Flying to America (29 page)

Smog is an interesting name, Carola said. In the empty expanses of Islamabad, the new capital that Pakistan plans to erect in the cool foothills of the Himalayas, the first buildings scheduled to go up are a cluster of airy structures designed by famed U.S. architect Edward Stone. Set in a cloistered water garden, the biggest of Stone’s buildings will house Pakistan’s first nuclear reactor — one of the largest sales made by New York’s American Machine & Foundry Co. Fifteen years ago, AMF was a company with only a handful of products (cigarette, baking, and stitching machines) and annual sales of about $12,000,000. Today, with 42 plants and 19 research facilities scattered across 17 countries, AMF turns out products ranging from remote-controlled toy airplanes to ICBM launching systems. Thanks to AMF’s determined pursuit of diversification and growth products, its 1960 sales were $361 million, its earnings $24 million. And in the glum opening months of 1961, the company’s sales and earnings hit new first-quarter highs. AMF’s expansion is the work of slow-spoken, low-pressured Chairman Morehead Patterson, 64, who took over the company in 1943 from his father, Rufus L. Patterson, inventor of the first automated tobacco machine. After World War II,
Morehead Patterson decided that the company had to grow or die. Searching for new products, he turned up a crude prototype of an automatic bowling-pin setter. To get the necessary cash to develop the intricate gadget, Patterson swapped off AMF stock to acquire eight small companies with fast-selling products. The Pinspotter, perfected and put on the market in 1951, helped to turn bowling into the most popular U.S. competitive sport. Despite keen competition from the Brunswick Corp., AMF has remained the world’s largest maker of automatic pin setters. With 68,000 machines already on lease in the U.S. (for an average annual gross of $68 million), AMF last week got a $3,000,000 contract to equip a new chain of bowling centers in the East. Is there another Pinspotter in AMF’s future? Chairman Patterson cautiously admits to the hope that perhaps the firm’s intensive research into purifying brackish and fouled water might produce another product breakthrough. “Companies, like people,” says Patterson, “get arteriosclerosis. My job is to see that AMF doesn’t.” Morehead Patterson did not attend the Viennese Opera Ball.

Carola Mitt said: Among other things, I mean the ego; it is also the symbol, in
astronomy,
for the inclination of an orbit to the ecliptic; in
chemistry,
for iodine; in
physics,
for the density of current, the intensity of magnetization, or the moment of inertia; in
logic,
for a particular affirmative proposition. Lester Lannin also played for the Viennese Opera Ball. Nonsense! said a huge man wearing the Double Eagle of St. Puce, what about sailing, salesmen, salt, sanitation, Santa Claus, saws, scales, schools, screws, sealing wax, secretaries, sects, selling, the Seven Wonders, sewerage, sewing machines, sheep, sheet metal, shells, shipbuilding, shipwrecks, shoemaking, shopping, shower baths, sieges, signboards, silverware, sinning, skating, skeletons, skeleton
keys,
sketching, skiing, skulls, skyscrapers, sleep, smoking, smugglers, Socialism, soft drinks, soothsaying, sorcery, space travel, spectacles, spelling, sports, squirrels, steamboats, steel, stereopticons, the Stock Exchange, stomachs, stores, storms, stoves, streetcars, strikes, submarines, subways, suicide, sundials, sunstroke, superstition, surgery, surveying, sweat, and syphilis! It is one of McCormack’s proudest boasts,
Carola heard over her lovely white shoulder, that he has never once missed having dinner with his wife in their forty-one years of married life. She remembered Knocko at the Evacuation Day parade, and Baudelaire’s famous remark. Mortality is the final evaluator of methods. An important goal is an intact sphincter. The greater prematurity, the more generous should be the episiotomy. Yes said Leon Jaroff, Detroit Bureau Chief for
Time,
at the Thomas Elementary School on warm spring afternoons I could look from my classroom into the open doors of the Packard plant. Ideal foster parents are mature people who are not necessarily well off, but who have a good marriage and who love and understand children. The ninth day of the ninth month is the festival of the chrysanthemum (Kiku No Sekku), when
sake
made from the chrysanthemum is drunk. Kiku Jido, a court youth, having inadvertently touched with his foot the pillow of the emperor, was banished to a distant isle, where, it is said, he was nourished by the dew of the chrysanthemums which abounded there. Becoming a hermit, he lived for a thousand years. Husbands have been known to look at their wives with new eyes, Laura La Plante thought to herself. Within the plane of each individual work — experienced apart from a series — he presents one with a similar set of one-at-a-time experiences each contained within its own compartment, and read in a certain order, up or down or across. Far off at Barlow Ranger Station, as the dawn was breaking, Bart slept dreamlessly at last.
Peridermium coloradense
on spruce
(Picea)
has long been considered conspecific with
Melampsorella caryophyllacearum
Schroet., which alternates between fir
(Abies)
and
Caryophylaceae.
Evidence that these rusts are identical consists largely of inoculation results of Weit and Hubert (1, 2), but these have never been fully confirmed. Take Dorothea McGowan, the
Glamour
editor said. Dorothea McGowan is the exception in the new crop: she speaks only English and was born in Brooklyn. Her premodeling life took her as far from home as Staten Island, where she finished her freshman year at Notre Dame College before taking a summer job modeling $2.98 house dresses. A few months later, her first photographic try at a cover made
Vogue;
this year she set some kind of a record by appearing on four
Vogue
covers in a row (nobody
but her mother or agent could have told that it was the same girl). Twenty-year-old Dorothea (“My middle initial is E, and Dorothy sounded so ordinary”) makes $60 an hour, has her own apartment in New York, studies French at Manhattan’s French Institute twice a week (“so that when my dream of living in Paris comes true, I’ll be ready for it”). Dorothea has been sent, all expenses paid, to be photographed in front of the great architectural monuments of Europe, among Middle East bazaars and under Caribbean palms. She is absolutely infatuated with the idea of being paid to travel. I never saw so many autumn flowers as grow in the woods and sheep-walks of Maryland. But I confess, I scarcely knew a single name: Let no one visit America without first having studied botany.

