Word: towns
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...changed in that time: workers still labor over tire presses, for example, and steel- belted radials still roll off the line. But in any number of subtle and not so subtle ways, the influence of the new owners can be felt throughout the factory and indeed throughout the town -- from the new automated stitching equipment on the shop floor to the cherry trees growing in profusion near the plant and in front of LaVergne's city hall...
LaVergne (pop. 5,500) is a decidedly rawboned blue-collar town rather than a quaint Tennessee tourist attraction. Dotted with car washes and low-rise factories, it has a work force that exceeds its population. Mayor Vester Waldron describes the place as a "bedroom community without the bedrooms...
...happens, though, LaVergne is just four miles down the road from the Nissan autoworks that inspired the screenwriters of Gung Ho, the 1986 Hollywood film about Japanese-American factory relations. The movie depicts the Japanese takeover of a mythical Pennsylvania company town as a comic clash between a lackadaisical work force and transplanted managers obsessed with efficiency. Although Bridgestone and LaVergne officials play down the comparison, workers at the Japanese-owned tire plant have another perspective. Says Roger Sherrill, a longtime tire assembler at Firestone who was on hand when the Japanese arrived: "That movie hit it right...
...thousands of miles from Times Square -- in Atlanta or Dallas, Phoenix or Detroit or any other of the dozens of cities that make up what suitcase-toting actors wearily call "the road." Like the Shakespearean troupe in Kiss Me, Kate who "open in Venice" and schlepp their show from town to town, ensembles representing recent Broadway hits take to the byways every year. This summer at least a dozen tours have offered purportedly the same entertainments as those on the Great White Way. But are they really? The idea that what you see in Peoria might be every...
Hugh Welch is a Buick salesman in the small Michigan town where he was born and raised. One Fourth of July he, his wife and two small daughters have visitors: Hugh's younger sister Dorsey, an astrophysicist, arrives with her young son Noah, who is deaf, and her husband Simon, an actor. The day is hot. Hugh and Dorsey buy fireworks from a woman who remembers them both as children. Supper is served. The pyrotechnics go off without a hitch. Dorsey explains why Noah likes the cherry bombs: "He can feel their shock waves with his skin...