038 Encore Quarantine Trivia

Bob Smith 0:00
This is Bob Smith for the next several episodes of the off ramp. We remember the spring of 2025 years ago. That’s when the COVID lockdown started, and Marcia and I transformed this program into a trivia podcast to keep ourselves and our friends entertained. We’re revisiting a few episodes from that spring, because it’s good trivia and it’s good to remember the kinds of things we were all going through when the first pandemic in a century upset all of our lives. Without further ado, here’s an encore performance of off ramp episode number 38 quarantine trivia from the spring of 2020

Marcia Smith 0:41
What’s the story behind the word quarantine

Bob Smith 0:44
and sheltering in place feeling a little couped up? Hey, it may be a chance to do some of your best work. We’ll tell you about three famous people who did some of their best work while working at home in quarantine during history’s greatest plagues, here on the off ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith.

Welcome to the off ramp, a place to slow down. Steer clear of crazy, take a side road to sanity and get some perspective on life. I’m Bob Smith. I’m Marcia Smith, and today we’ve got more fun trivia for you on a potpourri of topics as we shelter in place for the duration of the Coronavirus. Indeed, we’ve been digging through books and trolling the web to find some fun things we think will be pretty entertaining. And you’ve got a very good question there. Marshall, what

Marcia Smith 1:47
is that? Okay? Bob, Mr. History, where did we get the word quarantine? What am I supposed to know everything? Well, that’s what you say. Yes.

Bob Smith 1:56
Go ahead. Okay, Quora, Quora, Quora, quarantine. I’m starts with a Q. I would think it has something to do with the number four, okay, four, four. I don’t, I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense to me. 4444,

Marcia Smith 2:10
teens, 1414,

Bob Smith 2:13
oh, okay, that’s a red herring. Okay, tell me the answer. Okay.

Marcia Smith 2:17
The practice of quarantine as we know it today began during the 14th century in an effort to protect coastal cities from plagues and ships arriving in Venice from infected ports had to sit in anchor in Venice for 40 days before they let anybody get off or on. And this practice was called quarantine because it’s derived from Italian words Coronavirus, 40 days. Oh, really. So that’s what quarantine means. So it comes

Bob Smith 2:47
off 40 days. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know. I had no idea. So this term actually comes from a time like now, when there’s a pandemic going on in the world.

Marcia Smith 2:57
Wow, if, with any luck, we can get through it in quantity. What

Bob Smith 3:01
would you do on a boat in in harbor at Venice for 40 days the people

Marcia Smith 3:04
on the Princess Cruises? Bob, okay.

Bob Smith 3:09
Well, speaking of quarantine, there was a posting on one of my favorite websites called Mental Floss, and people who were amazingly productive in quarantine. And so I’ve got the stories of three folks from that item, okay? And I want you to tell me who they were, okay? I’ll give you some clues here. Okay, okay. This first guy is a guy named Bill. He’s a writer, and he found himself in a situation where he didn’t have any work, and so he went home and decided he would write some stuff. So that’s all I’m going to give you right now. Do you want me to tell you a date or anything? Well, that would help a lot. Yeah, okay, so the early 17th century. Oh, okay. Well, that lets out. You know, his name is Bill. Any any worked in London?

Marcia Smith 3:55
Would it be Billy Shakespeare? That’s

Bob Smith 3:58
exactly who it was, right? William Shakespeare. He did some of his best work during a quarantine. So he was an actor and a shareholder with forgot that he was an actor. Yeah, he was an actor. That’s, you know, how he started. But he was also writing at the same time, but he was an actor and a shareholder in the King’s Men theater troupe. So at this time, he was just pretty much acting. That was primarily what he was doing when the bubonic plague forced London theaters to close in the early 17th century. So their rule there was that after after a few weeks when the death toll exceeded 30 all public theaters, or they call them playhouses, had to be shut down. Wow, because they even knew then that people were communicating this disease 30

Marcia Smith 4:39
another. So they shut down before we did. They shut down long before we did. Wow.

