Bob Smith 0:00
Bob, Marcia, do you believe the US government should be sponsoring art contests?

Marcia Smith 0:04
Not really.

Bob Smith 0:05
Well, it’s been sponsoring one for nearly 80 years. What is it

Marcia Smith 0:09
and who was the oldest person to have reached the number one spot on the Billboard? 100

Bob Smith 0:15
answers to those and other questions coming up in this episode of the off ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith,

welcome to the off ramp. A chance to slow down, steer clear of crazy and take a side road to sanity with fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia. Well, Marcia, what is the art contest that the US government has been sponsoring For nearly 80 years?

Marcia Smith 0:54
Is it Performing Arts?

Bob Smith 0:56
No, it’s not performing arts. It’s

Marcia Smith 0:57
art. Art, it’s artists, fine artists, yes,

Bob Smith 1:01
fine artists, hmm,

Marcia Smith 1:02
see, I think the government should help with supporting the arts, but sponsoring the contest. I can’t think of one. Well, this

Bob Smith 1:11
is the federal Fish and Wildlife Services Duck Stamp Contest. No kidding, yes. Duck stamps have been a thing since the FDR administration. Hunters buy new duck stamps every year, along with their state hunting licenses. And money from the stamps goes to buy land for wildlife preservation. But in 1949 This is 15 years after the program started, they decided, let’s make it a contest and give the artists a prize. The prize they give is basically just a sheet of your stamps autographed by the Secretary of the Interior. But the artists get to keep the rights to their artwork, and then they can sell prints off of okay, so it’s been a very popular thing. There are like, 300 to 600 wildlife artists in the United States, and they compete for this. Oh

Marcia Smith 1:56
no kidding. Well, that’s kind of cool. It’s a win win.

Bob Smith 1:58
It is a win win. And where does the money go

Marcia Smith 2:00
to you? Just said some of the artists and wildlife preservation, no

Bob Smith 2:05
money goes to the artist. The US government spends all the money it receives on wildlife acreage, minus the cost of printing the stamps. Oh, that’s good. So taxpayers pay nothing. And in 90 years that program has been around, it’s raised $1.2 billion that’s billion with a, b, wow.

Marcia Smith 2:21
That’s an excellent way to do it.

Bob Smith 2:23
That’s the story of the only art contest the government sponsors, and why

Marcia Smith 2:27
I like it. All right, so Bob in 2023 the oldest person ever reached the number one spot on the Billboard, 100 what year was it? Again? 2023

Bob Smith 2:39
okay, the oldest person, yeah, reached the number one spot on

Marcia Smith 2:44
the Billboard, 100 Wow. I’ll give you a hint. Okay, that person was 78 years old in 2023 but was considerably younger when recording this song,

Bob Smith 2:55
hmm. So the song came back again, oh yeah, yeah, and again

Marcia Smith 2:59
and again and again and again. Is that a Christmas song? Yes, it is okay. Think about it.

Bob Smith 3:05
Well, it’s not Bing. Crosby,

Marcia Smith 3:07
no. Who was it? She was 13 years old when she recorded,

Bob Smith 3:11
Oh, this must be let’s see. What is it? Rock around the Christmas tree.

Marcia Smith 3:14
That’s it? Brenda Lee,

Unknown Speaker 3:16
no kidding, yep, yep.

Marcia Smith 3:17
She was 13 when she recorded that, and it reached number one for some weird reason in 2023 and it hit the billboard, 100 now, over time, this is my second part of the question. Only three Christmas songs have reached number one on the Billboard, 100 Can you name the other

Bob Smith 3:36
two white Christmas? Is that one of them? Nope, no kidding,

Marcia Smith 3:39
it was always up there, but never hit number one,

Bob Smith 3:42
never number one. All right. Was it? Let’s see, what would it be? Were they? Were they also, oh, I know the Christmas song by David Seville and the Chipmunks

Marcia Smith 3:51
in 1958 David Seville and the Chipmunks Christmas. Christmas time is here, and it was one more. Come on. You hear this constantly when we put on the Christmas radio, we hear this one constantly, yeah, when you tune into us

Bob Smith 4:05
Christmas music, no place like home for the holidays or something like that. This

Marcia Smith 4:09
is a little jazzier. Okay. What is it? All I want for Christmas? Is you? Oh, is that? Mariah Carey, yeah. So those are the three that have reached number one in all time.

