There’s a park in Clarksburg called “Dowden’s Ordinary Park.”
It turns out to be an historical site and an “ordinary” is pretty much a normal, every day inn. This one was on an important trail between Frederick and Georgetown (In 1755, General Braddock stayed there on his way to the battle at Fort Duquesne)
This leaves me wondering though. If this was an “ordinary”, what was going on at the other inns? Do you suppose it involved dinosaurs?
I’m not really what you would call a huge fan of Guns N’ Roses. Nothing against them, just not my music and I doubt I could name more than one of their songs (even then, I’m not sure I’ve ever actually heard “Sweet Child O’ Mine”).
Pretty much the main thing I know about the group is that two of its members are Slash and Axl.
The other thing I know is this:
If you do a Google search for Slash, you’ll be presented with a large number of pages about the guitarist. (As an aside, his interview on Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me was quite a bit more entertaining than one might expect from the rocker stereotype; a good lesson in not judging a book by its cover band.)
On the other hand, if you do a Google search for Axl, you’ll be presented with a similarly large number of pages for a B-movie about a boy and his robotic dog. (Definitely a “popcorn” movie; I enjoyed it, but I’m glad I didn’t pay to see it in the theater.)
A random memory….
During a high school discussion of Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition to sail around the world, one classmate asked, in all apparent seriousness, why Magellan didn’t just go through the Panama Canal.
The question may have possibly led to some merriment.
In these more enlightened days, I assume everyone understands he was either trying to save some money on tolls or possibly had left his E-Z Pass transponder in the other ship.
(Spanish Galleon image used according to Pixabay license.)
It was no ordinary sneeze.
A particularly vigorous sneeze of the ordinary variety might, at best, upset a small gravy boat. This was not such a sneeze.
A sneeze of the super-human variety might propel the entire Spanish Armada across the world so quickly that would be no time to drop a coin in the toll basket at the Panama Canal, even if one had existed at that time. A sneeze of this sort would not be troubled by such an anachronism.
No, this was a category 45 sneeze. The sort which, had it occurred within the pages of a Fantastic Four comic book, would have caused even Galactus, Devourer of Worlds, to stop midmeal to say “Bless You” while offering you a solar-system sized handkerchief.
(Header image: public domain via WikiMedia Commons.)
