Bob Smith 0:00
ANNOUNCER. This episode of the off ramp is an encore performance of an earlier show. How did chewing gum lead to the discovery of an ancient civilization,

Marcia Smith 0:11
And what famous sitcom started and ended with the same phrase?

Bob Smith 0:21
Answers to these and other questions coming up in this episode of The Off Ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith, how?

Bob Smith 0:27
Marc Welcome to The Off Ramp, a chance to slow down, steer clear of crazy, take a side road to sanity and get some perspective on life with interesting information and trivia. That’s what our show is all about. Well, Marcia, how did chewing gum lead to the discovery of an ancient civilization. I say discovery, being European discovery,

Marcia Smith 1:04
Yeah?

Bob Smith 1:05
Yeah.

Marcia Smith 1:06
Well, I don’t know, someone got it stuck on the bottom of their shoes and stumbled into a new world. It’s a little bit of a trick question, yeah?

Bob Smith 1:14
Yeah, but it has nothing to do with sticking gum on the bottom of your shoe.

Marcia Smith 1:18
I’m sure it doesn’t. Okay, tell me it has something to do with the ingredients in gum, right?

Bob Smith 1:23
That’s right.

Marcia Smith 1:23
They went on a search, looking for this certain gum.

Bob Smith 1:27
That’s right, that’s exactly right.

Marcia Smith 1:29
Well, thank you chewing gum.

Bob Smith 1:31
Its main ingredient is chicle.

Marcia Smith 1:33
Right. So. Is that why they’re called Chiclets?

Bob Smith 1:35
Yeah, that’s right

Marcia Smith 1:36
Okay.

Bob Smith 1:37
And when chewing gum began to gain in popularity in the 19th century, there was a great demand for chicle,the sap of the sapodilla tree. Chewing gum is made from chicle. And the sapodilla trees are located in the jungles of Central and South America. And workers going into the jungle to collect chicle knew about many archeological sites that were covered in vegetation the Mayan civilization, okay? And they alerted archeologists. ‘Oh, you’re looking for those? We find those all the time.’

Marcia Smith 2:05
Oh, no, kidding.

Bob Smith 2:05
So that’s how archeologists got into the Mayan world in the 19th century and started uncovering all of this — in which part of the world?

Marcia Smith 2:12
Central America.

Bob Smith 2:13
Yeah. And apparently, chicle was a big product for themtoo. The wood of the tree, the sapodilla tree, the Mayansused wood from that. They found Mayan wood around the temples, some of the temples that survived. And then they also harvested the gum to quench their thirst. And everything they did –

Marcia Smith 2:32
They (the Mayans) did use it for that purpose, to chew on it?

Bob Smith 2:35
Yeah, and the gum was also one of their ancient trade goods. Merchants took it to Central Mexico, where it was adopted by the Aztec culture. In fact, the word chicle is derived from a word which means to stick like gum. Going back to your idea, the gum sticking to something. And the resin and wood may also have beenused to produce glue and varnish in the Mayan culture.Marcia. Now let’s go to your question about a sitcom that started and ended with the same phrase.

Marcia Smith 3:03
You know, this sitcom, you, I think you saw the first and the last probably. And it’s a nine year running sitcom, and it, I don’t think many of us knew when it ended that that was the same phrase, the one they used in the beginning.

Bob Smith 3:19
I bet it was M.A.S.H then.

Marcia Smith 3:20
No. No. That would jump into my head.

Bob Smith 3:23
Okay? Mary Tyler Moore?

Marcia Smith 3:24
No.

Bob Smith 3:25
All right. What was it?

Marcia Smith 3:26
It was Seinfeld in a full circle moment. The first scene of the series started in a coffee shop with Jerry telling George that a button on his shirt was too high and that it makes or breaks the shirt, since it’s in no man’s land. And in the very last scene of the finale, a finale which hardly anybody liked, as I recall when, remember when they’re all sitting in the jail cell?

Bob Smith 3:52
Yes.

Marcia Smith 3:52
Jerry alludes to it again, saying The second button is the key button. It literally makes or breaks the shirt. As the camera pans back, George says, haven’t we had this conversation before?

Bob Smith 4:05
Really?

Marcia Smith 4:06
Yeah. And Jerry ends the series with, maybe we have.

