Word: gremlin
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Episcopal priest. His language was not out of the King James Version. "Now, I don't want any of you lugs referrin' to Benny as a murderer. I know his story. Got it from the D.A. Now, he's gonna tell it to the Gremlin Court." Benny folded his arms and told the Gremlins his tale. After an hour and a half of questions from the court, Benny passed the stiff admittance test and became a Gremlin himself...
...started preaching. He called them cowards and coyotes, threatened to pin their ears back. The boys listened aghast. Soon, they were confessing their crimes. They led him to their hideout, turned over lead pipes, brass knuckles, revolvers. On the spot, Father Swartsfager organized the Gremlin Club ("I'll teach you to be real tough guys-mentally, physically and spiritually...
Over the months, the Gremlin Club grew. The Padre, as the Gremlins called him, took other boys out of police courts, made himself responsible for their behavior. He organized boxing lessons, lectures, hot-dog parties. Whenever a Gremlin slipped, the boy went up before the Gremlin Court for punishment. Sometimes the sentence was a match with the club's best boxer. Once a group of Gremlins were arrested for bombing a schoolhouse. They confessed, but said that they had done it the night before they had met him. After a little sleuthing, Father Swartsfager found they were telling...
Only two or three of the Padre's boys have ever failed him. And the fame of the Gremlin Club has spread throughout Dallas. Last week, the citizens of Dallas launched a campaign to build the Padre a vast "Kid's World Community Center" for industrial education, vocational education, recreation and study. Sheriff Guthrie raided the Dallas slot machines and turned over the money to the Padre. The Center would cost about a million dollars. To Dallas, the Padre and his work were worth every cent...
Baffled, the Army called in the Navy, and the Navy, which had noise trouble of its own, appealed to Biologist Charles H. Blake of M.I.T. What subsea gremlin, they asked, was making the uproar? "Fish," said Professor Blake...