Word: yucca
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This morning, in mock-funeral fashion, the motorcade of atomic-age pilgrims solemnly winds its way past whorls of dust and yucca bushes to reach the 6-ft. Cyclone chain-link fence that surrounds the blast area. Among the pilgrims, some 1,700 of them, are mothers and babies, parents and grandparents, families of three and four who scurry out of cars, Minoltas in hand, eager to record for posterity the "place where it all began." What they see is nothing much. The original 400-yd., 25-ft.-deep crater has long since been filled in to prevent further radiation...
...high mesa framed by a fiery desert sky, the dancers appear: with eerie spectral masks, flesh painted in earthy clay and turquoise colors, and swathed in skins. The kachina priests whirl through the dusty streets of the village clacking tortoise rattles, chanting, waving yucca switches. Hopi legends say these "messengers of the Creator" have returned from the San Francisco mountains to begin anew the natural and spiritual cycle of planting and harvest. The desert will be blessed and purified and nourished by rain. An hour's drive north of the high mesa, on desolate scrubland wreathed by a dark...
...When yucca farmers clamor for an end to price ceilings on their produce, Torrijo confides to Greene under his breath (the politician's touch), "I'm going to grant it...I want to redistribute money...All the same I'll keep them guessing." In another town, the peasants, gathered like "a committee elected to arrange Christmas entertainments," try to shake the military men with angry, meaningless slogans. But the government's drum-rolls drown out their protest...
Although Globe residents had lived easily with the Forest Service's spraying program since 1965, they were outraged when backyard vegetation recently began to wither. Then eggplants turned as orange as pumpkins. Pumpkins turned as black as charcoal. And desert yucca, which normally grows as straight as a telephone pole, developed S curves...
...Polish Bison Brand Vodka [Oct. 14]? A Bog-Fog? Better a Yucca-Flats. Merely have at hand four quarts of vodka, 15 3-oz. bottles of maraschino cherries, ten mashed oranges, lemons and limes-plus rinds, 1 lb. of cane sugar, 10 lbs. of ice cubes, and proceed to dump the whole mess into a wastebasket. Stirring recommended...