Word: riffraff
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Even before Alabama became a state (1819), riffraff, bond jumpers, cardsharps and other fugitives from Georgia were crossing the muddy Chattahoochee River to find haven in wicked little Phenix City. As time passed, respectable families came to Phenix City, too, but gamblers, pimps and narcotics pushers still ran the town, and fattened on the trade of soldiers from Ft. Benning, just across the river near Columbus, Ga. This year Lawyer Albert L. Patterson ran for attorney general of Alabama on a pledge to shut down vice throughout the state, and especially in his home town of Phenix City...
John Steinbeck respects the underdog, but he melts uncontrollably before a no-good, boozed-up bum. His sentimental eulogies of riffraff began with his first successful book. Tortilla Flat (1935), continued in Cannery Row (1945), and appear again in Sweet Thursday, which is really a return visit to Cannery Row. It reads like stuff that has been salvaged from the wastebasket. All the characters in Sweet Thursday (who live in Monterey, Calif., Steinbeck's home territory) have a lot in common: rotgut whisky in their bellies, leather in their hides, gold in their hearts and bats in their belfries...
...arrogant British naval officers had better mind their language when they call the Chinese Nationalist navy "riffraff" (Sept. 7). In the past two months, I have visited Chinese navy ships, inspected their naval academy and watched their maneuvers. I have met many of their men, including admirals and sailors, and I'll cast my vote for their men being equal to the British or our own U.S. naval personnel. I've been privileged to know many British and American admirals, including such charmers as Britain's Admiral Tennant and our own beloved Admiral Halsey. Free China...
...Riffraff." For Nigelock's crew, the excitement was old stuff. A week before, they had been captured by a Nationalist warship but released under the guns of the Royal Navy's frigate St. Bride's Bay. Nigelock is one of a hundred British merchantmen (some under charter to Red China) engaged in Chinese coastal trade. Its crew and skipper expect to run into trouble: war-risk insurance on the China coast is the world's highest...
...intercepted in the China Sea. At least two were escorted to the Nationalist port of Keelung, where their cargoes were confiscated. One, the S.S. Inchkilda, was rescued by the British light aircraft carrier Unicorn, which signaled the Admiralty: "Unicorn closed and ordered the gunboat to stop. None of the riffraff on board could read the signal...