Word: petrol
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...speeding jeep, hop behind a lorry to get away from fast baseball players, be compelled to walk on the road again, only to jump clear of a rash driver, and so on down the road between a double line of huge lorries, where men played cards sitting on petrol tins, shaved with a mere drop of water, using the small windscreen mirror to see how they were progressing, and washed clothes in about one pint of water to a whole packet of soap powder...
...campaign was not up to the Irish mark. Homebound by Eire's shortage of petrol, candidates hardly bothered to take their coats off. Newspapers predicted apathy at the polls. A few days before the election, Dubliners seemed more interested in Eire's current hubbub over venereal disease than in politics. But the Irish misjudged the Irish. On election day some 65% of the eligible voters managed to get to the polls-by donkey cart, shanks' mare, even horse-drawn mourning coaches...
Dizziness as Usual. Some of the old life goes on. Some people connive to get extra petrol rations. Some patronize the black market. Some evade male military service or female labor service. Drawing-room diehards are still heard worrying about the Beveridge Report and Russia. In one such salon a white-haired, gilt-titled peeress ends a discussion of currency problems with the deathless remark: "For my part, I think there should be only ?100 notes because they are so much more practical." A successful Bloomsbury poet, looking into his brimming wineglass, observes: "Poverty must be very unpleasant, I think...
...Paper Controller issued candidates 125 pounds of paper and the Petrol Controller gave them extra gasoline. For the quick eight-week campaign, that was plenty. South Africans dubbed it the "blitz election": most of the electorate had not expected it until late summer; some had not believed there would be an election until after the war. As they voted this week, South Africans knew that Prime Minister Jan Christiaan Smuts had set the election date early because victory in North Africa had come so soon. They also knew that canny Field Marshal Smuts would not have called the election until...
...While the United States air pirates in Europe destroy works of art and culture, there are no such targets in their country. Their country is a jungle of concrete and steel and petrol, of banks and similar institutions. Their art treasures are the longest and most ugly bridge in the world, the highest and most ugly building in the world and the largest and most ugly statue in the world...