Word: boom
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...Boom! A cannon shot from the Society Jazz Band bass drum jolts the chattering crowd outside the Gertrude Geddes Willis Funeral Home into a brief silence. The casket is coming out. Boom! A second shot signals the stricken cadence of a dirge. The white gloves of the pallbearers flash in the morning sun as they float their burden to the silver-gray Cadillac hearse. The main party of mourners, a score or so, fit themselves into several cars waiting in line...
...Boom! Boom...
...Boom! Boom...
...Boom! As soon as the casket emerges, a bass drum shot shatters the air. The dirge-playing band leads the way up the road toward the cemetery, then separates from the casket. At first it retraces its route by drumbeat alone. Then the trumpet screams forth, the drummers swing out, belted choruses of The Second Line assail the sky. The crowd, most of it, becomes a blur of fidgeting feet, twisting torsos, bobbing heads. A corpulent man in an orange shirt spins and dips. An elderly woman executes a scampering step with the help of her cane. An open-shirted...
These are some of the increasingly frequent signs of the growing boom in America's defense industry, as contractors await a sales bonanza from the Reagan Administration's military buildup. The sums of money involved are immense. The President wants to boost the Pentagon's budget from the $171.2 billion allocated by the Carter Administration this year to $226.3 billion in fiscal year 1982. That amount is twice as much as Saudi Arabia earned from crude oil exports last year and twice the gross national product of Switzerland. Moreover by 1986 Reagan wants to increase the defense...