Bob Smith 4:43
This meant that the theater industry was pretty much paralyzed in the year 1606, and then after he suddenly found himself without a steady job, lots of free time, he went home, and guess what? He wrote. He wrote King Lear Macbeth and. Anthony and Cleopatra before the year was over. So now, if think about that, if you’re at home and you’re trying to figure out what to do, you may do a masterpiece. You may or three, for that matter, might as well put your time to good use. Okay, here’s another guy. All right. This fella was not a writer and he’s not an actor, and this happened about 50 years after Shakespeare wrote some of his favorite plays. This is also a fellow who was in England. He was in his 20s. He was going to Cambridge. University. Classes were canceled. He went home. A lot of familiar

Marcia Smith 5:35
stuff here. Yeah. Okay, okay,

Bob Smith 5:38
any idea. Well, what did he do? Well, he was a mathematician,

Marcia Smith 5:41
yeah, so he went home and did math stuff, yeah. He went home

Bob Smith 5:45
and to his family estate, which is about 60 miles away, to discontinuous studies there. Well, I need more than that. Okay, he didn’t have to respond to emails or video conference into classes. Oh,

Speaker 1 5:55
so he got a lot more done. Yeah. He had no structure, but he excelled. He wrote

Bob Smith 5:59
the papers that would become early calculus. He developed theories on optics. He was playing with prisms in his bedroom, taking the light from the window and fracturing it. And it was also a time when he came with a famous theory,

Marcia Smith 6:12
oh, is did he have an apple tree in his yard? Yeah, actually, he did. Okay, yeah. You

Bob Smith 6:17
know, we always think of him falling, sitting under an apple tree, and the apple fell. Well, they don’t know if that really happened, but there was an apple tree outside of Isaac Newton’s bedroom.

Marcia Smith 6:26
Okay, so that’s probably where he started looking at those apples dropping. So he

Bob Smith 6:30
did all this during the bupo Nick plague, when he was in quarantine at home, a student didn’t have anything to do, yeah,

Marcia Smith 6:37
that’s a pretty productive college break, isn’t it? That’s amazing. It’s not like going to spring break down in Florida here. This guy did a lot. He wasn’t

Bob Smith 6:46
Isaac, wasn’t down in Miami or Fort Lauderdale. Okay, I got another one here. And this guy is another artist, and he’s a artist who did a famous painting that you know and you like have always liked it, bizarre painting. This is a fellow who lived in the 20th century. And this was in 1919, and he lived in Norway. Do I have to give you any more? Well, yeah, Norway helps. His name was Edward, but they don’t pronounce it that way.

Marcia Smith 7:13
Ed Bob, Moon, yes. Moon,

Bob Smith 7:15
the famous painting, The Scream, you know?

Marcia Smith 7:18
Yeah, it looks like guy looks maybe that was a painting about the play. Well, it wasn’t

Bob Smith 7:22
actually, but he he actually contracted the Spanish flu, which was a terrible disaster, you know, but he actually survived, and he lived to continue making great work. And as soon as he got himself up to being physically capable, he gathered all the supplies and he began capturing his physical state, and he did a self portrait with the Spanish flu, which is one of his famous paintings.

Marcia Smith 7:46
I’ve seen that, and I didn’t realize that explains how awful he looked. Yeah,

Bob Smith 7:50
he had thinning hair and gaunt face sitting on his sick bed. He must have had a mirror he was looking at.

Marcia Smith 7:55
Yeah. I thought, wow, this guy. So those are three masterpieces,

Bob Smith 7:59
you might say, or three people who did great work while they were under quarantine. So what are you doing while you’re in quarantine? I’m

Marcia Smith 8:07
doing trivia my husband in the dining room. All right now,

Bob Smith 8:12
Marcia, I’ve got a fun one here. You know, we’ve been talking about closing borders, right? Because trying to make sure that people aren’t crossing books. No, not borders that’s been closed. I’m talking about like the Mexican border, the Canadian border. Yes, okay. And there was somebody who recently posted a question on Quora, that’s another website that has interesting questions and answers, and they said, what’s to stop somebody from walking across a farmer’s field into the US from Canada? Yeah, good question, and the person who responded to that was Jeff Weiner. He’s a Canadian author and a entrepreneur, and basically he posted two pictures on that website to demonstrate the answer. One was a city scene. One was inside a library. Where do you think both were taken? Where were these photos taken to prove how you could easily get across the US Canadian border, the easiest way, without going through a farmer’s field.

