Word: merchant
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Pepper's life has been an ordeal of "searching for something and never stopping, never being satisfied," as he put it in Straight Life, the unsparing, tape-recorded autobiography (Schirmer; 1979) that he assembled with his third wife, Laurie. His parents, a hard-bitten merchant seaman and a teen-age bride, began breaking up shortly after Art's birth in suburban Los Angeles (which his mother tried to prevent by aborting herself). Art's lonely upbringing was entrusted to an unloving grandmother. He found an outlet in the clarinet at nine and switched to the saxophone...
...which raised $120,000 in a few days. The crusade's headquarters in the El Bohio Café on Bergenline Avenue is jammed with refugees, who get $50 and all the food and clothes they need. Volunteers take pledges over the phone for jobs, supplies and lodging. One merchant sends over a rack of new clothing, another offers jobs. "The reaction has been overwhelming," says Rodriguez. "We are taking care of these refugees. The Federal Government is not involved...
...After the Mayaguez, a small U.S. merchant ship headed for Thailand, was seized by a Cambodian gunboat, President Ford ordered a military rescue by 1,100 Marines. All 39 Mayaguez crewmen were freed, but at the cost of 41 U.S. servicemen killed and 50 wounded...
Like animals long used to a chafing yoke, the townsfolk can take known evils in stride. Ill winds from the outside world bring them something worse. Two engineers arrive to oversee the laying of railroad lines that will forever end the isolation of the town. The local timber merchant, Pritykin (Gary Bayer), hopes to grasp the railroad-ties concession in his sweaty palms. But mostly the villagers treat the coming of the engineers as if it were a visit from royalty, bringing a scent of urbanity to their drab dismal lives...
...individual was merely a subject of caste, church and state. Europe for centuries had been under the sway of authority and tradition. Everyone had a place, and there was no place for an entrepreneur. The early Church Father St. Jerome had said it all: "A man who is a merchant can seldom if ever please...