Bob Smith 4:19
So, mariah carey all i went for Christmas, rocking around the Christmas tree and the chipmunk song, Chipmunk song, I’ll be darn that’s it. Wow, that’s pretty good. Well, you had me going there, because for a long time, the oldest person to reach the charts was George Burns with, I wish I was 18 again. Oh, really, yeah, that was back in 82

Marcia Smith 4:38
I think. Well, you must have been under 78 maybe it was just hit the charts, but not number one. Could be he was 84 I think. But that happened, so he hit the charts, but didn’t hit number one.

Bob Smith 4:48
Okay, thank you. You bet. Thanks for clarifying. Marcia. Marcia, what fashion role did Francis Ford Coppola’s family have in the early history of Victoria? Victoria’s Secret, what?

Marcia Smith 5:01
What did they have?

Bob Smith 5:02
What fashion role did, Francis Ford Coppola’s family? What year, late 1970s late night. I’m

Marcia Smith 5:09
trying to think when the Godfather came out. Well, this

Bob Smith 5:11
was after that, okay, but it had nothing to do with the god, it

Marcia Smith 5:15
didn’t. I was thinking perhaps a mobster. Look Victoria’s Secret, huh?

Speaker 1 5:23
Okay, tell me there’s a new book out called going bust, selling sexy Victoria’s Secret and the unraveling of an American icon. It’s still in business, but it’s going down in terms of stature and the amount of people buying the clothes and stuff. Is it really but the chain’s first store was in Palo Alto, California in late 1970s and it included a specialty item, a $1,200

Bob Smith 5:46
pair of his and her kimonos designed by film director Francis Ford Coppola’s artist wife, Eleanor,

Marcia Smith 5:52
really, kimonos?

Bob Smith 5:53
Isn’t that a strange thing?

Marcia Smith 5:55
We should get that for Christmas?

Bob Smith 5:56
Yes, let’s have so by the way, how long do most fashion brands last?

Marcia Smith 6:03
The actual name brands? Okay? Yes, I’ll say, oh gosh, 50 years? No,

Bob Smith 6:10
most of them are only 10 to 15 years, oh, really, before their premium position is challenged and overtaken by competitors? Yeah, I

Marcia Smith 6:17
was thinking of Levi, but that’s been 100 years. That’s a different story. Yeah, that’s, you

Speaker 1 6:21
know, a category of clothing we came up with. But when you think of brands, think of some of the brands you bought in the 80s and 90s, and their names you don’t see in the stores anymore. They were very big, Bill Blass and all these names. What is it? Again, the number of years, 10 to 15 years before their premium position is challenged and overtaken by competitors. Okay,

Marcia Smith 6:40
interesting. Bob, do you want to take a stab at the Word of the Year for 2024 according to dictionary.com?

Speaker 1 6:48
Sure. I’ll take a stab at it. Give me the word, and I’ll stab it. Oh, you mean I gotta know what it is. Oh, dear. Here we go. This was easy a couple years ago when we had COVID and all those words that came out of that, can you give me any hint as to

Marcia Smith 7:02
this? It’s, no, it’s so weird that you’d never come up with this one. I thought immediately would be something technical, you know, related to AI kind of stuff. Yeah. But no, the word is, get this demure, really, that’s an old word. It is. And come back, well, no, oh no. Demure sort of describes me kind of modest and shy reserve.

Bob Smith 7:24
Oh no, no, it doesn’t. Marshall does not describe you. Ever called

Marcia Smith 7:27
me to No, no. All right. But why did it become popular? You ask because a popular tick tocker named Julie Annie, J, o, l, Giuliani uses the word in advice post, and apparently a lot of people had to look the word up last year because she was always saying it was demure. She’s got a song that has the word in it. Dictionary.com. Said usage went up 200% looking for the word, and it had a 1,220% jump in digital searches.