Bob Smith 4:09
Oh, isn’t that funny? And I bet very few of us ever even knew that. What are they talking about?

Marcia Smith 4:14
Yeah, I didn’t know what they were talking about, which is part of the reason everybody hated it. It’s an inside joke too.

Bob Smith 4:20
Yeah, yeah, a very inside joke. Oh, that’s interesting. Well, that’s kind of a cute little trivia thing. Okay, here’s an animal question. You’re you’ve been the animal question expert up to this point on this.

Marcia Smith 4:31
I am the expert.

Bob Smith 4:32
Yes, you are. So let me ask you this, what animals have been known to become intoxicated and have refused admission to their communities by their fellow animals?

Marcia Smith 4:42
Birds?

Bob Smith 4:42
No smaller than that, smaller than birds.

Marcia Smith 4:46
Mosquitoes?

Bob Smith 4:48
Smaller than that.

Marcia Smith 4:49
Well, I almost said it.

Bob Smith 4:51
I heard it.

Marcia Smith 4:52
I was going to say, ants,

Bob Smith 4:53
Ants, yes! Although they are, for the most part, no-onsense insects, some ants have been known to get stoned on a nectar which they lap from the bodies of certain beetles. Problem ants like these have been known to fall down refusing to move any further. They don’t carry their loads

Marcia Smith 5:10
I’ll bet – I’m not gonna carry that.

Bob Smith 5:14
So what happens? The sober ants crowd around them, stroking their bodies, attempting to nudge them back totheir feet, and often the ants have to be carried back to the nest to sleep it off.

Marcia Smith 5:24
Are you kidding? That’s hilarious.

Bob Smith 5:26
One naturalist has reported that he saw one ant carry another intoxicated ant up to the nest, only to be met by two working ants who refused to let the drunken ant in.

Marcia Smith 5:37
That’s funny, isn’t it?

Bob Smith 5:39
They grabbed him, carried him across the path and flung him into a pond.

Marcia Smith 5:43
Oh, my god, did that kill him?

Bob Smith 5:45
No, the dunking had a sobering effect.

Bob Smith 5:47
Okay, just like real people, you say I’m in the river, see if it –

Marcia Smith 5:52
That’s a lot of complicated behavior there for ants.

Bob Smith 5:55
Isn’t that hilarious? That’s from the Encyclopedia of Amazing But True Facts.

Marcia Smith 5:59
Wow, I like that.

Bob Smith 6:00
So I assume it’s true.

Marcia Smith 6:01
I assume.

Bob Smith 6:02
It’s a funny imagery, isn’t it? To think of an ant being lik What is wrong with Harold? He’s in the nectar. Again.

Marcia Smith 6:10
That should be in one of the cartoons, right? It sounds like a Disney cartoon,

Bob Smith 6:14
Yeah.

Marcia Smith 6:15
Okay, Bob, there’s a major heat wave going on in parts of the world,

Marcia Smith 6:20
Yes, including the United Kingdom.

Bob Smith 6:22
It’s where it’s often sweltering to over 100 degrees andabove in Fahrenheit. But they don’t use that. Of course, they use

Marcia Smith 6:29
Yes, I’m talking our degrees, just so we can all understand it. Bob.

Bob Smith 6:34
A little provincial look at England from America, yes, 100 degrees, yes.

Marcia Smith 6:38
Why don’t they talk like us? I don’t understand. So goinginto that thinking, Bob, how many Brits do you think have air conditioning?

Bob Smith 6:47
Oh, very few. I’ll bet. Yeah, it’s because it’s never been a big deal. You know, it’s usually been moist and wet in the summers. And it can be cool, it can be hot, but not that hot.

Marcia Smith 6:56
Yeah. So what’s your answer?

Bob Smith 6:58
What’s the question? Again,

Marcia Smith 7:01
You just went off there on a tangent. What percentage of Brits do you think have air conditioning?

Bob Smith 7:07
Very few. I think that was my answer.

Marcia Smith 7:08
But give me a percent

Bob Smith 7:10
I’ll say 20% or less.

Marcia Smith 7:11
Yeah, well, roughly 5%

Bob Smith 7:15
Oh my goodness.

Marcia Smith 7:16
Compare that to over 85% in the US.

