Word: cloudburst
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Butcher Knife. Then the presidential train began a station-to-station run to Buffalo. Seven thousand people stayed through a violent cloudburst at Auburn, Republican Congressman John Taber's home town. They cheered lustily as Harry Truman berated Taber for using "a butcher knife and a saber and a meat ax . . . on every forward-looking program . . ." There were more crowds at Schenectady, Amsterdam, Little Falls, Utica, Rome, Oneida, Syracuse, Seneca Falls, Geneva, Rochester, and Buffalo. And there would be great crowds again this week as the President toured the Middle West. Politicos and columnists seemed puzzled by the phenomenon...
...Snapped Tory M.P. Hugh Linstead in a letter to the Times next day: "Have we now reached the stage when no one in authority dare say 'carry on' if a meteorologist says it is going to rain?" Brigade HQ countered apologetically: "There were storms-there was a cloudburst over Clapham Junction [four miles away]." Britons felt cheated. Blimped the father of one subaltern: "Dammit, the Guards never run-nor do their uniforms...
...Robert Schuman, his storms proved more than figurative. On one of his solitary walks among the Left Bank bookstalls he was caught in a cloudburst, returned home drenched. His secretary scolded him. Said Schuman: "I suppose I have too much confidence." After a pause he added: "In a manner of speaking, of course...
Five minutes into the second chukker, the rains came. A verliable cloudburst, which at one stage made the goalies invisible from the middle of the field, transformed the ground into a quagmire. But lacrosse games don't stop unless either one team is collectively struck by a lightening belt or something equally drastic occurs, so the contest continued despite the downpour...
Edwin G. Nourse, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, which counsels the President, took a long look at the falling barometer of commodity prices last week. Newsmen prodded him for a weather report. Was this a crashing cloudburst, or just a heavy shower that might clear away some of the hot air of inflation? Economist Nourse adjusted his pince-nez. This, he said gravely, was a time for "masterly silence...