Word: cactus
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...train pulling Harry Truman's special car ground to a stop at flat, dusty Uvalde, Tex. As 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...
Congress has never been on the air, but the House once had a short-lived loudspeaker system. Speaker John Nance Garner of Texas, before whom the microphone was placed, abolished it the second day it was in operation. Wishing a short snort after a rugged session, "Cactus Jack" heard that a member was about to deliver a "special order" speech. Said Speaker Garner, forgetting that his lightest word could be heard all over the chamber: "Now what is that son of a bitch going to talk about?" After adjournment, Speaker Garner told House electricians: "Get that damned thing...
Perhaps some of the thrill was due to the screechy sound track and the glaring pictures--it was easy to fall into the character of "Cactus" when the whole thing lacked realism. But Hollywood, not to be caught napping, has brought all of this to its public in typical fashion, adding new thrills with marvelous color photography. Big names, horses, Indians--what else--, and lots of extras have been thoroughly mixed, seasoned well with technicolor, and served hot in the newest Wild West thriller...
...Junior Gallery were covered by an iconography of the familiar world, seen by the children in very unfamiliar focus. Most of the pictures kept well within the bounds of childhood experience (animals, vehicles, houses, rooms) But some were well outside. One surrealist moppet had painted a huge cactus tree containing a human face, and surrounded by sunflowers surmounted by chickens and peacocks. There were three pictures of lovers on park benches. Art experts and child psychologists who were queried said that children paint such scenes because of unsatisfied curiosity: they do not understand what their subjects are doing...
...Habit. Pulque, compounded of fermented cactus juice from a Mexican century plant, is a malodorous, milky-looking sour liquid which sells for ten centavos (2?) a liter, is swished down by low-class Mexicans as a substitute for water, which in Mexico is scant and bad. Some scientists believe that pulque's yeast and vitamins offset the unbalanced diet of chili, corn and beans, act as a counterirritant to hot peppers. But that is the best that can be said for it. Its production is unsanitary. Its sale is in filthy, squalid pubs. Its consumption produces a stumbling goofiness...