Marcia Smith 9:06
Well, I was thinking Niagara Falls.

Bob Smith 9:09
Well, that’s water. That’s not easy to get across. No. I

Marcia Smith 9:14
mean, the town of niagara falls, there’s a city there, yeah,

Bob Smith 9:16
but you have to cross the river. Oh, okay, and that’s a big deal. Well, then Vermont. Yes, Vermont, that’s exactly right. Any name of the city in Vermont, I have no idea. Okay, Derby line, Vermont. Now I’m gonna show you these pictures and describe them. Okay, okay, there’s two pictures. This is the one that’s taken on the street I told you about. Basically, you just walk through the town and you go from Canada to the United States.

Marcia Smith 9:39
So that’s crazy is that a sidewalk that’s just crossing the line skis crouched down

Bob Smith 9:44
next to a monument, a stone, and then there’s a car behind him. He says, here’s a picture of me on the US side of the border taking in Derby line Vermont. The gray car in the background is in Canada. In the photograph I’m touching with my right hand, the rock that marks the border between. In the two countries. So that’s pretty impressive. What’s the name of the town? Derby line, Vermont derby. I don’t know why it’s called Derby line. Why isn’t it called state line or borderline? You know? Yeah. And look at this picture in a library. Now, this is a guy sitting it’s him, he says. And here’s this picture is taken of me inside the Haskell free library and Opera House, a shared resource on the US, Canadian border. My left foot is in the US. My right foot is in Canada. The black line on the wooden floor isn’t a shadow. It’s the border between the two countries. That’s

Marcia Smith 10:34
hilarious. Well, why would they do that? It was built years ago, and who knows how they didn’t know why, where the line was, I don’t know, but it’s funny, but

Bob Smith 10:43
you don’t have to cross a farmer’s field to get to the United States. You just have to cross a room in a library to get to the United States. Why

Marcia Smith 10:50
would anybody go through all those guards and everything? And I don’t know,

Bob Smith 10:56
fascinating, huh? So it’s the 49th parallel. Of course, it’s the longest undefended border in the world. If you want to sneak across, you don’t have to do it in

Marcia Smith 11:05
a farmers. I just read a book that used Vermont as for drug running out of Canada, from overseas.

Bob Smith 11:12
Did they go through a city library? No,

Marcia Smith 11:15
but they did go through Vermont. And I thought, Well, I wonder if it’s not much of a border patrol there, but obviously not if you can sit on both sides of the line. That’s bizarre. It is amazing,

Bob Smith 11:27
isn’t it? Just an amazing photo. Oh, dear. All right, we’ll take a break here, and we’ll be back in just a moment. This is Bob and Marcia Smith, and you’re listening to the off ramp, and we’re doing a bit of fun trivia for today, and we’ll be back with more in just a moment. Hey, this is Bob Smith, and again, we’re revisiting some of the original episodes of the off ramp trivia podcast, the show that Marcia and I began doing during the COVID 19 lockdown as a thing to do together, a creative project. We thought it would last a few weeks. Well, it went on longer than that. COVID finally ended, but the podcast continues. We hope you enjoy both the fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia and also some of the comments and observations on the things we were all experiencing at that time.

Unknown Speaker 12:14
Welcome back. I’m Bob Smith, Marcia Smith,

Bob Smith 12:17
and you’re listening to the off ramp podcast for exploring fun trivia today as we shelter in place during the Coronavirus emergency. Okay, I’ve got a question you might find this interesting. All right, this is a musical question to what great man was Beethoven’s Third Symphony originally dedicated to, and why did Beethoven later angrily tear up the dedication, really? Yeah. Who was it composed in honor of the Eroica Symphony, a famous man in Europe in that century?

