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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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THOROUGHFARE:
Noun: 1. A main road or public highway. 2a. A place of passage from one location to another. b. Right to such passage. 3. A heavily traveled passage, such as a waterway, strait, or channel.
etymology: Middle English thurghfare : thurgh, thorow, through; see thorough + fare, road (from Old English faru, fær, from faran, to go; see fare).
As an aside, authors often surprise me with unexpected bits of erudition. One of David Eddings characters has a horse called Faran which (see above) I now know means ‘to go’ in Old English
HIGHWAY:
Noun: abbr. hwy. or hgwy. A main public road, especially one connecting towns and cities.
Continued from yesterday:
Highways made of macadam with a bituminous binder could not support heavy goods traffic and the heavy traffic during World War I resulted in road construction that included subsoil drainage, a firm foundation, a concrete base, and an additional wear coat of concrete or bituminous pavement.
Mussolini began to build autostrada to provide work for Italians during the depression of the 1920s. Built as single carriageway three-lane highways, they were perhaps the first ‘motorway’ system. The first truly modern highway system was the German autobahn system, constructed in the 1930s and, like the autostrada, designed for large (mainly military) traffic volumes and speeds in excess of 165 km/hr.
In Britain, trailing behind as usual, legislation authorising new or existing roads as motorways was not introduced until 1949. But, by the end of the 1950s most European countries had a system of main highways, with Germany's remaining the most advanced.
The 68,400-km American Interstate Highway System is a limited-access network stretching from coast to coast and border to border. The first interstate was in Missouri, Kansas, or Pennsylvania depending on who you listen to,.
Its conception, gestation and birth were less smooth than the highway! In 1939, Roosevelt recommended Congress to consider action on a system of direct interregional highways, with all necessary connections through and around cities, to meet the requirements of the national defense and the needs of a growing peacetime traffic. Because of political infighting and lobbying and a couple of wars it was not until 1956 that the Federal-Aid Highway Act emerged, and the early 1990s before (virtually) the entire Interstate Highway System had been completed and opened. Nevertheless, during those 40 odd years, the interstate system, and the federal-state partnership that built it, changed the face of America.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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many cities in hte north east started building "parkways" in the early 1920's-- for the new car owners.. (i know Boston and NY did, and so did Fairfax Virgina--)
these parkways were limited access roadways (but were closed to commerical traffic) that were designed to be 'pleasant' drives.. for new car owners..
some remain so today.. (The garden state parkway was a major access road to Atlantic city, and the road was gently curved, and ambled down from NYC to the seaside resort.) the grand central parkway (which changes names as it leave NYC's borough of queens and becomes the northern state parkway is an other beautiful road.. so is the wilber cross parkway (continuation of NY's Hutchison river parkway in conneticut)
these road had rustic wooden signs, and beautiful low arched stone bridges, (many build as WPA projects..)and plenty of places to pull of the road, to picnic or park and enjoy the view.
much of the mount vernon parkway in virgina is now part of a federal park! (and its the main roadway to Washington's house).
DDE warned against the interstate highway-- he was afraid of 'the military industrial complex' that as all in favor of the highway system... but they are a joy for long trips.. you sail along, on smooth, well laid out roads.. (and bypass all the downtown of a 1,000 little towns!)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I traveled last summer to NYC, and my friends said to drive the Taconic Parkway. Ah! bliss! I was immediately transported back to about 1967 when my family had made a trip to NY. it was a feeling I had long been trying to recapture... a deep part of my being has been satisfied.
formerly known as etaoin...
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Here in the Denver area a parkway is a divided street with a parklike setting between the two sets of lanes.
The Denver area has a grid numbering and naming system that extends from Golden on the West all the way to the far eastern confines of Aurora, which is hmmm, perhaps 35 miles from Golden. From North to South it also is about 35 miles. Broadway divides west and east, and Ellsworth divides North and South.
The grid system makes navigation very simple, since a quick look in the phone book tells you that S Memphis and Alameda, where I reside, is 172 blocks east of Broadway and three blocks south of Ellsworth. The drawback to buildling the road system on a grid is that it's really inefficient. To go from Aurora to Broomfield you drive 15 miles west and 15 miles north, a total of 30 miles. If there were a diagonal going the same route you would drive a bit over 21 miles, a considerable gas savings if you commute that way every day.
On the other hand, diagonals lend themselves to terrible intersections (anyone who has driven in Washington DC can attest to this.)
Getting back to Parkways -- One of the major routes going east out of Denver is 6th Avenue, but it ceases to be 6th Avenue from Colorado Blvd on out to Monaco, and is there called 6th Avenue Parkway because it is divided with wonderful expanses of lawn and trees between west- and east-bound lanes. There are quite a few other streets just like that throughout the Denver metro area, and they are all named by adding Parkway onto the otherwise normal name of the street.
One last oddity -- if you look at a map of Denver you will see that downtown Denver does not follow the grid system; instead its streets are set at a 45 degree angle to the rest of the area's routes. The numbered streets downtown are called streets, while the numbered streets in the rest of the area are designated as avenues, and they are only north of Ellsworth. Only a very few of the east west roads north of Ellsworth have names that are words, like Colfax AVenue, which replaces 15th Street from one side of the city all the way to the other. It's billed as the longest commercial street in the world. In the entire 35 mile length of it I'd estimate there are no more than 50 or 100 private houses, all the rest is zoned commercial.
You are probably all asking yourselves -- could htis be more boring. Yep.
TEd ped ped peds away
TEd
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In the early 1960s. I used to commute from Bethesda, MD to the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, MD. The Baltimore-Washington Parkway was one of the more scenic stretches of roadway I have ever used. It was falling into disrepair when I left the area, but that was many years ago.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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...a horse called Faran which (see above) I now know means ‘to go’ in Old English
In one of the Grimms' fairy tales, wasn't there a horse named Falada? The knacker cut off its head and mounted it on the wall, where it would carry on conversations, as I recall. (No wonder my mother complained about their being so dire!) Does Falada have a certain meaning?
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Falada appears to be Portuguese for the past participle of the verb to say or to speak.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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That's right, Mr Dixbie. And it's the feminine form. I know the Bros. Grimm were great philologists, but had no idea their knowledge apparently spread as far and wide as the Habsburg dynasty did.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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...it would carry on conversations
Falada appears to be Portuguese for the past participle of the verb to say or to speak
Whoa!
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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And it's the feminine form.
So was the talking head from a female horse?
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