Word: alva
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...cheerless lobby of Mexico City's Hotel Ambos Mundos one night last week, General Jesús H. Alva sat stroking his huge mustache. He was reminiscing about the old days when he was one of Pancho Villa's Dorados ("golden" shock troops). As he talked, the 70-year-old general played with a wooden bullet. "Son," he said to a bystander, "they sent us these, thinking that we wouldn't be able to fight with them. That trick could not stop the Dorados...
...crossed the lobby to the cigar stand, bought four of his favorite cigars. As he turned from the stand, he brushed against one Jesús Arias, police chief from the tiny Michoacán town of Vista Hermosa, who was a little the worse for tequila. General Alva's dark green felt hat fell to the floor...
...shouted at Arias, reaching for his hip. "I was one of Villa's Golden Ones!" "And I am from Michoacán!" snarled Arias. Alva drew his .45 Colt automatic; Arias leveled his pearl-handled .38 at the general's middle. Without saying anything more, he squeezed the trigger three times. The general sank to the black-&-white marble tiles, fired once before he hit the floor. Once was enough: his slug ripped through the police chief's heart...
...General Alva lost consciousness, his left hand opened and the wooden bullet rolled slowly into a dusty corner. The next morning he died...
Most of Thomas Alva Edison's diary is like this day's extract-an approach to all & sundry on a one-track even keel. Like his neat, snug handwriting, which seems exactly to reflect him, Edison's way of life indicates no ups & downs-only a remorseless, meticulous line of continuity. Editor Runes has printed only a handful of Edison's daily records (along with many of his articles and public statements), but they are enough to show what a strange assortment of things swam in the sea of cool equanimity that was Edison...