Marcia Smith 12:47
Yeah, it wasn’t. It wasn’t somebody like Mozart. No, no,

Bob Smith 12:53
it was not another musician to what great man was Beethoven’s Third Symphony originally dedicated now that is the Eroica Symphony. And why did Beethoven later angrily tear up the dedication. Who was the person he dedicated his third symphony?

Marcia Smith 13:08
I have no idea. Was it his wife? No, famous this a famous person. This person, I don’t know. Do you know Beethoven’s wife

Bob Smith 13:15
name? No, so Sheila. Yeah. Sheila. Sheila Beethoven? No, it was Napoleon, really? Yeah, he admired Napoleon. But when Napoleon proclaimed himself the Emperor of France, just decided I’m dictator, Beethoven became so enraged at this eagle maniac that he tore out the dedication and he substituted to the memory of a great man. So he was yes. Yes. Okay, here’s a jazz question. How did shooting off a gun illegally start Louis Armstrong on his musical career? Well,

Marcia Smith 13:50
did they put him in jail or something? And while he was in there, he started playing trumpet. You know,

Bob Smith 13:55
it’s something like it. Remember the story of Muhammad Ali or Cassius Clay? How did he get started? No, I don’t. Oh, his bike was stolen. Oh, yeah, his bike was stolen. And he went to the he went to the police department. Oh, I do know that, to complain. And the cop said, you’ll, you need to know how to defend yourself, son. And he took him to boxing Galway to help him be defend him. This little scrawny kid learned to defend himself, and he became world champion because of that. Well, this is similar to that. So how did shooting off a gun illegally start Louis Armstrong on his career on New Year’s Day in 1913 12 year old Louis Armstrong shot off a gun. He was arrested for the crime and sent to reform school to well, reform and lucky for him and for us, it was there that he learned to play the bugle, and the trumpet, and his name, Satchmo, came from satchel mouth given to him by the editor of a London newspaper, saying his mouth looked like it was satchel. It was like he could, because he could make it big, like it was like, it was like it

Marcia Smith 14:55
was holding a while. Yeah, he blew it up like a blowfish. Yeah,

Bob Smith 14:59
exactly. Wow, yeah. And he’s also credited with starting what jazz musicians call scat singing, substituting, you know, syllables for words, yeah. But that was because he shot off a gun, a little boy, 12 year old boy shooting off a gun. So you never know where great things are going to come from. Now, I’ve got some more trivia here. This is famous last words by Ray Robinson, Fon farewells, deathbed diatribes and exclamations upon expiration.

Marcia Smith 15:28
Now I read one in there. Can I get see if you know who it is? Okay? His last words, he was a singer, okay, an actor, whom you both should know. And his last words were, I’m going,

Bob Smith 15:46
I’m cool. I’m going on stage. I’m

Marcia Smith 15:48
going, I’m going in Mabel, no, just I’m going, No, I’ll give you some he had blue eyes. The question I have is, oh,

Bob Smith 15:56
did he drop the consonant on the end? Yeah, I’m going, Yeah, okay, blue eyes that Frank Sinatra,

Marcia Smith 16:01
that’s right, really, yeah, he said it to his wife, Barbara, as he died. I’m going, Yeah, I don’t know why that’s so sad, but

Bob Smith 16:09
this is very sad. It is okay. Now here’s one, since you’re talking about that we all remember hearing about Steve Jobs when he died. Oh, I do remember being said, Whoa. Oh, wow. You know, supposedly, so, here’s another similar sentence, okay, it’s very beautiful over there. Hmm, who said that? Another guy who was an innovator? Yeah, he was actually an inventor. Inventor,

Marcia Smith 16:34
famous, famous, very famous. Well, tell me the year. Died in 1931 okay. Well, that narrows it down. I know everybody who died in 31 Okay, yeah, I don’t know. I’ll just say Edison Thomas. Edison. Okay, that’s we’ll see. I don’t know that many inventors from the Yeah, turn of the century.

