Word: mud
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Thurber's latest excursion into the world of fantasy. The rabbits tipped their heads, as men tip their hats, "removing them with their paws and putting them back again." A pink comet flashed by, missing the world by inches. The air was full of the tinkling of musical mud, the roar of barking trees, the flight of wingless birds. In fact, everything was just as usual...
Wright had built daringly and well against earthquakes: he designed the Imperial to float like a flexible collection of barges on Tokyo's soft mud. The floors were cantilevered on supports which carried them the way waiters carry trays on one hand. To keep the center of gravity low, the outer walls (double shells of brick poured solid with concrete) tapered toward the top. All piping and wiring was laid free of the construction in concretecovered trenches. An immense pool guarded the building from the fires which usually follow Japanese quakes...
Never has more mud been pumped, slushed, squirted and squooshed, and I beg to report that the Connecticut clam is far mightier than the slush pump. Needless to say, it will take many years for TIME to regain my confidence after this disappointing experience...
Last week this wretched, sleazy city was stark and rude, its colors mud-brown, grime-grey and the red of rusted iron roofing on shacks where bombed-out thousands lived. The wind, as characteristic of Tokyo as of Chicago, touched the rubble heaps, whined along the empty streets, but never quite carried away the ancient stench of fish and sewage...
Land of Romance. As the transport drew near the land, G.I.s swarmed to the rail, eyes misty with Technicolor anticipation. "The sun shone with an idiot brightness, but it was raining"-and out of the miasma loomed "dejected palm trees, a few worn mud buildings, aged water buffaloes . . . and a cluster of sickly natives, including several girls with rings in their noses who would never get a screen test." The G.I.s, stared in speechless horror- until "a colored soldier won immortality ... by throwing back his head and crying, in a long, high wail, 'Iran! Land of romance...