I’ve got a number of things to post here on AgWired but I think that too many time zones, time changes and meetings are catching up to me this weekend. So here’s all you get today. Actually a lot got done here on the home front including some office catch up work.

This post is ag related in that I stopped along California Hwy. 46 at Blackwell’s Corner to buy some almonds and pistachios. As I pulled in this is the sign that greeted me. I didn’t realize that I was on the James Dean Memorial Highway. Apparently this is where he gassed up his race car on September 30, 1955 before his fatal crash. This is what it says on Wikipedia:

Dean was driving west on U.S. Route 466 (later State Route 46) near Cholame, California when a black-and-white 1950 Ford Custom Tudor coupe, driven from the opposite direction by 23-year-old Cal Poly student Donald Turnupseed, attempted to take the fork onto State Route 41 and crossed into Dean’s lane without seeing him. The two cars hit almost head on. According to a story in the October 1, 2005 edition of the Los Angeles Times,[10] California Highway Patrol officer Ron Nelson and his partner had been finishing a coffee break in Paso Robles when they were called to the scene of the accident, where they saw a heavily-breathing Dean being placed into an ambulance. Wütherich had been thrown from the car, but survived with a broken jaw and other injuries. Dean was taken to Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival at 5:59PM. His last known words, uttered right before impact, were said to have been “That guy’s gotta stop… He’ll see us.

So there you have it. I learned something new and interesting thanks to California agriculture.