Bob Smith 16:54
He said to his second wife, she asked him if he was suffering. He said, No, no, that’s good. Just waiting. Then he looked out the window and he uttered those words, it’s very beautiful over there. Oh, that’s lovely. See, it makes you wonder what he was talking about for sure, you know.

Marcia Smith 17:10
Well, yeah, but, but see, I think he and Steve Jobs had particularly interesting brains and process what they were seeing in some way, that’s what I’d like to think. Anyway.

Bob Smith 17:24
Okay, now here’s a totally different one. We always hear the expression. Nobody ever said, I wish I’d spent more time at the office on their death bed. But this guy kind of did. He said, How were the circus receipts in Madison Square Garden.

Marcia Smith 17:43
What year was that doesn’t say, okay, the circus receipts. Well, I only know a few Ringling and that other guy,

Speaker 1 17:53
Greatest Show on Earth. Yes, that’s who it was, and his name is, yes, starts with two initials. PT, Barnum, yeah, yeah. Thank you, yeah.

Bob Smith 18:04
How were the receipts in Madison Square Garden?

Marcia Smith 18:07
Well, obviously his mind was in a bad place when he died. I mean, really, that’s what he needed to know, that on the way out the door, he didn’t have much more of a life, obviously. Okay. Now this

Bob Smith 18:18
will probably surprise you. Tell my mother I died for my country. Tell my mother I died for my country. I thought I did it for the best, useless, useless. What?

Marcia Smith 18:30
What does that mean? I thought I did it for the best, that it was useless, that he wish he hadn’t. Is that what he said?

Bob Smith 18:36
He was 27 years old. He said, Tell my mother I died for my country. I thought I did it for the best. Useless, useless. Wow, this was a tragedy, and he was a guy who knew tragedy because he was an actor. John Wilkes

Marcia Smith 18:52
Booth, oh, John Wilkes, he didn’t die in war. No,

Bob Smith 18:55
he was, he was, he refused to surrender. He was shot in the neck in a burning barn, and when they got to him, he said, Tell my mother I died for my country. I thought I did it for the best. Useless, useless.

Marcia Smith 19:06
You think he regretted it, then that’s what I’m hearing, I think. But, you know, he said he

Bob Smith 19:10
did it for his country, which was the Confederacy, yeah. So he probably did think he did it for his

Marcia Smith 19:16
you know, but what was the useless part is he saying? I

Bob Smith 19:19
think he was saying it was useless thing to do. Probably it just didn’t work out. Or, who knows, okay, yeah, it didn’t work out, that’s for sure. Okay, one more. Am I dying? Or is this my birthday?

Marcia Smith 19:31
What kind of person said that? Somebody I know?

Bob Smith 19:34
No, a socialite, okay, okay. Lady Astor is she lay dying at the age of 85 the wealthy socialite and first female member of the British House of Commons, woke to find herself surrounded by her entire family. Oh,

Marcia Smith 19:47
is it my birthday or so? She was

Bob Smith 19:49
thinking of what would be the reason everybody’s here, and she had considered to be having acid wit. She had sparring matches with Winston Churchill. So. So a passionate advocate of women’s rights, she spoke for her entire sex when she declared, We are not asking for superiority for we’ve always had that. All we’re asking for is equality. But when she was dying, she said, Am I dying or is this my birthday? It’s a sad thing. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 20:13
it sounds like something I’d say if I saw my family standing around when I opened my eyes. Yeah, something. What’s going on? Yeah, is it my birthday? Where are you all here? Here’s

Bob Smith 20:27
here’s one that’s kind of funny. I never felt better.

