Word: rollered
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...blocks east, atop one of the city's steepest, best sledding hills, Dean Mason Solt, 39, street-department worker, drove his twelve-ton street-roller around the curve, headed down toward the busy intersection. As usual, he shoved the gearshift into reverse. But the gears failed to mesh. He set the brakes, but already the twelve tons of steel were rolling, gathering speed down the steep grade toward the jam of cars, busses, children...
Rollerman Solt, who has ten children of his own, from six months to 15 years, said later: "I stood on the brake. ... I could have jumped off if it hadn't been for all those cars and children. . . . The roller was headed for a busload of school kids coming up the hill. I thought of my ten. I wondered how they would look after that roller passed over them-and I knew then I wasn't going to jump. I couldn't see how I was going to get through that mess of cars and children...
...roller overturned, plowed up the pavement in a 9-ft. skid on its back, ground to a stop. Solt, his right leg bruised and his back sprained, crawled to the roller, closed the shut-off valve on the high-pressure fuel tank. Then he was carried home, to the six boys and four girls he had not forgotten...
Easily the most important of these threats was the first. The romantic roller coaster of the Burma Road is China's best-publicized and most spectacular lifeline, but it is desperately vulnerable to air attack. Because a single lucky or well-aimed bomb can back up several days' traffic in no time, Chiang Kaishek's Government has in recent months depended increasingly on the flow of goods through Kwangtung Province, southernmost in China...
...roller is probably the highest-paid man in the industry, and on the average his base rate will run $2 or more per hour, exclusive of tonnage bonuses. For the 40-hour week, this would make a base rate of $80, and it is not uncommon to find rollers today drawing $200 a week or more. In other words, in the past few weeks in this district a roller received better than $60 for a day's work...