Word: handymanning
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From the days of the dime novel through the era of soap opera, U.S. romantics have dreamed of inheriting an estate and a title in Great Britain. Early this year the dream came true for 60-year-old Adrian Ivor Dunbar, a handyman from Upper Fairmount, Md. Adrian left England more than 40 years ago, made his way to the U.S. in slow stages via Australia and Canada, married a comely widow, fathered two sons (both now in the U.S. Army) and in 1939 became a U.S. citizen. Last January, at the deaths of two cousins whom he had never...
...stock movie melodrama. Fredric March, as the circus manager and clown tightrope-walker, gives an earnest performance that seems to recall a little too strongly his confused Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. Terry Moore as his bareback-riding daughter and Cameron Mitchell as a circus handyman in love with her are merely displaced Hollywood juveniles. Gloria Grahame as the circus manager's sultry young wife and Adolphe Menjou as a secret-police officer carry more conviction, but the best performances are bits, e.g., Alex D'Arcy as a fatuously handsome lion tamer, Hansi as a circus...
...self-imposed isolation, the rector's convictions grew into eccentricities. The rectory grounds became a small wilderness, the rectory itself rundown and rat-ridden. The rector refused to see anyone without four days notice-in writing. His only steady contact with the parish was Burt Mefton, a handyman who brought him his groceries. The rector lived on oatmeal, apples and bread. He sent his tea and candy rations to needy parishioners...
...activity is a new expression of the old American passion for working with their hands; it has sent the sales of power saws, sanders, drills, spray guns, and all power tools soaring. But mainly, the "build-it-yourself" boom is born of economic necessity. Not only has the oldtime handyman all but disappeared, but hired home builders or repairers are sometimes shoddy workmen, and always high-priced. Said a Chicago lumber dealer: "It's a simple economic fact that a $75-a-week bookkeeper can't buy the services of a $150 carpenter...
Neither his wife nor his son nor his employers knew what dreams whirled in the head of Maxime Formartin. Perhaps-unlike Thurber's elaborately dreaming Walter Mitty-Maxime himself did know. He was a lowly handyman, chauffeur and clerk for the firm of A. Freyman & Van Loo, Antwerp shippers. Long years of faithful service had brought him one occasional pleasure and privilege: going to the bank to draw some of the firm's money for import duties...