Word: impromptu
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Hate for the Germans ran strong in Brussels. Said a well-groomed hostess at an impromptu cocktail party: "I wouldn't mind a bit if some German soldiers were brought into my parlor right now and shot. I'd glory in the bloodstains on my carpet." Wrote a correspondent: "It doesn't seem incongruous to come across a grey-haired old lady, laughingly pointing to the body of a dead German soldier." Said a choked-up Brussels merchant: "The swine have overrun us twice in a single generation." For the second time retreating Germans burned the Library...
...Wehrmacht officers who may have had a hand in the attempt on Hitler. But Dr. Goebbels did not hide the fact that Berlin's Guard Battalion had had to seize the Ministry of War in the Bendler-Strasse, where the Army High Command makes its headquarters, carry out impromptu executions in its courtyard...
...pigeons, suddenly found three circus elephants in their midst. With equal suddenness, in the midst of the elephants, appeared sober, chunky Roger Dearborn Lapham, the onetime shipowner who is now San Francisco's bustling new mayor. Mounting a soapbox, able Mayor Lapham gave the pigeon feeders an impromptu 15-minute lecture on the merits of unifying the city's traction system. Pointing to the elephants, he cried: "There stands an early outmoded form of transportation the likes of which we intend to get rid of in this town...
...sessions were fairly private affairs till Eddie Condon began to put them on as a program at Manhattan's Town Hall (TIME, Nov. 23, 1942). For two seasons Guitarist Condon has led small, impromptu combinations of simmering jazz talent in Saturday afternoons of the rarest syncopated heat. Last week Condon went on the air for the first of 13 weekly broadcasts (Blue Network, Sat. 3:30 E.W.T.). His opening burst, a wow, featured such vintage improvisers as Trumpeters Max Kaminsky and Oran "Hot Lips" Page, Trombonist Milfred "Miff" Mole, Clarinetist Ellsworth "Pee Wee" Russell, Pianist James P. "Jimmy" Johnson...
...juke box and what you got out of it? Remember the cheese sandwiches and the cokes with the gang? It's pretty hard to remember, but your juke box once had this piece: Crosstown [music]. . . . And whenever that came out of the juke box, somebody started an impromptu rumba and boy, did the manager kick. But that was only when your mood was good, whether it was the moon, the coke, or the girl...