Marcia Smith 20:32
It sounds like What’s that funny movie we liked with Meryl Streep. You never sounded better. Oh

Bob Smith 20:39
yes, yes. Where she was the singer. She couldn’t sing, well, yeah. And the coach said, she said, how was I? I think he said, You’ll never sound better. Yeah, you’ll never

Marcia Smith 20:49
sound better. That’s what that reminds me of. She said, I never felt better. No, this is the guy. This is the guy. What went was he an actor or what he it was

Bob Smith 20:57
an actor. It was in 1939 he suffered a heart attack at the age of 57 he was very athletic, and he was known for his his charm, a sense of humor and everything.

Marcia Smith 21:09
And then it was like one of the Barrymores or something that era. Yep, Douglas Fairbanks. Oh, okay, yeah, he was he the swashbuckler? No, that was very much. Yes, he

Bob Smith 21:17
played Robin Hood, the thief of Baghdad, the mark of zero

Speaker 2 21:20
and but that was his last words. That’s pretty funny, he reassured an

Bob Smith 21:24
attendant while resting at home. I’ve never felt better known for his charm, his good looks, and apparently, an inability to gage his physical condition. Then he went back to sleep and he died. Then,

Marcia Smith 21:36
wow, that’s a nice way to go. Yeah, feeling good.

Bob Smith 21:39
What were his last words, I’ve never felt better. He’s an actor.

Marcia Smith 21:43
He’s used to acting. And just give me one more. Okay,

Bob Smith 21:47
this is somebody talking about her father. She said, somehow I know you’re you’re there, dad, I know you’re up there, saying, Why are you wearing that dress?

Marcia Smith 22:00
Was she dying? No,

Bob Smith 22:01
her dad had just died. She was told her dad had died. Oh, okay, it’s Melanie Griffith. Oh, the actress and the star of the movies, Working Girl and other films. She arrived in con to receive a special award the con Film Festival. Okay, those were upon arriving there in 2001 she was told her father, businessman Peter Griffith, had died. She She was named after the character her mother Tippie headman played in the birds. Oh, okay. Was Melanie? Oh yeah. She paid tribute to her father’s lasting influence. Saying, somehow, I know you’re there, dad, I know you’re up there. Saying, Why are you wearing that dress? That’s it’s touching, isn’t it? Yeah, very

Marcia Smith 22:43
nice. Okay, all right, good times. Last words, don’t cut the ham too thin. Is that what somebody’s last words mean?

Bob Smith 22:55
Then the early days of railroading, they had these railroad cars, and Fred Harvey got the franchise to put rolling restaurants on these railroad cars. So he died in 1901 he bade one of his sons, the least sentimental goodbye in history. His son came to him to ask him, you know, Dad, anything you’d like to say, don’t cut the ham too thin. At least he didn’t say, don’t cut it too thick. So he’s not, that’s

Marcia Smith 23:19
right. He wasn’t a cheapskate, yeah, wow. See, he cared about the details he

Bob Smith 23:25
did. Okay, here’s one. This is unfortunate. Okay, Colonel John Sedgwick, he was a commander of the army of the Potomac in the Civil War, and he enjoyed a reputation among his men as a good humored guy and a relentless optimist at the Battle of the wilderness while the other men were diving for cover from Confederate sharp shooters, Sedgwick scoffed at danger, stood up and said they couldn’t hit an elephant at this

Marcia Smith 23:53
and he was shot. I would, I would. There you go. All right, one of the best tombstones I ever read was in Hollywood. What is the name of that cemetery there Hollywood Forever, I think. Yeah, Mel blank, one of Bob’s personal heroes, with all his wonderful voices, did

Bob Smith 24:10
he all the characters for the Warner Brothers cartoons Daffy Duck and forkie The pig and Bugs Bunny? Yeah, he’s

Marcia Smith 24:15
great. And his tombstone said, Bob, that’s awful.

