Word: customs
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...Return. Muntz, born in Elgin, Ill., was 20 when he started his used-car business there. Seven years later he opened a lot in Los Angeles. As a speculation, he bought 13 new, war-stranded, right-hand-drive cars which had been built for the Orient, including a custom-built Lincoln intended for Chiang Kaishek. When Los Angeles papers ran stories about the cars, Muntz sold the entire lot in two weeks without even unpacking all the crates, made a tidy profit...
...Ragged Army. He gave up his commission in disillusionment-to marry a rich widow, gain election to the House of Burgesses (he bought vast quantities of ale and rum, as was the custom, to get out the vote), and to live the life of a prosperous but restless country gentleman. But he did not falter, 16 years later, as the fever of rebellion swept the colonies. "The . . . peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with Blood or Inhabited by Slaves," he wrote. "Can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice...
Summer Flies. Where did the conservative stream rise? Before history, when experience, as custom, prejudice, and social institution, began to pass from one generation to another. Kirk does not explore the stream's upper reaches. His subject is conservatism in the modern world, the century and a half dominated by the ideas of the French Revolution, and the infinite, infinitely various get of those ideas...
Bisaccia stands high amid the crags and chestnut trees of the Southern Apennines, 60 miles to the east of Naples. It is a small town of some 7,000 souls, and the land is poor and arid. So it has become the custom for many Bisaccesi to move elsewhere to earn their living: to Naples and to Rome, to Mexico and Brazil, and to the United States, where some 200 emigrants made their new homes in Richmond...
...Funerals. In merriment-minded Tehuantepec, any pretext for a party goes; the commonest is a wedding. By custom, after the newlyweds retire, celebrators gather outside the bridal chamber, drinking and shouting broad sallies at the groom. Later, when he comes out to greet the crowd, firecrackers explode and an all-night fiesta starts. Scarcely less gay are wakes and funerals (where a favored dirge is the tune of Yes, We Have No Bananas). There are 21 scheduled community fiestas a year in the town...