Bob Smith 7:20
That’s a lot of people, 85%.

Marcia Smith 7:22
Yeah, but Britain’s rarely get that hot, because it is an island. But I don’t know, after this summer, I wouldn’t mind being a what an HVAC dealer in

Bob Smith 7:31
Oh, my goodness. Can you imagine they must be making a killing now?

Marcia Smith 7:36
Oh, yeah, just like crazy.

Bob Smith 7:38
Well, I’ve got a question about a country. What country was originally called New Holland. Now I’m going to give you a choice here.

Marcia Smith 7:44
Thank you. Thank you.

Bob Smith 7:46
Was it Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia or South Africa? And it was on the maps, there are actual globes with the words New Holland.

Marcia Smith 7:55
Say again?

Bob Smith 7:56
Okay. Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia or South Africa.

Marcia Smith 7:59
I’ll say New Zealand.

Bob Smith 8:01
That’s what I would have guessed. I thought it would be New Zealand, but it’s actually Australia, believe it or not.Long before Europeans arrived in Australia, it was widely speculated that the Southern Hemisphere was home to a large land mass. It was often referred to as Terra australius incognita, “the southern unknown land”so the name Australia comes from Latin for southern but that wasn’t the first name Europeans gave. The Dutch who sailed near it called it New Holland.

Marcia Smith 8:32
Yeah?

Bob Smith 8:32
It appeared as New Holland on globes, starting in 1681 but the Dutch never colonized the island. They just went by it when they were colonizing New Zealand. Then in 1804 English explorer Matthew Flinders proposed changing the name to land of the South. That’s what Australia means. Now one more question.

Marcia Smith 8:49
Uh huh.

Bob Smith 8:49
Another continent was once named Australia, land of the South.

Marcia Smith 8:53
Really? New Zealand?

Bob Smith 8:54
No, no, a continent, another continent.

Marcia Smith 8:58
So it has to be Greenland.

Bob Smith 8:59
No, just the opposite.

Marcia Smith 9:02
Iceland?

Bob Smith 9:03
Antarctica.

Marcia Smith 9:04
That was called?

Bob Smith 9:05
That was called Australia, originally,

Marcia Smith 9:07
Really!

Bob Smith 9:08
Yeah, the bottom of the earth that was first named Australia. And it fits, it’s the southern land, right? But now it’s known as Antarctica and Australia, the land down under is the Southern landmass. That’s what the name means I, I didn’t know that that that meant south in Latin.

Marcia Smith 9:23
We missed Latin class that day.

Bob Smith 9:26
I took Spanish.

Marcia Smith 9:27
I didn’t

Bob Smith 9:28
But, you know, it’s derived from Latin.

Marcia Smith 9:30
I guess I got out of English by the skin …

Bob Smith 9:32
So Australis is Latin for Austral which means Southern, and that’s where Australia comes from. Here’s another pertinent thing that just came in the news. You know, we’ve heard CEOs over the past few years say it was time to return to the office [after COVID]. You know, they warned that executives may have to take hard action against employees who want to work remote. Right?

Marcia Smith 9:52
Wonder, how’s that going?

Bob Smith 9:55
Well, well, well! Here’s an update on that, a study from aresearch consortium backed by the office messaging company Slack, has found that 35% of non executives surveyed were back in the office five days a week. But guess what? Only 19% of executives were there

Marcia Smith 10:15
Really?

Bob Smith 10:16
Yes, they stayed home.

Marcia Smith 10:17
Well, that’s surprising.

Bob Smith 10:18
They’re still staying home.

Marcia Smith 10:19
How can you be in charge of anything if you’re not there?

Bob Smith 10:22
So fewer executives are in the office than workers, and that comes from a New York Times article, Hey, is anybody watching the interns? Because the problem is the interns are graduating from college. They want to gointo a company and form relationships with people to help their careers, and there’s nobody there,

Marcia Smith 10:42
I think I would insist on executives at least three days a week, don’t you?

Bob Smith 10:46
Let’s do that. Let’s get the workers together and tell the executives what to do. You get your butts in here.

Marcia Smith 10:52
That’s just dumb, don’t you kind of wonder where this is all headed with all the empty office space

Bob Smith 10:57
Well, and you know, it’s not just people who worked in cities, either. What about all those big suburban office parks?

