Word: pedicab
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...often dreamed myself back into my bombers," mused the ex-general, "and went sailing through the skies." After three years, 57-year-old General Tanaka had turned his single pedicab into a fleet of ten. Still it was not good enough. "Bicycles and jinrikishas are too laborious," roared the veteran fighting man to his cowering assistants at their garage one day. "Automobiles are still a luxury. It is I who must find a middle ground...
After Japan's surrender, General Tanaka decided to do something about this cultural problem. Japan's streets were crawling with a new three-wheel pedicab which had largely displaced the old, coolie-pulled jinrikisha.* These provided the driver with pedals to push with, but they still left him boorishly up front. Visionary Tanaka decided to give his country a more cultured conveyance. He took his savings and ordered a tricycle pedicab built, with the driver's seat in the rear. Then he hired himself out as a ricksha...
Last week, standing in the rain before Tokyo's Imperial Palace, General Tanaka barked another set of orders in the name of a greater Japan. Once again a roar of motors responded and the old commander's new squadron, a fleet of seven jaunty green motorized pedicabs, went putt-putting down the macadam road on their test flight. They have the name "Qu' avec"-a Japanese notion of the way a Frenchman might say "With whom?" "I call them 'Qu' avec,'" simpered Tanaka, "to indicate that boy & girl might get together pleasantly in pedicab...
...night they watched graceful Siamese dance exhibitions or sipped drinks under the fake banana trees of the Silver Palm Club. The more adventurous let fleet-tongued, fleet-footed samlor (pedicab) boys wheel them off to the Cathay Night Club, where they jitterbugged the night away with wriggly Siamese taxi dancers. (Lest the visitors get any improper ideas, signs at their hotels informed them sternly: "It is forbidden to entertain lady guests in the bedroom without permission of the management...
...just come back from the races at the Royal Turf Club. The Dwarf twirled his two Lugers, sarcastically asked Pramote: "Can you spare 300 deals?" (about $15). Pramote said his wife had all his money; she was out. The Dwarf waited. When she arrived, on a three-wheeled Siamese pedicab, he grabbed her purse; it contained only keys, a compact and some change. The Dwarf shot her in the chest, wounding her seriously...