Word: roach
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...surest weapon against the roach is extreme temperature. The insect thrives between 70 and 80° Fahrenheit, but can be killed by dry air at 86°, becomes numb at 35°, dies at 23°. It is also very susceptible, when it can be reached, to poison. In Manhattan the most common varieties of roach are the American (an inch and a half long) and the German (half as large) ; the German is locally known as the "Croton bug" because it first invaded the city in large numbers when holes were cut in walls for water pipes...
...booze in my bag, when I bumps into this guy. He's got a flashy blue uniform on, and loads of gold braid, so I pick myself up and snap to attention, who knows, it might be an admiral. Only it's not an admiral, it's Al Roach, the Yard Cop. "They're mobilizing us," he says. "Gave us uniforms for the first time in 308 years. Don't ask me why, maybe it's protective concealment with all these Navy men in the Yard." It's all very fine, all Colonel Apted ever had man a water piston...
...light jag. The smoker is then said to be "high" or "floating." When he has smoked a reefer down to a half-inch butt, he carefully conserves it in an empty match box. In this condition it is known, in Mexican, as a chicharra, or in English, as a "roach...
...install them through the ship's sides. Another timesaver: giant "bathtubs" at Maywood give Navy self-propelled landing boats complete dock trials, uncover bugs within handy reach of a wrench. A third trick: when Kaiser's Fontana steel plant needed a blast furnace in a hurry, Alden Roach built him one (Consolidated had never touched furnaces before...
Despite all this, nonsmoking, teetotaling Alden Roach has time to play tennis on his own court beside his big white Monterrey-style home in fashionable San Marino. He collects ships' models, thinks up nicknames for his two children (currently called Punch & Judy), whirls visitors through the shipyards in a maroon Lincoln. But what he enjoys most is contemplating Consolidated's whopping backlog of $480,261,000 (including seven types of ships and 4-to-5-in. naval ack-ack guns) and thinking up tricks to chew that backlog up faster...