Marcia Smith 11:03
That’s what I’m thinking all the time. What are they going to do with all they’re suffering too.

Bob Smith 11:07
If you drove on the Illinois State Tollway for years, you might remember seeing big office parks with huge logoslike the one for All State Insurance. Well, we did all the time. All State’s former 232 acre headquarters campus is empty. 95% of their employees were able to work from home during the COVID lockdown, and so they said, Okay, goodbye. They said, goodbye to their home of 55 years. So that complex may be developed into a warehouse complex, and developers of other big office parks and suburbs are thinking of turning them into, you know, apartment buildings or housing complexes.

Marcia Smith 11:43
Wow.

Bob Smith 11:43
So big changes in the world.

Marcia Smith 11:45
Yeah. Who would have thought that?

Bob Smith 11:46
Yeah

Marcia Smith 11:47
One of the biggest outcomes from the lockdown was all that.

Bob Smith 11:50
This is a good final quote on that. As one developer put it, don’t worry, in the built environment, nothing ever completely disappears. That’s been true of factories, mills and canals. They’ve all been converted into something else. They think it may be true of the 20th century, suburban office parks too.

Marcia Smith 12:08
Okay, so Bob, in the past, we have talked about the most popular foods in the United States. Pizza topped the list, 55% followed by hamburger, ice cream and french fries, all top notch healthy foods,

Bob Smith 12:21
All at the top of the food pyramid. You’re absolutely right.

Marcia Smith 12:25
Who do you think is considered the healthiest state

Bob Smith 12:27
in the United States?

Marcia Smith 12:29
Correct?

Bob Smith 12:29
The healthiest state? I’d say California.

Marcia Smith 12:32
I would have said that, or Colorado. But no, nay. Nay. It is Vermont. Oh. The obesity rate and smoking is lower than many states, with just about 80% of the residents reporting daily exercise. So Vermont really tops it. But returning to the most popular foods, Okay, question, let’stalk about the world based on data from 50 countries, what are the most popular foods in the world?

Bob Smith 13:00
Now that’s an interesting question. Yeah, most popular food, I would say rice has to be one, because it’d be big in in Asia. I mean

Marcia Smith 13:08
It’s a huge crop. It’s Fourth on the list of the world.

Bob Smith 13:11
And it’s used in all kinds of European dishes too. I mean, you know, American and European. Fourth on the list, right?

Marcia Smith 13:16
Yeah.

Bob Smith 13:16
Okay, so I need to have the top three. Yeah, I bet bread has to be one

Marcia Smith 13:21
That’s farther down the road, really, yeah, way down.

Bob Smith 13:21
Because I think of grainss.

Marcia Smith 13:26
You’ll like the top because it’s pretty much what you eat a lot.

Bob Smith 13:29
What is it? Lettuce, salad.

Marcia Smith 13:32
Number one is salad, okay? And number two is chicken,

Bob Smith 13:36
Okay, so they list salad as a food, yeah? Well, I think of salad as a combination of things.

Marcia Smith 13:41
Well, every country has a little different mix mash up of salad, okay, but salads are the number one, number onefoods, followed by chicken, cheese, rice. And then these I don’t understand — tea and coffee. You ever think of tea and coffee as the top foods?

Bob Smith 13:57
Well, only going back to that thing where he talked about the tea being thought of as an amphodesiac. I’m sure that, you know, remember people were putting tea leaves and their sandwiches and everything?

Marcia Smith 14:06
Yeah, I can see that. But, and that’s number seven, is milk, followed by eggs, apples and soup.

Bob Smith 14:11
Wow, that’s interesting. I didn’t hear any beef on there.

Marcia Smith 14:14
No, it comes later, but wow. 10 most popular foods in the world?

Bob Smith 14:19
Well, the top one sound pretty healthy, healthy, yeah. What are they again?

Marcia Smith 14:22
The top four, let’s see. Salad, chicken, cheese and rice.

Bob Smith 14:25
Not bad.

Marcia Smith 14:26
No, that’s great,

Bob Smith 14:28
Yeah.

Marcia Smith 14:28
Okay. What do you got? Mr. Bob?

Bob Smith 14:31
I’ve got a question on expressions, idioms. You know, we love word expression questions here.

Marcia Smith 14:36
Yeah.

