Word: formicaed
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Shiloh and Other Stones, an important first volume of fiction by Bobbie Ann Mason, 42, introduces a Kentucky of disabled truckers and Rexall waitresses. Her view produces achingly accurate pictures of the commonplace. These tales neither judge nor mystify, but shine like a Formica countertop. "I'm writing about ordinary people rather than alienated superior sensibilities," she explains. "I'm writing about people who are trying desperately to get into the society rather than...
...mundane of contemporary realities: a typical California suburb. The creature appears to his friend Elliott in a pizza-strewn back yard; he lives in a child's closet. As E.T. built his "phone home" device from old toys and household castaways, so Spielberg fashioned a dream world from the Formica-and-vinyl tatters of the American dream...
...Cafe, where a sign on the screen door decrees NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE, a jut-jawed miner hunches over a cup of coffee at the Formica counter, digging coal grime out of his fingernails with one toothpick while another bobs at the corner of his mouth. "Ain't gonna give you my name," he growls. "But just remember Herrin and Muddy Bottoms. This ain't but the start." Herrin is a town some 20 miles to the west where striking union loyalists shot 19 would-be strikebreakers to death in the "Herrin Massacre" of 1922. Muddy...
South of the Border is not artificial-flowers-formica-tables-plastic-trails-through-the-living-room a little tacky. It is the showroom of tack, all the kitsch of America distilled into 100 acres by the side of 1-95. There are 304 motel units, 103 campsites, four restaurants, three gas stations, 17 stores, miniature golf, a train ride through the woods, not to mention a 200-foot observation sombrero, all based on a Mexican theme filtered through several layers of bias, ignorance and Hanna-Barbera. As the brochure says, "Ees onlee wan South of the Border, Amigos, where Pedro...
They say some things never change, and until this summer, Elsie's, that venerable Mount Auburn Street dive, could have been used as proof. But gone are the seedy, chipped, dirty white formica countertops and hospital green walls. Gone too, apparently, are the long lines and lack of seating space...