The Ghostway (1984)

A U.S. state located in the north-central part of the country, in the Great Lakes region, bordered by Lake Michigan in the east, Lake Superior in the north, and the Mississippi River in the west. Wisconsin was inhabited by Paleo-Indians as early as 10,000 BCE, in addition to various cultures who developed in the area over time. By the time of European contact in the 1600s, it was mostly Ioway, Ho-Chunk, and Menominee Native peoples who populated the area. Wisconsin is known as America's "dairyland," as it is the country's leading producer of cheese. Agriculture is one of the state's main economic sources, due to its rich soil deposits, the result of eons of glacial activity in the region, and high water table. Madison is Wisconsin's capital, and Milwaukee its largest city.

In the early days of the telephone, calls had to be connected manually by inserting two phone plugs into specific ports, one from the caller and one for the called, in a panel called the switchboard. The switchboard operator was the individual who connected these calls. Until the advent of direct dialing, all calls went through operators. The first telephone operator was named George William Croy, who found his "calling" in 1878. It later it became a trend in the United States for this position to be held by women, with the reasoning behind this being that women were expected to be more courteous to customers than men. Moreover, women would work for much lower wages than men, making the exploitation of their gender an integral part of the developing telecommunications industry. Because switchboard operators were often the public face of an organization, the convention of hiring beautiful women became part of the culture associated with switchboard operators, who became in some senses associated with the pretty, independent, and wholesome “All American Girl.”

From the Latin, where "homo" refers to "man" and "cida" refers to "killer," a homicide occurs when one human takes the life of another. It should be noted that there are various types of homicides and not all homicides are illegal. Murder in the first degree is the wrongful murder of another person with both intent and premeditation to kill established as motives prior to the act. Second degree murder is considered a “crime of passion,” meaning that there is no premeditation but there is intent to kill. Manslaughter is the killing of another person but is not considered murder because neither premeditation nor intent are present, although the desire to do bodily harm to another person was part of the motive prior to the act. Involuntary manslaughter, in which neither premeditation, desire to kill, nor commit bodily harm are present. A common example of involuntary manslaughter is a traffic accident cause by people under the influence of drugs or alcohol. There are also legal homicides, which includes killing a person for self-defence or the self-defense of another human being.

The 31st state to join the Union, California was originally settled by hundreds of small, seminomadic indigenous groups before becoming the part of the Spanish Empire known as Alta, or upper, California. After the war of independence between Mexico and Spain, in 1821 California became a part of Mexico and then a part of the United States of America after the Mexican-American War in 1848. Although the name "California" derives from a 17th-century Spanish romance about an island of gold, in 1848, with the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, California became known as "the golden state" as thousands of people migrated to California by land, over well-established trails, and by boat, thus marking the beginning of the California Gold Rush.

There are a number of iconic landscapes and architectural sites in the state including Yosemite National Park, the Golden Gate Bridge, Disneyland, Redwood National Park, Lake Tahoe, Death Valley, and Hollywood to name but only a few. The state is best known for its connections to the film industry, the wine making business, and its agriculture, which was wrested from the western deserts via huge irrigation projects and the back-breaking labor of often undocumented immigrant farm workers.

Also known as an arroyo seco, gulch, or gully, a wash is a dry stream or river bed that does not hold water most of the time, but that is subject to seasonal flooding. Washes vary greatly in depth, width and length, and can be found all over the world in semiarid and desert areas. They are common throughout New Mexico and Southwestern parts of the U.S., where prolonged droughts keep them dry and heavy rains make them prone to flash flooding.

One of the most abundant rock types underlying the Earth's surface, especially the upper oceanic crust, basalt is a dark-colored igneous rock. It can be fine-grained and compact, although as it usually reaches the earth's surface via volcanic activity and lava flows, hardening into rough, crystallized, pumiceous formations. Many areas within the U.S. Southwest are scattered with extinct volcanoes, and basalt is therefore abundant throughout the region.

A single-action pistol whose barrel measures 10 inches or longer. Because the barrel of this pistol far exceeds the normal pistol barrel length of four inches, the velocity of bullets fired from long barrel pistols is lower than from short barrel pistols. This is because gas generated during the percussive explosion needed to expel the projectile from the barrel works as a frictive agent, competing with the projectile to exit the barrel. Therefore, the longer the barrel, the slower the velocity of the shot fired due to the increase in friction that results from the increase in barrel length. Colt Manufacturing Company desgined and manufactured eighteen different models of long barrel pistols. Today, these kinds of gun are more for show than for actual use.

The long barrel pistol is also wrapped in mystery. The exemplar of the long barrel pistol is the Buntline Model or Buntline Special, a 12-inch-long pistol famous for being the weapon of the legendary Deputy Town Marshal of Tombstone, Arizona, Wyatt Earp. As the legend goes, a Western literary novelist, Edward Judson, purchased five long barrel pistols at the 1878 St. Louis Exposition and gave them to five lawmen destined for fame or infamy, depending on the story being told. Wyatt Earp, Neal Brown, Charlie Basset, Bill Tilghman, and Bat Masterson were the rumored recipients of these pistols. Because Judson purchased the weapons under a pseudonym, Ned Buntline, they later acquired the name Buntline Model or Buntline Special. While this legend is a nice tale, there is no evidence that it is true.

A long, repetitive prayer or chant. The term is used colloquially to refer to a list or series of items, especially when spoken out loud in a monotonous, tedious manner.

An American car brand that is known world-wide as popular, reliable and affordable. The Ford automobile company was named after Henry Ford, who is famous for changing the world of transportation as well as of industry. In 1908, he designed the Model T car, an inexpensive automobile that made owning a vehicle a feasible thing for the common man and not just for the wealthy elite. The method and philosophy of production introduce by Ford in the manufacture the Model T was an integrated moving assembly line known as Fordism, a system of mass production for mass consumption that was adopted in a variety of industries and deeply affected American economy in the first half of the 20th century.

The Ford company grew rapidly and developed into a multinational corporation. Over the decades, its cars were, and still are, among the best-selling in America as well as in many other countries across the globe.

Adobe is made of clay soil mixed with water and straw that is then formed into walls, oblong shapes, hornos (ovens), or bricks. The finished object is left to dry and harden in the sun. Once cured, it is covered in a coat of plaster, which is essentially thinned adobe mixed with lime.

The word adobe originated in Arabic, and was used by the Spanish to refer to mud brick structures. Adobe was incorporated into English in the 18th century, and the term has come to mean not just the building material but also an architectural style popular in the Southwest, U.S. particularly in Arizona and New Mexico. The use of adobe in New Mexico can be traced to many centuries prior to European contact and was widespread among various Native American groups, especially the Puebloans. With the arrival of Spanish explorers and settlers, local building techniques were combined with Spanish architectural styles to create what is now referred to as the Santa Fe or Spanish-Pueblo Revival style, made famous by the rise of Santa Fe, NM as a popular tourist attraction and cultural center.