Bob Smith 14:37
Okay, so Cat got your tongue.

Marcia Smith 14:39
Cat got your tongue.

Bob Smith 14:41
What do they think was the origin of that expression? Now that’s a question you throw to a person when they don’t seem to know what to say. Like, I did just there. Pause for a moment.

Marcia Smith 14:51
Yeah.

Bob Smith 14:52
What? Cat got your tongue? Where did they think that came from?

Marcia Smith 14:55
Gosh, I don’t know. Does it go back to Romans?

Bob Smith 14:59
It goes backn to punishment, believe it or not,

Marcia Smith 15:01
Oh, god, did they put – Oh explain Lucy.

Bob Smith 15:05
Back to the British Of course, the British Navy. The British navy, one of the possible sources for the phrase Cat got your tongue is the cat o9 tails, which were used as whips for flogging in the English navy. Being whippedcaused severe pain, so much so that the victim might stay mute for an extended period of time.

Marcia Smith 15:25
Really.

Bob Smith 15:26
So that’s one potential. Another potential. Origin of Cat gotyour tongue comes from ancient Egypt, where people would cut out blasphemers and liars tongues and feed them to cats.

Marcia Smith 15:39
Oh, god, that’s a story. Oh, man!

Bob Smith 15:43
Yes, the cruelty of human beings, another big topic here on the Off Ramp. Cat got your tongue? Because you’re not talking.

Marcia Smith 15:52
Oh, Lord, I think we better take a break.

Bob Smith 15:54
Okay, we’ll be back in just a moment. You’re listening to The Off Ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith

Bob Smith 15:59
We’re back and the cat doesn’t have our tongue. I’m Bob Smith and Marcia Smith. We’re here with The Off Ramp, our podcast we do weekly for the Cedarburg Public Library in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, and which goes out over the world on multiple platforms. Yes, we are global, and that means you have feedback on things once in a while, and I have feedback from our friend Steven Short, one of our listeners. You remember last week I talked about Buckminster Fuller being boring, and I felt bad about that. Well, Steve worked for Buckminster Fuller when we were in college. He worked,

Marcia Smith 16:33
That’s right, I forgot about that.

Bob Smith 16:34
So he said, “As I sit here with a couple of feet on my framed Dymaxion map, my which is a Buckminster Fuller map, of course, which surfaced during the move. He just moved. I offer a defense of RBF. He calls him Buckminster Fuller. What if you’d popped into an advanced psychology presentation or an auto repair class, would you have branded that as a snooze too? Just wondering, he said that once he told true believers when he was working for them, he couldn’t comprehend Fuller’s presentations. I was advised to just let the words wash over you. Certain sections may not make sense, but then later portions would.” So this is from a guy who worked for Buckminster Fuller.

Marcia Smith 17:14
Yeah.

Bob Smith 17:15
So Steve says you just got to experience Bucky and let the experience wash over you. But he does add here, “Truth be told, a couple of Bucky textbook thick books ended up in my discard pile during packing for the move.”, so he didn’t take them.

Marcia Smith 17:30
Yeah, well, I can understand.

Bob Smith 17:32
And I have to add one point, that was an open forum. I saw him, and it was for the public to come and to talk about Earth Day. So it should have been a more of a general public kind of presentation.

Marcia Smith 17:43
I think that’s a failure to communicate, but I’ll give Bucky credit.

Bob Smith 17:47
And I want to thank Steve for speaking up for RBF, as hecalls him.

Marcia Smith 17:51
Well, how does RBF fit into Bucky?

Bob Smith 17:54
Well, his real name was Richard Buckminster Fuller.

Marcia Smith 17:56
Ah, thank you.

Bob Smith 17:57
And I guess only those who worked for him would probably know that. Just for those who might not know, Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher and futurist, and he made the geodesic dome. That was the thing that most of us remember.

Marcia Smith 18:12
That’s what I remember.

Bob Smith 18:13
So thank you, Stephen. I hope your coastal move from San Francisco to the East Coast went well. All right, moving on.

Marcia Smith 18:21
Okay, moving moving on from Buckminster Fuller to peanuts, of course. The comic Strip,

Bob Smith 18:26
Good transition.

