Golden

I like McDonalds.

My son (and his commie hippie friends) all think that McDonalds (and WalMart) are the epitome of evil...and that capitalism itself is a million times worse than the oppression caused by Hitler, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Whatever, and all the world's ayatollahs combined. If they were educated enough to know who he was, they would probably blame Ray Kroc for every regrettable thing from the extinction of the dinosaurs to the rise of the Kardashians.

I disagree. I think people who serve economical and tasty sandwiches and salads are a valuable asset to the world.

And as a person who worked for McDonalds back in my youth, I have to say that my employment there provided knowledge and experience that I consider the foundation of my development as a contributor to the USA's gross national product. I also learned how to use a spatula.

Perhaps I'll share some of my stories from those days in a future post. Good times, those were. And I got free Big Macs.

Anyway, the point is that yesterday's puzzle was about "arches."



As I suspected, everyone found this one to be easy. (And for the same reason, I feel no need to discuss the bullet point quotes. Although, if anyone has ever heard the word "stately" used to describe something other than Wayne Manor, please let me know.)

Panel 1 is comic character Archie Andrews, who was pretty stupid, but did have a Top 40 radio hit back in the 60s..

The football guy is Archie Manning, who is famous for being Peyton's father. As a parent myself, I certainly understand how proud a father can be when his son gets to move from some crummy state to live in Colorado. I'm sure Archie considers Peyton's move to Denver as the family's most significant accomplishment.

Archie Bunker is famous for being the stepfather of the Meathead, who directed "The Princess Bride" and "This is Spinal Tap." Today's interesting relatable factoid is that Mr. Bunker was played by Carroll O'Conner, back when naming a boy "Carroll" was considered acceptable. In fact, the Ken Caryl Ranch (the lovely neighborhood just south and west of the Foothills Park and Rec District) was named after a guy named Kent Shaffer and his brother Carroll. They changed the spellings for the same reason The Monkees and Def Leppard did.

The last panel is obviously the St. Louis arch, which features one of the most interesting elevator rides you will ever take. It is the one and only cool thing in the entire state of Missouri.

As for the Tuco connection, you'd have to remember what he was doing in the scene depicted:



The gold was hidden in a grave, so Tuco had to search the entire cemetery to find the name he sought, giving us the opportunity to listen to one of the great movie songs of all time.



The grave he was looking for belonged to Arch Stanton. Of course the gold turned out to NOT be buried there, but...well, I won't share the spoiler. But it is an amazing movie, with Eli Wallach's acting standing the test of time as perhaps the greatest performance ever.



I found out about Heggie's Rock when I was doing some genealogical research on my family's history. It turns out that distant forebears were from the Heggie clan in Fife, Scotland. The spelling was changed to the "y" ending in the mid 1800s, probably due to simple illiteracy.

Heggie's Rock is a 130 acre outcrop in Columbia County, about 20 miles from Augusta, GA. The Nature Conservancy has created a Preserve that encompasses about 101 acres of that outcrop. Heggie's Rock was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1980, one of only 10 such designations in Georgia. It is named for Archibald Heggie, a Scot who acquired the property around 1808 through his wife, Martha Ramsey, whose grandfather built a grist mill on nearby Little Kiokee Creek.

I've never been there, but it's one of the landmarks on my bucket list. I'm sure I'll write about it after I've taken the tour. Stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, I have a slightly more challenging puzzle for you today. What do these folks have in common?



The extra credit question for today will probably only be answerable by my siblings, but I'll throw it out there anyway. How does the last panel relate to our family's genealogy? (If anybody outside the clan gets that one, I'll be amazed.)

As always, thanks for dropping by. (And by the way, we're only about a month away from Shamrock Shake season. Whoo hoo!) Have a great day!