Bob Smith 8:00
So that’s just because of some pop culture Person. Person

Marcia Smith 8:03
used it. She was a What did they call them? A influence, an influence. She was an influence. People go to her and she used the word demure, and apparently her audience didn’t know what it meant. So I thought that was pretty funny. Well,

Bob Smith 8:16
you think that being older people as geezer influencers, we could bring a lot

Marcia Smith 8:20
of old words. That’s what I have on my like face contraption, you know? Well, what is it? Biden says malarkey. Yeah.

Bob Smith 8:29
He uses malarkey. I love those kinds of words, me too. I think we have some of those we could bring back, don’t you think? So

Marcia Smith 8:35
You betcha. Bob, you betcha.

Speaker 1 8:38
There you go. There’s one. Marcia, what famous movie was shot in the desert dunes near Yuma, Arizona, Game of Thrones, The Avengers, Star Wars, or Planet of the Apes, Star Wars. That’s right, that’s where the Tatooine. Tatooine, that’s where Luke Skywalker was born. Those dunes on the border with California were a perfect match for Luke Skywalkers, home planet. So parts of A New Hope and Return of the Jedi were filmed there. Must be hard to set up, and you have to shoot something there and then go somewhere else, and you go to Africa. But

Marcia Smith 9:09
mostly, that’s the beauty of the United States. We got a lot of different terrains going on.

Bob Smith 9:15
That’s right, for sure. That’s right. Okay. Bob, okay. One more question about Arizona, all right, among us state capitals. What is Phoenix’s largest distinction among all US state capitals? What is Phoenix’s largest distinction? I just gave you a hint there,

Marcia Smith 9:32
the size of its dome. The size of its dome, population. Oh, is it the biggest? Yeah, really, the

Bob Smith 9:39
most populated state capital in the United States, and one of the sunniest and driest population, nearly 2 million people, one of the fastest growing areas of the country. So

Marcia Smith 9:50
all right. Speaking of states, here’s my transition. Bob, what state in the United States ranked number one in happiness? Yes,

Bob Smith 10:01
the happiest state, yeah, Hmm, let’s see. Okay, is it a out of the way place that people go to for vacations?

Marcia Smith 10:10
Yes, people tend to go there. Yes, they could be, we’ve done it.

Bob Smith 10:14
Okay. Gonna be Tennessee, Tennessee or Kentucky or Kentucky? Yeah, they’re very happy places you don’t think so apparently, well, maybe,

Marcia Smith 10:23
maybe they are, okay,

Bob Smith 10:27
wow, you just offended all of our friends in Kentucky and Tennessee. No,

Marcia Smith 10:30
I’m just thinking it’d be more vacation like Hawaii. Okay, that’s number one. Oh, it is. Yeah, that’s the happiest place. Yes, the study ranked and analyzed metrics that included social, physical, economical and emotional health, although some of the Hawaiians we met weren’t that happy, but that’s

Bob Smith 10:48
right, because it’s all so dependent on tourism, it’s a difficult place to live. Yeah.

Marcia Smith 10:52
So the top 10 happiest in order, Hawaii, number two, Maryland, New Jersey, Utah, Delaware, Minnesota, Connecticut, Idaho, Nebraska and number 10, Massachusetts, all right, those are the top 10. Yeah, our family is least in one of those states, and the bottom of the happy scale, yes, West Virginia, Arkansas and Ted, last Louisiana. Oh, dear. They’re unhappy, and

Bob Smith 11:20
they have such a happy party there in the same in New Orleans, yeah? New Orleans, yeah, I

Marcia Smith 11:25
guess they forget.

Bob Smith 11:28
Maybe that’s why they have to have that party. Yeah. Okay, okay, all right. What US state adopted the motto he’ll never get this one. May the fourth Thank you. May the 14th star shine bright. Well, the 14th state. Which one is it?

