Potato can be spelled GHOUGHPHTHEIGHTTEEAU.

 

For so many reasons!

 

A transplanted Hoosier (that's a story in itself) when I moved to SoCal, my new BILaw began to train me in fwy naming, so I learned and used them until I escaped thirty years ago to NorCal. He claimed it was the Truckers who created and utilized the names, perhaps to entertain or distinguish themselves on the CB radios. The 405 was the San Diego freeway, the 10 was the Santa Monica, the 605 was the River Grade. The Glendale, Pasadena, Hollywood and Valley Freeways all went to their named areas.
NorCal drivers didn't or wouldn't tell me the same secrets, just referring to the numbers.
The 152 is the best of my dozen!

 

Okay, okay... I'll cop to apparently introducing an off-topic thread to this forum. Mea cupla. I get it. No more. Although... this issue does seem to have struck a nerve here.

In my defense, highways and roadways are an integral part of my X152 experience. I didn't acquire my car to put it up on a shelf in admiration, but to drive it!! And as such, the road is as important a component to my driving as the wheels, supercharger, and even stereo. And, California Slang notwithstanding, attaching a "the" when describing a numbered highway just strikes me as being about as odd as seeing a roof rack - or yolk steering - on an F-Type.

And I don't buy the 'trucker' explanation. NorCal has it's own set of named highways (Embarcadero, Capital City, Nimitz, Bayshore, Pacific Coast, etc.) but modern conversation seems to have managed to drop the "the" when they're referenced by their numeric designations.

Jis saying...

 

If your off topic conversation goes past one page, then clearly people like it. It people don't, they can simply move on to the other threads.

 

I need to find a different childish topic to follow...cya