Marcia Smith 18:28
She never appeared in the Peanuts comic strip, but the little red haired girl did appear in a lot of peanuts TV specials. She was, I don’t know if you remember her. She was the object of Charlie Brown’s unrequited love. Okay, do you know the backstory on her?

Bob Smith 18:43
No, I don’t.

Marcia Smith 18:45
You know. Often people think that Charlie Brown was Schultz, right?

Bob Smith 18:49
Charles Schulz, yes, a cartoonist, and maybe Charles Schultz was smitten with a girl who had red hair.

Bob Smith 18:54
That’s exactly right. There’s your deduction. That’s it. She represents the girl who walked away and said no to his marriage proposal from Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz,

Marcia Smith 19:04
Really?

Marcia Smith 19:05
Yeah, the red headed Donna Mae Wald worked in the accounting department of Art instruction Inc, a correspondence school where Schultz worked. They dated for three years, and despite her refusal to marry him, they remained friends their whole life. And he

Bob Smith 19:21
so it wasn’t when he was a little boy.

Marcia Smith 19:23
Oh no, he was an adult, okay? And he put her in there as his object of desire.

Bob Smith 19:30
That’s charming.

Marcia Smith 19:31
It is charming, and they remained friends forever. Yes.

Bob Smith 19:33
That’s pretty cool. Marcia, I have a question for you on the New York City subway system. Did you ever ride the subway in New York City when you visited there?

Marcia Smith 19:43
I have

Bob Smith 19:43
Okay, here’s the question, if you took all of the underground tracks in the New York City subway system and laid them end to end as a single tunnel,

Marcia Smith 19:53
Oh, geez,

Bob Smith 19:54
how long would be?

Marcia Smith 19:55
It would it be across the United Statesacross part of the. United States. Okay?

Bob Smith 19:58
It would roughly be the distance from New York to Cleveland, okay, 418 miles of underground track. And that’s how many miles a new cell phone project is going to link. Because if you take the subway today, there are pockets where you can’t get any cell phones, right?

Marcia Smith 20:16
Yeah

Bob Smith 20:17
A handful of spots, and a new 10 year effort is aiming to fix that. It’s a $600 million project. And it’s being paid for by a private communications infrastructure company who transit wireless. They’ve been a provider of cell phone service, Wi Fi service to the subway system for years, but they’re going to do thisproject spend 600 million and then they’ll eventually share revenue with the city, once their installation costs are recouped, and supporters believe extending Wi Fi through all of the tunnels could actually make the subway safer, because it would give authorities multiple sources of communication during emergencies.

Marcia Smith 20:49
Okay. Well, that makes sense. Yeah, you would have think that everywhere in New York has connection.

Bob Smith 20:56
Apparently, not even all of the overground subway stations have Wi Fi. It’s spotty. It’s different places. Okay, so how many underground stations do you think there are in New York City the subway system? Because they’re gonna link all those underground stations together. How many under 24 now let’s try this again. You got 418 miles of underground track. How many stations you think are down there?

Marcia Smith 21:20
52 218 218 oh, my goodness. Well,

Bob Smith 21:24
and the new project will extend Wi Fi service to all those, plus the above ground stations as well. I never think about that. Did you need Wi Fi underground too? Yeah, if you’re going to stay in touch, I’m sure people are doing work on the subway system, and they lose their work between stations and

Marcia Smith 21:40
so forth. Jeez, okay, Bob, what do these four movies have in common? Okay, okay, A Nightmare on Elm Street. Goodfellas, three billboards outside ebbing, Missouri. We saw that. Remember that? And the exorcist. What’s the question again? What do they all have in common? What do they all have in ELMS? Nightmare on Elm Street, good fellas.

Bob Smith 22:07
I don’t, I can’t think of a common. I know commonality.

Marcia Smith 22:10
You’ll be surprised. Okay, they’re all based on true stories.

Bob Smith 22:14
Oh No kidding, yeah. Nightmare on Elm Street is based on a tree that is

Marcia Smith 22:18
the most interesting of them. You can see why exorcist there was a real case of, yeah, exorcism, multiple cases. And the billboard outside ebbing that Francis McDermott played, that was a real mother, and Goodfellas was based on a guy who wanted to grow up to be a mafia guy, of course, but Nightmare on Elm Street that came from this is very weird. Laotian male refugees after the war, they suffered traumatic resettlement problems when they came to the US, okay, and they suffered from horrific nightmares, and many of them died during the nightmare. Nightmares, a lot of them wouldn’t even go to sleep, and then they died from sleep deprivation. Oh, my god, yeah, so that was the basis of Nightmare on Elm Street.

