Word: worn
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...vestibule doors banged in the silence of the sunny afternoon, a little old man with a bright pink face came hurrying up to the train. It was ex-Vice President "Cactus Jack" Garner, the copilot whom Franklin Roosevelt had dropped in 1940. John Garner, now 75, was wearing a worn work shirt, buttoned at the throat, a pair of dingy pants. There was an outrageous twisted rope of cigar between his teeth and a faded ten-gallon hat pushed back on his white hair. His old friend from the U.S. Senate stepped down, rushed forward, hand outstretched. Old Jack Garner...
...theater or museums, worked most of his evenings, played cards on Saturdays after his lectures. He smoked 20 cigars a day-"he was so fond of smoking that he was somewhat irritated when men around him did not smoke." His talk was sharp and often humorous (he described one worn-out political friend as an "aged lion, well on his way to becoming a couch cover"). He did most of his writing during his annual three months' summer vacation, conceiving his works in his head and writing them down almost without correction...
...England in 1939 Dr. Sachs found Freud "very ill and incredibly old. It was evident that he pronounced every word at the cost of an enormous effort. . . . But these torments had not worn down his will. I learned that he still kept his analytical hours whenever he had a time of slight alleviation of pain. . . . He discussed problems and personalities of the psychoanalytic movement in America with full knowledge of the details. . . . The greatest part of the time we ... stayed in the garden and looked over the lawn where he rested, sometimes in light slumber, sometimes caressing his chow...
Clothing. "Zoot" suits - the green-and-brown camouflaged apparitions worn early in the war - have been discarded by the Army (marines still wear them). Nowadays soldiers wear a two-piece jungle uniform made of green herringbone twill. Because medics insist, it is thick enough to keep out mosquitoes and leeches; because chemical-warfare officers insist, it is gasproofed. Result: a hot, heavy uniform which makes men sweat like stokers, fails to dry out overnight, often fails to give its alleged protection because men simply cannot abide being smothered while fighting for their lives...
Shoes. Green canvas leggings, usually prescribed, chafe so badly in the steaming jungle that troops on the march throw them away, tuck their pants legs into their socks. The canvas jungle boot, which may also be worn, does not chafe but its rubber sole provides no arch support on long marches. The eventual solution may be a boot-shoe with nylon uppers and cleated rubber sole-if a way can be found to make the cleats stay...