Marcia Smith 11:44
Oh, I see,

Bob Smith 11:46
yes, what US state adopted the motto, may the 14th star shine bright. I’ll give you. Oh, you got a selection? Go ahead, sure. Montana, Texas, Vermont or Ohio? I’d

Marcia Smith 11:57
say Vermont wasn’t one of the original 13, but it’s near there, so I’ll say Vermont, all right.

Speaker 1 12:02
The motto of Vermont actually is freedom and unity. But in 2015 Vermont also adopted the state Latin motto due to the efforts of Latin student, Angela COVID, key Stella, quarta, Decima Fauci, which means, may the 14th star shine bright. It was the 14th state to join the union. Yes. That’s strange and archaic, isn’t it, yeah,

Marcia Smith 12:24
but it makes sense. It’s over in that area. It would join the union early on, early on, right? Yeah, okay, Bob, can you estimate how much space debris is floating around above us? Oh, sure. It’s tons, tons. You can do tons. It’s got

Bob Smith 12:40
to be 1000s of tons of space debris. These are you’re talking about satellites and spaceships and things that have blown up, I don’t know, maybe 200,000 tons,

Marcia Smith 12:52
17 point 6 million tons. How can that be? It’s starting to pose serious damage, no kidding, to crewed and uncrewed space missions. More than once, they have had to move the space station to avoid getting hit. Space junk consists primarily of retired satellites, rocket boosters and other human made objects. So these

Bob Smith 13:15
are satellites up there. Okay,

Marcia Smith 13:18
our people, what do you

Bob Smith 13:19
mean crude, you said they’re crude and uncrewed

Marcia Smith 13:22
crude, oh, C R, E, W, E, D, okay. I

Bob Smith 13:26
was thinking, like, crude oil. How can a mission be

Marcia Smith 13:29
crude? Understand?

Bob Smith 13:30
So it’s C R, E, W, peopled, right? Peopled missions and UN people mission. Okay, yeah, yeah. They got

Marcia Smith 13:37
to figure out how to scoop this stuff up. That like getting plastic out of the ocean.

Bob Smith 13:42
I just find it amazing that there’s that many millions tons, 17 point 6 million tons of stuff that we’ve shot up into the space all these different countries, yeah, yeah. And it’s been orbiting the Earth, yeah. And now it’s starting to crash, and it’s running, it’s space stations. Got things hitting it. And,

Marcia Smith 13:58
yeah, Wow, isn’t that? And then somebody in Texas, something fell into their backyard and they sued. What the hell is that?

Bob Smith 14:09
Well, and that could be dangerous to anybody. Those kinds of things could happen. That’s correct, okay. Marcia, I have a literary question, what author took a job as a forest fire watcher, a forest fire watcher to inspire his work. John Irving, Stephen King, Jack Kerouac, or Ernest Hemingway.

Marcia Smith 14:27
Ernest Hemingway, no.

Speaker 1 14:30
Jack Kerouac, that’s who it was. By 1956 he’d already written, but had yet to publish on the road, and he sought a break from civilization, so he signed up for work as a US Forest Service fire watcher or lookout. They call it on desolation peak in Washington. After hitchhiking from San Francisco, he spent 63 days alone in a cabin in the National Forest getting paid that is now part of North Cascades National Park and that in. Inspired his future works, he said, I’ll be darned. Yeah, I didn’t know that. No, I didn’t either. Well, it’s nice to be paid to be alone for 60 days. Yeah, I

Marcia Smith 15:08
wonder how old he was. Well, had to be a young man. Yeah, six. He was on the road. Back in those days, he

Bob Smith 15:13
was on the road. Okay, I

Marcia Smith 15:15
think it’s time for a break.

Bob Smith 15:16
All right, you’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith. We’ll be back in just a moment

Speaker 1 15:22
we’re back indeed with more questions. What could be better here on the off ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith, we do this each week for the Cedarburg Public Library, Cedarburg, Wisconsin, and its internet radio station. After that, it goes on podcast platforms, and is, sorry, a little too eager, Marcia, it goes on podcast platforms all over the world, no, and is heard all over the world.

