Word: islanded
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Frankie Costello is an underworldling with a difference: he has more money than most bank presidents and he never seems to be around when any rough stuff is going on. This enables him to maintain a snug Manhattan apartment and a big house in the Long Island countryside, to contribute to worthy causes, and to control as many Tammany politicians as he finds convenient...
...veteran of the Normandy landing who always wanted to be a teacher, O'Brian received his Truk assignment in 1946. He soon found that, for a teacher, Truk was no island paradise. The islanders, an easygoing, coffee-colored people of mixed Micronesian stock, were poor, half-starved and, in Navy eyes, superstitious (one of their taboos: they refused to eat the Navy's beans...
...natives were eager to learn, but not always easy to teach. At first, he found, students from one island would refuse to mingle with those from another. Also, they had a horror of losing face: a teacher scarcely dared flunk students lest they refuse ever to go home again. Even some of O'Brian's alumni were troublesome. A few got back to their villages and refused to do any work; some even tried to overrule their chiefs. Others flouted ancient taboos in their parents' faces...
That sort of thing was not what O'Brian was after. He does not think that his schools should destroy the island way of life. "Truk doesn't need democracy," says he. "It needs to feed itself, and it needs English to keep from getting fleeced if U.S. protection should end." O'Brian hopes Truk won't change too much. "It's wonderful. If I can, I'm going back there to live...
...Long Island plot 20 miles from Manhattan, Builders Levitt & Sons put up a trim two-bedroom bungalow. Like other U.S. builders, they knew a slump had curbed real estate sales; many a new house was going begging because the price was too high. But Bill Levitt felt sure there were plenty of buyers, if the house -and price-were right...