Word: knockabout
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Ships & Reactors. Those statistics mark a long reach from the spring of 1898, when a young teamster named Warren Bechtel hitched up a couple of mules and went into the "earthmoving" business in Oklahoma's Indian Territory. His knockabout enterprise prospered, and by the time of his death in 1933, "Dad" Bechtel was head of the combine building the Hoover Dam, the biggest construction project of its day. It was his son, Stephen Bechtel, who expanded the business into a worldwide engineering and construction organization that now employs some 8,500 technicians and engineers...
James Michener first visited Spain as a chart boy aboard a freighter that hauled oranges from the eastern coast to the marmalade factories of Dundee. In the 35 years since then, he has returned repeatedly, both as a knockabout traveler and a rich tourist. In his book he makes no effort to prettify the country's problems or ignore its faults. As long as Spain remains ruled by the army, the landed families and the church, he sees scant hope of any dramatic social or industrial progress-although he does grant that there have been genuine advances in recent...
Poor and yearning little girls are standard fixtures in hardscrabble literature. Most of them, like little Clara Walpole, scheme and claw their way up from a knockabout childhood and finally wear silk dresses and live in the biggest house for miles around. But if Clara seems to be a drearily familiar type, there is a magical naturalistic quality in this book that makes her one of the most pathetically provocative literary heroines of the year...
...British Actor Michael Craw ford, knockabout champ of Broadway's boffo Black Comedy, has had enough movie successes (including The Knack and The Jokers) to be able to say with justifiable immodesty: "I expect to see Fame arriving next week in a little, neatly labeled package." The only thing that could waylay Fame would be for Crawford himself to wind up prematurely in a neatly labeled coffin...
From the start, the legend was slightly askew. Lindbergh was no Flying Fool. Even at 25, he was probably the best knockabout flyer in the U.S. He was chief pilot (of three) for a tiny airline with a newly awarded contract to fly airmail between St. Louis and Chicago. Four times, lost in fog, he had been forced to ditch his plane and jump for his life. Lindbergh had left the University of Wisconsin midway through his sophomore year to take a course in flying, bought his first plane (for $500) a year later, and qualified as a pilot...