Bob Smith 24:19
Yeah. Wasn’t that cool to see that on, to see that on a tombstone? Yeah, it made you smile. Oh, it

Marcia Smith 24:25
did. Then that’s what you want to do after you’re gone. It was that. That’s all folks with an

Bob Smith 24:29
exclamation point. Yeah, that’s all folks. And the day we were there, some people had left a little, I think there was a Tweety Bird, Sylvester, the cat doll, somebody had left there at the at the base of his tomb. So cute, very cute. So this is a famous artist, one of your favorite impressionists. He did want a funeral oration in 1917 he told an artist friend his eulogy when he died should be limited to this sin. Simple sentiment, tell them that I loved to draw, then go home. My last words, tell them, I love to draw, go home. Who is that? It’s

Marcia Smith 25:12
Monet or Monet?

Bob Smith 25:15
It’s Edward de

Marcia Smith 25:16
GA Oh, that he did draw a lot of little ballerinas there.

Bob Smith 25:20
Yes. And then we know drink to me was what? What artists said that last drink to me, drink to me. And Paul McCartney wrote a song about it was

Marcia Smith 25:27
that wasn’t Van

Bob Smith 25:28
Gogh no Picasso, oh, at the at the age of 91 a command to be toasted on his demise. He said, Drink to me.

Marcia Smith 25:39
I like that. Yeah. You always want to think you’ll say something clever. He

Bob Smith 25:43
was fond of paying people by check because he knew that the creditors, they preferred keeping his autograph, yeah,

Speaker 1 25:49
so they wouldn’t cash it, yeah, so he didn’t have to, yeah. He did to

Bob Smith 25:53
pay his creditors. Yeah. Okay, one more, and it’s another movie star from the same era we talked about earlier, a little later, but he was from the probably the 30s and 40s. He said, I’ve had a hell of a lot of fun, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. That was his last words. What year did he die? He died in 1959 and the heart attack in the arms of his girlfriend, who was only 15 years old,

Marcia Smith 26:18
1515,

Unknown Speaker 26:20
Errol Flynn, that’s creepy, yeah? Well, of course, the

Marcia Smith 26:24
arms of his 15 year old girlfriend. Oh.

Bob Smith 26:26
He was famous for, oh, my young girls drinking drug use.

Marcia Smith 26:31
That’s just Yeah, obscene, yeah,

Bob Smith 26:33
yeah. But in 1959 he died, in his last words, where I had a hell of a lot of fun, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.

Marcia Smith 26:42
Be nice if we could all say that only have a little better moral character. Yes,

Bob Smith 26:46
okay, we’ll end up on a funnier one. Okay, yeah. This is another movie stars, a comedian. He said that was the best ice cream soda I ever tasted. He was part of a twosome. What year he died in 1959 he sucked the last bit of pleasure out of life. Oh,

Marcia Smith 27:05
well, it wasn’t like Stan Laurel or somebody like that.

Bob Smith 27:09
It was somebody like that. But not these guys were known for a baseball routine. Who

Marcia Smith 27:14
was on first, yeah, so that was who? Yeah, I’m trying to with Marx Brothers, no,

Bob Smith 27:19
Abbott and Costello? Oh, of course, of course, Lou Costello was the one, yeah, yeah, yeah. And apparently he liked to eat. Apparently he liked ice cream, because his last words were, that was the

Marcia Smith 27:28
best ice cream. I knew that it was 1959 Yeah, yeah. So those

Bob Smith 27:33
are from famous last words, fond farewells, deathbed diatribes and exclamations upon expiration, compiled by Ray Robinson, published by Workman Publishing in 2003 and there’s a lot more in there. We’ll return to that some other time.

Marcia Smith 27:49
Good one. I’d like to think I’d be clever, but I’ll probably went. I’m not going. I don’t want to go.

Bob Smith 27:58
Okay. Well, there we go. Another round of trivia, Marcia, and we hope you join us again next time we get together. In the meantime, we’ve got to go back to, I don’t know we’re going to watch some TV now, or what are we doing during this time of aging in place? Is that what we’re doing? Are we aging in place? That’s, I think that’s

Speaker 1 28:16
it. Yeah, that doesn’t take any effort. Let’s go exercise. Okay. Okay. You

Bob Smith 28:25
the off ramp is produced in association with the Cedarburg Public Library, Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Visit us on the web at the off ramp. Dot show you.

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