Word: muffler
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Many a Clevelander was apprehensive while the new tunnel was under construction. Lesser tunnels at the same site jangled nerves with their dreadful racket. This tunnel has an enormous muffler in which even the loudest sounds get lost. A screaming siren can be carried into the muffler and become inaudible in a few yards. When the tunnel is in operation, its noise is reduced to levels acceptable at least to N.A.C.A.'s hardened neighbors. The tunnel works-late at night only, so its inordinate thirst for electricity will not slow the city of Cleveland...
...frail-looking young pianist walked into the recording studio one day last June, wearing beret, coat, muffler and gloves, carrying two large bottles of spring water to drink, five small bottles of pills, and his own piano chair. Before he started to play, he soaked his hands and arms in hot water. Then he began a week's stint: recording Bach's difficult "Goldberg" Variations. Sometimes he sang as he played, and when he finished a "take" that particularly pleased him, he jumped up with a gleeful "Wow!" But when a piano note sagged by a hair...
...finding her neither safe nor sane, merely sidesplitting. Auntie Mame is a screwball who has to be seen or read to be disbelieved. She is a coupon-clipping Pearl White hanging on the dizzy cliff edge of her every enthusiasm. She is a roaring Life Drive without a muffler, and the most commanding prose female since Philip Wylie dreamed up "Mom." Around her and her nephew Pat Author Dennis has fashioned a frothy drawing-room comedy spiked with smoking-room raffishness and powder-room chitchat. The little old lady from Dubuque will find Auntie Mame some gal, but no lady...
...rattle and a clatter that Calvin Coolidge, 50 yards away in the White House, might easily have heard. Its hood was propped open to keep the motor cool, its rear end listed to one side under an uneven burden of piled-up duffle in the back seat, and its muffler was all too obviously missing. A sweating cop whistled the flivver to a stop, and out popped Wayne Morse. Characteristically, Mrs. Morse stayed in the car and said nothing...
...started to make out a ticket, Tourist Morse started to talk. He had lost the muffler in suburban Bethesda, he explained. If the cop would just have a heart, he could fix it himself at the Hains Point tourist camp and save a few dollars. Under the torrent of Morse's argument the policeman relented, tore up the ticket and wearily directed Morse to the camp. Last week Morse was still noisily disturbing the peace of Washington, still arguing endlessly and effectively...