Word: decrepit
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Ironically, one big achievement only showed the need for another. With water-happy householders emptying an estimated 500,000 tubfuls down the drain the first day, the capital's ancient and decrepit drainage system broke down. To make things worse, heavy rains flooded the streets. By week's end, engineers were forced to cut the inflow of the new water by a third. They probably will hold it at the reduced level till the drainage system can be overhauled-at an estimated $60 million, more than twice the cost of the entire Lerma project...
...Chicago for a series of lectures, T. S. (The Cocktail Party) Eliot, 62, mused: "The years between 50 and 70 are the hardest . . . You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down . . . Basically I am a very lazy man . . . After Christmas I will try to get down to doing another play. I know that no one ever has two successes in a row, so I am writing the next play for a small out-of-the-way theater in London . . . You must go on living...
Like many another country doctor, Dr. Leander C. Bryan of Rutledge, Tenn. (pop. 518) had fumed & fussed for years over poor telephone service. Things came to a head in 1936 when the dilapidated telephone system was threatened with a complete shutdown. Nobody else wanted to buy the decrepit concern, with only 36 subscribers, so Dr. Bryan took it over himself for $600 in order to keep in touch with his widely scattered patients...
...power was based on the rural vote and Georgia's unique, decrepit county-unit system. Roy himself was born on a farm in southeast Georgia, knew his woolhatters and had something on almost every politician in the state. In a state where 122 city votes can be offset with one tame woolhatter in a rural county and 25 woolhatters can sometimes swing a county, Roy's system worked fine...
When Langdell Hall was completed in 1929, there was an understanding that the rather decrepit brick building which was crowding its north-east corner would be removed as soon as possible. The Rotch Building has enjoyed 21 years of reprieve since then, but with the Graduate Center going up right behind it, it will be demolished this summer...