Word: toads
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Japanese superstition holds that toads wield a dangerous hypnotic magnetism over humans, and Japanese say that like a toad Toyama pulls and pushes young men into these plots and assassinations. Born in a frenzy-inclined community on Kyushu Island, he was raised in the "school of heroes" of Miss Takaba, a unique female warrior who wore two swords and swung two hot little fists. In his youth Toyama evaded and broke successive apprentice ships, embarked on a self-righteous outlawry something like Robin Hood's, and about 1894 established the foundations of the Black Dragon Society...
...Club, to "direct proceedings." With this they were vastly satisfied-until they found that the man who organized the club was an agent of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, which is run by Colonel Hashimoto, who is run by the secret societies, which are still run by the ancient toad of Kyushu...
...prime requisite for F. o. B. membership is to be "a fellow being with a bellow feeling" to enjoy windy punning and complex ritual. Payment of one peso initiation fee makes the joiner a Whiff (all non-joiners are Snuffs, ritualistically defined as "infinitely worse than a cross-eyed toad with athlete's foot"). A Whiff becomes a Puff when he pays his first month's levy. A Puff becomes a Gust when, after his entry, 1,000 planes have been shot down and he has paid in ten pesos. When 5,000 planes are down...
...worth a Saroyan comic-tear or two. Uncle Melik "was just about the worst farmer that ever lived." On his godforsaken desert farm, he set out hundreds of pomegranate trees, poured all his love and money into them, lost both trees and land. Once he looked a horned toad straight in the eye. Then...
...raid protection) on 6,000 acres of woodland. At first Charlestowners had been as elated as small boys by this windfall. But by last week their town had grown to 5.000. Where there had been three people to a house, there now were twelve. Rents doubled, trailer camps toad-stooled, a carpenter lives in a truck with an oil stove to keep him warm. Wrote one harassed inhabitant in the Louisville Courier-Journal: ". . . Although we were paid well for our acreage, still it isn't so easy to stand by and see the familiar old oak, the lilacs, hollyhocks...