Marcia Smith 15:49
Dear god, okay, all right, I’m ready for AKA, also known as, okay, all right. It’s a card game I love. And the category today, Bob is circus performers? Okay?

Bob Smith 16:02
Oh, it’s your family.

Marcia Smith 16:07
Sorry. Indeed, okay. So you know how this goes. It’s also known as, so if I said what circus performer is also known as, big cat domesticator.

Bob Smith 16:19
A big cat domesticator, uh

Marcia Smith 16:22
huh, that would be what

Bob Smith 16:24
circus, the lion tamer, that’s

Marcia Smith 16:25
correct. Okay, how about flame taster, the fire breather? Taster. Eater, okay. Fire eater, yes, okay, Saber in Jester,

Bob Smith 16:36
that’s the sword swallower,

Marcia Smith 16:38
correct? Class comic,

Bob Smith 16:40
the class comic. Bob Smith, no, wait a minute, the class comic, yeah, class

Marcia Smith 16:47
circus performer,

Bob Smith 16:48
it’s just the clown. I

Marcia Smith 16:51
don’t know that’s it. Oh, Class Clown.

Bob Smith 16:53
Oh, I see, yeah. Were you the class clown?

Marcia Smith 16:56
Um,

Bob Smith 16:57
were you one of the class clown? Yeah,

Marcia Smith 16:59
I think I would you get

Bob Smith 16:59
in trouble for things you said, you said out loud, and then, yeah, I did too. Reseeded. That’s

Marcia Smith 17:04
why we’re together and doing a podcast. Okay, it’s true. Yeah, it’s sad. Time they put me in front so that the teacher could hit me with,

Bob Smith 17:13
yes, I always put you up front when you were a class clown,

Marcia Smith 17:17
nobody. You didn’t sit behind anybody. Man, that’s exactly

Bob Smith 17:20
where I wanted to be in the first place, in the front of

Marcia Smith 17:23
the class you would not me. Okay, back to the question. One wheel rider, a unicyclist, correct? Last one taut string traverser.

Bob Smith 17:34
Taut string traverser, the tight rope walker. Excellent.

Marcia Smith 17:38
I was wrong. There is one more okay? Wedding Band expert, wedding band expert, wedding

Bob Smith 17:44
band expert, yeah, the ring master,

Marcia Smith 17:47
very good. No,

Bob Smith 17:48
I didn’t do too bad. This

Marcia Smith 17:49
time, much better than last week, where you failed miserably. I

Bob Smith 17:53
like going to the circus. Okay? Marcia, speaking of show business, let’s talk Shakespeare. I know you were at like, what was the theater that you were

Marcia Smith 18:05
Skylark, skylight, comic opera.

Bob Smith 18:09
Comic opera. But you were familiar with a lot of Shakespeare work. Yes, what did you guys do? We did the English comic

Marcia Smith 18:15
opera. Gilbert and son, Gilbert Sullivan. That’s what I remember. Stuff like that, Puccini, which wasn’t always like because people were constantly dying. Yeah, I was gonna

Bob Smith 18:24
say that’s kind of coughing, coughing and dying. Okay, Shakespeare’s plays, they generally reflect European political history, as we know, there’s all things about kings and rulers and so forth and so on. But what Shakespeare play is believed to have been inspired in part, by a historic event in the new world. In

Marcia Smith 18:45
the New World, one of his plays, Oh, gosh. What you do about nothing, no, no, mid summer dream, no, okay, all right, something that happened in the United States. I didn’t say United States fired. Oh, you said the new thing that happened in the New World, okay, could be Canada. Oh, Canada. It’s considered

Bob Smith 19:07
probably one of his last plays.

