Pluggers by Rick McKee for January 18, 2024

Maybe in summer but right now on my part of the Blue Marble we have snow ;-)

It’s STILL a standard hazard in adventure movies, as it has been for a hundred years. And it still scares me. (The Hans Christian Andersen Story, “The Girl who Tread on a Loaf — that I heard as a child — didn’t help, either !)

So non Pluggers need not care if there be quicksand eh.

Never worried about that ever hiked all over.

Coming across a rattle snake is more of my concern when hiking as is a Grizzly bear. Which is why I carry Bear Spray and a pistol.

No, but thanks for the memories of jungle movies, Gilligan’s Island…

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept …” – J.R.R. Tolkien – Lord of the Rings.

Well, i’m way south of Dallas but i’ve been there. never heard of a problem with that.

Despite movies drama, it’s impossible to sink in quicksand….

Never occurred to me to concern myself with quicksand. Got swallowed by a significant sinkhole while out riding once. Once was enough, of course.

Pluggers are much more likely to worry about losing balance on uneven ground. A person’s center of gravity changes with age [also with pregnancy, but that’s a different and temporary issue] and bones become more brittle. That is why that Medicare survey one has to take at the doctor’s office asks about falling [“Have you fallen 2 or more times in the past 12 months? Are you here today because of a fall? Do you have any problems with walking or balance”]. However, for many pluggers today, movies and TV shows in their youth spent a lot of time having heroes and heroines getting stuck in quicksand, mud, etc. According to a 2010 article by Slate, this is a major gimmick in adventure picture in the ’60s, when “almost 3% of all films showed characters sinking in mud, clay, or sand.”

I’d just use it to hold me up. I’m very sore and wobbly.

The Quicksand Meme was very prevalent in late 50s, early 60s TV shows. It was a very cheap effect for black-and-white television where quicksand was simulated by cut oats suspended in water.

I remember my brothers and I playing in the back yard. Whether we were gun-toting cowboys or spacemen, we often had to watch out for quicksand.

I fell in quicksand once: Road workers were making a sidewalk near a culvert that held a flowing stream. A pile of sand collected in the stream, and became quicksand. I wasn’t scared; just annoyed. I had to pull foot out, and then retrieve the shoe that remained.

Last I saw some was Blazing Saddles. :)