Word: benches
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Bench & Bar. In Dallas, Justice of the Peace William E. Richburg sentenced Wife-Beater Grady Rogers to attend church with his wife for four Sundays. In San Francisco, after Stanley John Ostram had been arrested for doing 80 on the Bay Bridge, Judge Matthew Brady suspended his license, ordered him to drive across at 45 once each month for a year...
Whitney's housewives sniffed the spirit of change, suddenly rebelled. After years of submissively sidestepping the bench and its occupants (some of whom had a roving eye and a ribald tongue), a delegation of housewives called on young Mayor Fred Basham and told him to do something about it. The mayor agreed. One morning Whitney's oldtimers discovered, with cackling chagrin, that their sanctuary had been ignominiously lugged into a nearby alley. They angrily drew up a petition asking that it be put back. Cried one: "They done it in the night like a thief-if that bench...
When the town ignored them, they dragged nail kegs to the spot where the bench had originally reposed, and perched on them like defiant octopuses clinging to piling. The chief of police threatened to confiscate the nail kegs. That was more than the old men could take. They demanded, and finally got, a special municipal election to decide whether the bench should be restored...
Whitney's housewives redoubled their cries. Complained 70-year-old Mrs. T. E. Bagley: "They must spit about two or three gallons a day! They ain't died fast enough, these old men!" Tom Rose, 97-year-old dean of the bench sitters, replied with spirit: "Come here in '77 from Tennessee, been married 76 years, and my wife ain't whipped me yet! What do they want us old folks to do-hide in the woods...
...week's end Whitney came to a decision. By a 2-to-1 majority, the townspeople voted the bench back...