Marcia Smith 19:10
Was it King Lear? No, it’s not King, tell me, it’s the

Bob Smith 19:14
Tempest. Oh, really, it has many Italian influences. One of its characters is the King of Naples, but it’s believed to have been inspired by a hurricane shipwreck that ultimately discovered Bermuda.

Marcia Smith 19:27
Oh, okay, well, if you’re right, I wouldn’t have got that that island

Bob Smith 19:30
chain was known to the Spanish and the Portuguese since 1543 but sailors steered clear of Bermuda because it had jagged rocks and treacherous reefs that cut right into ships, lots of shipwrecks there. But in the summer of 1609 something happened that ultimately came to the attention of Shakespeare. A large English fleet was sailing to Virginia to resupply Jamestown, and they ran smack dab into a huge hurricane, and it scattered all the ships and one of the ships the. 250 ton sea venture was relentlessly pounded by waves filling up with water, and for three terrifying days, the expedition leader, Sir Thomas gates, urged his male passengers to man the pumps, and so they did, as the admiral was the only one on top of the ship he was piloting, trying to steer the ship through these terrible Titanic swells. Three days, three days, they kept doing that. And finally, on the third day, he spotted land, guided the sinking ship to shore. It wedged between 2v shaped rocks. Everybody got off safely, including the dog. 150 people got the ship, yeah. And what they found was no people. There’s no people there, because Bermuda is like Hawaii. It was formed on the top of volcanos. Okay, so there’s a volcano there that goes 14,000 feet down to the Atlantic Ocean. So it was coral reefs and stuff. But what happened over time was this became a very good climate, the mild climate, lush landscape, thick flocks of easily captured birds and herds of feral pigs they think were left behind by Spanish explorers years ago. That makes sense. And a lot of marine life, lot of fish. So it was a great place. And they were there for like three months, and they built two new ships, and then they sailed on to they built two new ships. Well, they got 150 guys there, and they got skills. So they built two new ships. Those are some skills. Sailed to Virginia, resupplied Virginia. But the discovery of this came back to England in letters that look what we found, because you have to remember what the English had. Three colonies had failed, Jamestown, Roanoke Island off of North Carolina, and one in Maine. So this looked like, hey, maybe this is a place we can do business. It became the first successful colony in the New World, Bermuda. And so Shakespeare heard this kind of stuff. He read one of those accounts, and he wrote The Tempest, which starts with a hurricane, a shipwreck and a magical remote island, which he referred to at one point as bermuth. These like Bermuda, yeah. So the tempest was performed for King James the First in the Royal Court on November 1, 1611, six months later, a ship sailed to Bermuda with 60 colonists, this time with men, women and children. They landed there. They found there was three guys left behind from the other venture. On purpose. Yeah, they deserted. And they stayed there. They deserted. So these colonists got off the ships and they found food and wildlife. The sailors had raised crops for two years. They had corn, pumpkin, beans, vegetables, cucumbers and melons. And so from that point on, Bermuda became a successful colony for the English, and Shakespeare noticed it, and it helped inspire one of his plays. I didn’t know that? No,

Marcia Smith 22:39
I certainly didn’t. Did you read that book? No, I

Bob Smith 22:41
read a description of it. It’s like, Oh, my God, I get confused by all these people and only magic and wizards and everything. But, yeah, but it’s a remote island. So now a lot of people think of The Tempest as an allegory for Europeans colonizing other places. Everybody was talking about this, so Shakespeare wrote a play about it. I had no idea the tempest had anything to do with Bermuda, but apparently it did. And the Tempest is the storm. That’s the hurricane. That’s what the tempest refers to.

Marcia Smith 23:07
Okay, Bob. Where did we get the phrase Rob, Peter to pay Paul when we take money out of one place and put it in another, because we don’t have enough money and that pot? Where does that phrase come from? I

Bob Smith 23:20
would think it would refer to, well, you know, the disciples of Christ. They were itinerant. Peter and Paul were always traveling, and they probably had a hard time getting money together, and maybe it dealt with that.

