Word: houseboat
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Machinist's Mate. Dave sold newspapers and Christmas trees, fished in houseboat-bordered Lake Union to piece out the family fortunes. His mother worked in a laundry. He never forgot waiting for her outside its steamy windows while she drudged on late at night. Eyeing the ornate houses of the rich on Capitol Hill, Dave resolved to be as good as any of them...
...unavoidably brought out personality. A somewhat thyroid spinster from Lahore passed around the manuscript of a sex novel she had been working on. One handlebar-mustached old colonel, who had spent 40 seasons in Kashmir, refused to leave. Said he: "Good God, no! I'll just pull my houseboat over another mile or so and forget the trouble." The Hindu pianist who played an Indian version of boogie woogie at the houseboat-cabaret Bluebird had a different solution. He bought a new, heavy, imported Scotch tweed suit with heavy overcoat and tweed cap. Asked if he were not afraid...
...able to find a cottage for him there, and Shanghai Bureau Chief William Gray has his eye on a small hotel on an island off Wusih in Lake Tai Hu, northwest of Shanghai. "Wusih," says Gray, "is a sort of Chinese Venice, where you travel mostly by motor houseboat, a top-heavy but pleasant craft with attendants who serve tea and Chinese chow at thoughtful intervals...
...liked to spend weekends drinking and gambling himself, aboard a craft known as the "Bum Boat," an ancient stern-wheeler converted into a houseboat. When the City Council decided one December to clean up the red-light district, he protested vehemently that such an action in the week before Christmas would be unChristian. On such occasions he was a formidable figure-a wry neck kept his head cocked to the right and made him look like an angry rooster. Once he ended a two-hour Council debate by rising and bellowing "Bull!" at the top of his lungs...
...with some 1,500,000 members. Their activities range from sports to classes in stenography, from providing board & room for city working girls to running summer vacation camps for youngsters. Currently the Y.W. is hard at work in war zones, with some 20 rest and recreation centers (including a houseboat on the Nile at Cairo) which provide servicewomen with such occasional luxuries as breakfast in bed, hairdressers, tearooms...