Word: wrench
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...stomped back into the airplane, its engines still turning over. But when Pilot Conrad Shinn gunned his engines and fired four JATO (jet assist) bottles for takeoff, the R4D stuck fast, its skis frozen to the icy surface. Only by blasting off his eleven remaining JATO bottles did Shinn wrench the plane loose and stagger into the thin air at well below normal take-off speed. Back at McMurdo, Dufek ordered establishment of the Siple camp delayed for two weeks ("If it was too cold for me, it will be too cold for those Seabees"), then headed...
...Rough Wrench. Changing over to a free economy will be a hard wrench for many Bolivians. Some miners will lose their jobs; almost all of them will pay more for food. Black-marketeers and influence-peddlers by the thousands will have to go to work. Prices, for those who used to get subsidized commodities, will go up. Among the groups that will be hit, President Siles' popularity is bound to drop. Yet his great popularity is almost the only weapon Siles has to use in putting the reforms across; Bolivia's main armed force is not a government...
...Benjamin ("Happy") Chandler. Since last June, when he defeated the Clements-Wetherby machine in a bitter fight over control of the state party, Happy has been as determined as ever to wreck Wetherby's cause. Although Happycrat Chandler now denies that he is ready to sling a monkey wrench at his own party, his monkeyshines prove otherwise; e.g., he has neglected to instruct his 20,000 state employees to 1) contribute the traditional 2% of their salaries to the Democratic campaign fund, 2) help get out the vote. Last week, though he made it a point to greet President...
Someone Aboard. At last the signal came. "Hey," said Lieut. Polyak loudly, "there's Gyor." Some of the passengers turned in their seats to peer out of the windows. According to a prearranged plan, the six wrench carriers began to count silently and slowly to 300 in order to bring the airliner, according to Polyak's calculation, to the westernmost point in its course. At the end of the count, Polyak leaped from his seat and headed for the pilot's compartment. The others sprang into action against their fellow passengers, laying about them right and left...
...Lieut. Polyak worked with his wrench to open the door of the pilot's compartment, the outer knob of which had been removed (an ordinary flying precaution in Communist countries), the pilot himself threw the ship into a series of violent maneuvers, sudden power dives, steep climbing turns and skidding yawing. Inside the cabin the embattled passengers rattled about like ice cubes in a cocktail shaker, while heavy crates of cargo, torn loose from their moorings, cascaded back and forth...