Word: greasers
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Actually, for all his old-worldliness, Medina was raised in Brooklyn, was called a "greaser" at public school because his father was Mexican (his mother is a D.A.R. of Dutch descent). He made the water-polo team and Phi Beta Kappa at Princeton, and was earning $100,000 a year as a lawyer before President Truman appointed him to the federal bench...
Early Years. He grew up on his father's farm. At the university he rapidly became the biggest man on campus, earned money as a grocery clerk, bakery pan-greaser, sleeping-car conductor. He was an above-average student, president of the student body, senior orator, member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, captain of the rifle team (he once shot tassels off a fellow R.O.T.C. student's uniform in an exhibition...
Business leaders discovered that some labor leaders, for a price, would cooperate in destroying competitors. That was the beginning of labor racketeering. Sam Parks, Skinny Madden, Bob Brindell, Al Capone, Tom Maloy, "Joe the Greaser" Rosenweig, "Dopey Benny" Fein, Louis Lepke, Jacob Shapiro, et aL, strewed the industrial U.S. with wrecked property, spoiled vegetables, stink-bombed theaters, ruined laundry, the bodies of innocent bystanders, of fellow goons, of banditti who opposed them...
...morning brought it under control. A jury steering gear was rigged and the main engines urged to nine-knot speed. For 700 miles 26-year-old Second Officer Arthur Hawkins guided her eastward, by the moon and stars and a page torn from an old school atlas. Greaser Joe Boyle, his ribs broken, was propped on a stool in the engine room to check the gauges. But after two days he collapsed, died overnight in his bunk...
...crew gradually spilled the beans. Whoever would talk got free drinks. Some of the men were reticent and asked not to be quoted. Senior Printer Pearce Jones not only consented to be quoted; he insisted. "I am protected," he said, "by the Typographical Society of Great Britain and Ireland." Greaser Tom Barber and Fireman Jim O'Brien and Engineer Peter Johnson were in fine form. Oiler Jack Sykes babbled in Cockney. Gradually the story took consecutive shape...