Marcia Smith 23:32
So you think it’s religious and bad? Well, yeah, yeah. Well, they weren’t the disciples, but in the mid 1700s the ancient Cathedral of St Paul in London was falling apart, and the strain on the Treasury was so great that it was decided that it would merge with the new St Peter’s cathedral to absorb some of the cost for its deteriorating building. No kidding, parishioners were not happy, and they had a rallying cry of they’re robbing Peter to pay Paul. Oh, no kidding, so that’s where it came from. Yeah, they’re taking from our church and giving it to that crumbly, old church. Rudyard Kipling also used that phrase 100 years later to criticize the concept of income redistribution. That phrase is still used today, obviously. Oh, that’s

Bob Smith 24:20
right, that’s what they say where robbing Peter shouldn’t be doing this.

Marcia Smith 24:25
It all goes back to the church that was falling apart.

Bob Smith 24:28
Oh, that’s funny. Okay, that’s great. All right, Marcia, what state is associated with frozen custard? Could it be Arkansas, Kansas, Indiana or Wisconsin, Wisconsin? That’s true. It’s considered the frozen custard capital of the world. But guess where it originated?

Marcia Smith 24:45
I’ll say Germany.

Bob Smith 24:47
No where it originated, in New York, on Coney Island. Oh yeah. Ice cream vendors Archie and Elton core found that by adding egg yolks to ice cream, they created a smoother texture. Oh, a frozen custard stand at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago was where a 17 year old Milwaukee boy Paul Gillies. Oh

Marcia Smith 25:07
Gillies discovered stand, a famous custard stand in Milwaukee, and

Bob Smith 25:11
he discovered Frozen Custard at the Fair in Chicago. He built a small custard stand at West blue mound road. It was the first Frozen Custard stand in Milwaukee, and now they’re all over the city, all

Marcia Smith 25:22
over the place, and custard is not like ice cream, because it uses eggs, that’s right. So it’s richer and creamier and frightfully Delicious. It tastes

Bob Smith 25:31
wonderful, doesn’t it? So which of the custard stands in Milwaukee was the inspiration for Arnold’s on Happy days? I don’t know. Leon’s frozen custard. Oh,

Marcia Smith 25:41
yeah. Okay, according to space.com Bob between 1993 and 2010 the Earth’s tilt changed by 31 and a half inches. Why?

Bob Smith 25:52
What was this reason? It’s not fracking, is it? It’s just the opposite.

Marcia Smith 25:56
Yeah, scientists believe it’s mostly from the enormous amounts of groundwater humans have pumped out of our planet’s interior for irrigation and human use. It’s actually affecting our tilt and rotation, which can affect even the weather eventually. Geez. I mean, it’s probably already started. They say this

Bob Smith 26:15
is just from taking water out of the ground, Earth. Huge amounts of water. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 26:19
huge amounts, billions of gallons, wow, for irrigation and human use. Okay, okay, Bob, what were the very first words that Alexander Graham Bell heard during his first phone call? Okay?

Bob Smith 26:33
Because he said, Come here, Watson, I need you. So what were the first words he heard?

Marcia Smith 26:39
Who is that? Who’s calling?

Bob Smith 26:41
Who’s calling me,

Marcia Smith 26:43
it was your call. Is important to us. Please continue to hold

Bob Smith 26:48
I doubt that. Oh, my goodness, isn’t that funny from the man who wanted to say ahoy when you picked up the phone? Yeah, yeah. All right, let’s go to quotes. Okay? Lionel

Marcia Smith 26:59
Hampton, gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind. That’s good. That’s a nice one. And Ralph bloom, there is a calmness to life lived in gratitude and a quiet joy.

Bob Smith 27:14
I feel that way after Thanksgiving, don’t you? Yep, that’s

Marcia Smith 27:17
the idea here. Two gratitude quotes. Okay, very good.

Bob Smith 27:20
We have gratitude for you listening. We do hope you join us again for fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia here on the off ramp.

The off ramp is produced in association with CPL radio online and the Cedarbrook Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin, visit us on the web at the offramp. Dot show do.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai