Word: backwash
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...clock, central Manhattan subway stations were jammed with pushing, gesticulating throngs. Shoe stores were invaded by snow-powdered hikers in search of rubbers and galoshes. Hotels were besieged; and a backwash of the stranded headed for bars, all-night movies and the apartments of friends. Meanwhile the Fire Department was struck by the horrible thought-it couldn't move its trucks. Its engine-house gongs rang out the "five sixes" (all firemen report for duty). It got radio stations to ask the citizenry kindly not to let their houses burn down...
...Christmas drew near, the voices of carolers, not all of them blending harmoniously, were raised across the land. Office parties left a backwash of glasses and overflowing ash trays on desks and filing cabinets. In Boston, the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals sent out three wagonloads of oats, carrots and apples for the city's work horses. Sweet but harassed rich girls prepared to make holiday debuts at Atlanta's Piedmont Driving Club, San Francisco's Palace Hotel, Baltimore's Alcazar, and in many another big-city ballroom. Boise, Idaho, a city...
...race. The New York Herald Tribune, in a burst of journalistic enterprise, sent an airborne reporter circling over the fleet ("first air coverage of such an event"). He saw a fleet of sails fanned out, with 70 miles of smooth water between the leader and the tailender. The backwash of a baby hurricane just missed the racers. Even so, one sloop's topmast was sprung...
...backwash of postwar epidemics spread across China, carried by 60,000,000 louse-ridden refugees. Two months ahead of the virulent summer season, a cholera epidemic broke in Canton. Only cool weather prevented a full-scale epidemic in Hankow. Bubonic plague broke out in Foochow, and in north China was apparently moving on Peiping and Tientsin. Two planes carrying UNRRA medical supplies flew to Tientsin to meet the threat...
...seemed to ride in on a backwash of shortages, tie-ups, Missouri politics, old union contracts and recapped tires, most Americans were still willing to guess that the future would be vast and exciting. If not, the time for worrying would come soon enough The average citizen still had money, and his wife still had some perfume and a permanent wave. As the clock struck twelve he would probably think of a fine way of toasting the future and toning up his stomach...