Bob Smith 23:11
Wow. I don’t think that’s the storyline of that movie, but not at all.

Marcia Smith 23:15
It does nothing to do with refugees, but that was the thought starter for that movie.

Bob Smith 23:20
Who would know that that’s interesting. I did, and now I’ve shared it with the world. Thank you very much. You’re welcome. Okay, here’s something that’s related to a recent incident. So I’m going to ask you this question, what is the beeswax wreck? Ever heard of that the beeswax wreck? No, is it a man who overdosed on honey? He’s the beeswax wreck, the crash of a truck shipping beeswax candles, or a shipwreck that may have inspired the movie Goonies?

Marcia Smith 23:50
Well, I’ll go with three shipwreck

Bob Smith 23:52
That’s exactly right. The movie connection is the answer, because marine archeologists in Oregon have now concluded they’ve discovered remnants of a centuries old shipwreck that they believe inspired the movie The Goonies. But actually it’s more interesting than the Goonies. The Goonies was about a treasure ship somewhere on the coast, off the coast of Oregon. What they have actually found is 20 pieces of wood in a cave off the Oregon coast in June, and it turned out to be wreckage from a Spanish galleon which crashed in 1693, and it was carrying beeswax. I’ll be doing beeswax and Chinese pottery.

Marcia Smith 24:27
Well, that’s an interesting combo. It was part of a luxury goods

Bob Smith 24:31
trade that was between Manila and Acapulco, Mexico, and the ship got knocked off course. Now, there’s always been thoughts that something like that happened. They couldn’t ever put the pieces together. Because for centuries, people were finding pieces of pottery shards that were Chinese and little markings on things that were from beeswax containers. They never could put it all together. But recently, an Oregon local was searching for gemstones off the coast when he discovered this timber, and he said that looks like it came from a bob. So he alerted archeologists, and there’s a group called the maritime archeological society. You’d like that. Oh, that sounds fascinating. And they published a very interesting article. Apparently, this ship had many tons of beeswax in large blocks and candles, and then the porcelain wares were intended for the luxury markets in the new world in the late 1600s I didn’t know that we had global trade like that. Yeah, that’s hard to believe, isn’t it, to European communities in the new world, they traced the pottery, the porcelain, to being made sometime between 1680 and 1700 they think that in 1700 there was a major earthquake that created a tsunami, and then that scattered all of the stuff around the coast. Yeah. Okay, well, that makes sense. But apparently, the Nehalem Indians, their oral history traditions, have often said that some of the crew of a surviving shipwreck lived with the coastal Indians for some time, leaving behind descendants whose families continue to this day, Spanish sailors up in Oregon, isn’t that amazing? Yes. And this whole ship, it’s called the beeswax shipwreck, go online and you’ll find fascinating stories

Marcia Smith 26:07
about it. Will do that was intriguing. Bob, okay, I’m gonna finish up with a couple of quotes here. Okay, all right, here’s a quote from Orson Welles, okay, when you’re down and out, something always turns up, and it’s usually the noses of your friends. Well, that’s from personal experience. He went through a long hard time there for a while. And here’s from quarterback, Johnny Unitas. I could have played two or three more years. All I needed was a leg transplant.

Bob Smith 26:40
There’s a man who knows his equipment right, a leg transplant. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get those kinds of things that would take right? Yeah, that made a new leg.

Marcia Smith 26:50
You know? That can make it still be a good quarterback. Oh,

Bob Smith 26:53
my All right. Well, time is up for what we have. We want to thank Steve for his comments and invite anyone else listening. We’d love to hear from you. You can go to our website, the off ramp. Dot show go down to contact us and leave your information. You can also leave us questions that we can pose to one another as well. That’s it. I’m Bob Smith. I’m Marcia Smith. Join us again next time when we return with more great trivia here on the off ramp, you

Bob Smith 27:33
the off ramp is produced in association with CPL radio online and the Cedarburg Public Library. Cedarburg, Wisconsin, the.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai