Valley was Sutter’s Fort, established in 1839. Its construction began in 1841. Located in Sacramento and restored to its original condition, its DD coordinates are ▲ 38.5723, -121.4712.
The city of Sacramento (as well as the Sacramento River and the Sacramento Valley) takes its name from Spanish explorer Gabriel Moraga; when Moraga’s expedition discovered the beautiful river valley, they were said to have commented, “¡Es como el sagrado sacramento!” – “It’s like the Blessed Sacrament” (a reference to the Sacrament of the Eucharist in the Roman Catholic Church).
Sutter’s Fort and present-day Sacramento, CA, were the southern terminus of the Siskyou Trail, a route that incorporated existing Native American trails between the fort and Fort Vancouver to the north. Used by early hunters and trappers who were employed by the Hudson Bay Company (which used Fort Vancouver as a regional headquarters) the trail follows along the modern route of US Hwy 99, which was replaced by Interstate 5 in the early 1960s.
Another trail connected Sutter’s Fort to the early Spanish settlement of San Francisco, and the Pacific Ocean. This trail was met by the El Camino Real, a road that connected the Jesuit and Franciscan missions between San Francisco and San Diego.
In a 1978 SNL Family Feud sketch, one family was from El Camino Del Rey Mar Vista, California.
El Camino Real or Camino del Rey is Spanish for the Royal Road or King’s Road. During the Spanish colonial era, the term was used for a road important enough to be maintained by the government.
Several roads around the world have this name, in Spain, the Americas, the Caribbean and the Philippines. The longest is in South America, extending from Ecuador through Peru and Bolivia to Argentina, with branches to Chile and Paraguay.
In Game of Thrones, the Kingsroad is the main overland route through Westeros, beginning at Storm’s End in the south and terminating 2000 miles later at Castle Black at the Wall. In Episode 2 of Season 1, which was entitled ‘Kingsroad’, most of the action takes place along the road.
In 2015, guitarist and singer Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters fell from the stage during a concert in Gothenburg, Sweden, and suffered a broken right leg; his injury forced the band to cancel the rest of their European tour. In order to keep from cancelling the U.S. leg of that tour, Grohl had a custom “throne” built for himself – inspired by the “Iron Throne” in the television series Game of Thrones – which allowed him to perform while seated.
Grohl subsequently lent the throne to Axl Rose of Guns N’ Roses, and Darren Wall of the Seattle metal band Greyhawk, after they suffered leg injuries.
The term “foo fighter” was used by pilots during WWII to describe unidentified objects, presumably unknown enemy aircraft but most often naturally occurring phenomena. A noted incident involves two men who had sighted a red ball of fire that appeared to chase them through a variety of high-speed maneuvers. Upon returning to base, one of the men described it as “fucking ‘foo fighters’”. The name stuck, with the expletive removed from the officers’ report.
Nobody knows why they were called “foo fighters”, but the best explanation (to my way of thinking, anyway) lies in the fact that during the period there was a newspaper comic strip called ‘Smokey Stover’, drawn by Bill Holman, in which the stand-alone, undefined, nonsense syllable ‘foo’ often turned up on signs, lists, menus, and the lips of various characters at random but frequent intervals. The pilots would have been familiar with it in that context of being something random, ambiguous, and unexplainable.
-“BB”-
[Not in play]
I saw that when researching my previous post; it could be the most viable explanation, but others list a shortening of the military acronym FUBAR to “FU/foo”; also a possible explanation is the abbreviation for unidentified flying object “UFO” that could have been mispronounced as “oo-foe”, and futher mangled as “foo.” (This is just speculation, and IMO Bill’s post presents the most plausible situation.)
FWIW, “UFO” appears to have been coined in the late '40s, several years after WWII and the coining of “foo fighter.”
In play:
Smokey and the Bandit was a 1977 action comedy film, starring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jerry Reed, and Jackie Gleason.
The film depicts a pair of bootlegger truckers – Bo “Bandit” Darville (Reynolds) and Cledus “Snowman” Snow (Reed), who agree to a wager, to smuggle a truckload of Coors beer (which was, at that time, not sold east of the Mississippi River) from Texarkana, TX to Atlanta within 28 hours. During their trip back to Atlanta, Bandit (driving a black Pontiac Trans Am) gives a ride to a runaway bride (Field), and is pursued for the rest of the trip by Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Gleason).
The film was the second-highest-grossing film of 1977, behind only the blockbuster Star Wars.
George Lucas considered Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune for the Star Wars role of Obi-Wan Kenobi which eventually went to British actor Alec Guinness.
David Prowse, the actor who embodied Darth Vader on screen, was ostracized for leaking information about his role in Episodes V and VI, although reportedly the info had been previously leaked by unknown persons and Prowse was ambushed with the question in an interview. This led to Sebastion Shaw being the revealed face of Vader in Episode VI.
Vader, Washington had a population less than 1,000 people at the last census. Vader is about 60 miles north of Vancouver WA, and about 40 miles southwest of Seattle. The town is named for Martin Vader, a veteran of the Civil War.
Doc Martin was an English television comedy/drama, which ran on the ITV network for 10 series (seasons). The show centered on Dr. Martin Ellingham, a brilliant surgeon who develops a debilitating fear of blood. Due to this, Martin leaves his surgical career to become a general practitioner in a small seashore town in Cornwall.
“Doc Martin”'s brusque style, short temper, disregard for social niceties, and lack of emotion place him at odds with the quirky local residents who become his neighbors and patients.
I Love a Mystery was a radio show airing off and on between 1939 and 1952, featuring the adventures of Doc Long, Jack Packard, and Reggie Yorke, of the A-1 Detective Agency.
The Mystery Machine was the van owned by Fred Jones in the cartoon TV show, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! from 1969. Typically riding in the van with Fred was Daphne Blake, Velma Dinkley, Norville “Shaggy” Rogers, and Scooby Doo.
The Mystery Machine van closely resembles a 1967 Dodge A100 panel van.
The “Little Red Wagon” was a Dodge A100 pickup truck, which had been heavily modified to become a dragster. The Little Red Wagon frequently appeared as an exhibition at drag-racing events in the 1960s and 1970s; it was believed to have been the first truck capable of doing “wheelstands,” and was, at that time, the world’s fastest truck.