Carola was thrilled by all the interesting conversations at the Viennese Opera Ball. The Foundation is undertaking a comprehensive analytical study of the economic and social positions of the artist and of his institutions in the United States. In part this will serve as a basis for future policy decisions and program activities. The contemplated study will also be important outside the Foundation. The climate of the arts today, discussion in the field reveals, is complex and various. Pack my box with Title Shaded Litho. Pack my box with Boston Breton Extra Condensed. Pack my box with Clearface Heavy. (C) Brasol, 261–285; Buck 212–221; Carr,
D,
281–301; Collins, 76–82; Curle, 176–224; A. G. Dostoevsky,
D Portrayed by His Wife,
268–269; F. Dostoevsky,
Letters and Reminiscences,
241–242, 247, 251–252; F. Dostoevsky,
New D Letters,
79–102; Freud,
passim;
Gibian, “D’s Use of Russian Folklore,”
passim; Hesse
— see; Hromadka, 45–50; Ivanov, 142–166 and
passim;
King, 22–29; Lavrin,
D and His Creation,
114–142; Lavrin,
D: A Study,
119–146; Lavrin, “D and Tolstoy,” 189–195; Lloyd, 275–290; McCune,
passim; Mackiewicz,
183–191; Matlaw, 221–225; Maugham, 203–208; Maurina, 147–153, 198–203, 205–210, 218–221; Meier–Graefe, 288–377; Muchnic,
Intro . . .
, 165–172; Mueller, 193–200; Murry, 203–259; Passage, 162–174; Roe, 20–25, 41–51, 68–91, 100–110; Roubiczek, 237–244, 252–260, 266–271; Sachs, 241–246; Scott, 204–209; Simmons, 263–279 and
passim;
Slonim,
Epic . . .
, 289–293 and
passim;
Soloviev, 195–202; Strakosch,
passim;
Troyat, 395–416; Tymms, 99–
103; Warner, 80–101; Colin Wilson, 178–201; Yarmolinsky, D.
His Life and Art,
355–361 and
passim;
Zander, 15–30, 63–95, 119–137. Carola said: What a wonderful ball! The width of the black band varies according to relationship. For a widow’s card a band of about one-third inch (No. 5) during the first year of widowhood, diminishing about one-sixteenth inch each six months thereafter. On a widower’s card one-quarter inch (No. 3) is the widest, diminishing gradually from time to time. For other relatives, the band may vary from the thickness of No. 3 to that of the “Italian.” No. 5 band is now considered excessive, but among the Latin races is held to be moderate, and if preferred, is entirely correct. To administer the agreement and facilitate the attainment of its ends, a Committee on Trade Policy and Payments will be set up with all member countries represented. The judicial form contemplated in the agreement is that of a free trade zone to be transformed gradually into a customs union. As Emile Myerson has said,
“L’homme fait de la métaphysique comme il respire, sans le vouloir et surtout sans s’en douter la plupart du temps.”
No woman is worth more than 24 cattle, Pamela Odede B.A.’s father said. With this album Abbey Lincoln’s stature as one of the great jazz singers of our time is confirmed, Laura La Plante said. Widely used for motors, power tools, lighting, TV, etc. Generator output: 3500 watts, 115/230 volt, 60 cy., AC, continuous duty. Max. 230 V capacitor motor, loaded on starting — 1/2 hp; unloaded on starting — 2 hp. Control box mounts starting switch, duplex 115 V receptacle for standard or 3-conductor grounding plugs, tandem 230 V grounding receptacles, and wing nut battery terminals. More than six hundred different kinds of forceps have been invented. Let’s not talk about the lion, she said. Wilson looked over at her without smiling and now she smiled at him. This process uses a Lincoln submerged arc welding head to run both inside and outside beads automatically. The rate of progress during the first stage will determine the program to be followed in the second stage. The
Glamour
editor whose name was Tutti Beale “moved in.” What’s your name girl? she said coolly. Carola Mitt, Carola Mitt said. The Viennese Opera Ball continued.

Belief

A
group of senior citizens on a bench in Washington Square Park in New York City. There were two female senior citizens and two male senior citizens.

“Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit,” one of the women said suddenly. She turned her head to each of the four corners of an imaginary room as she did so.

The other senior citizens stared at her.

“Why did you do that?” one of the men asked.

“It’s the first of the month. If you say ‘rabbit’ four times, once to each corner of the room, or the space that you are in, on the first of the month before you eat lunch, then you will be loved in that month.”

Some angry black people walked by carrying steel-band instruments and bunches of flowers.

“I don’t think that’s true,” the second woman senior citizen said. “I never heard it before and I’ve heard everything.”

“I think it’s probably just an old wives’ tale,” one of the men said. The other male senior citizen cracked up.

“Shall we discuss
old men
?” the first woman asked the second woman.

The two men looked at the sky to make sure all of our country’s satellites were in the right places.

“What about your daughter the nun?” the second woman, whose name was Elise, asked the first, whose name was Kate. “You haven’t heard from her?”

“My daughter the nun,” Kate said, “ you wouldn’t believe.”

“Where is she?” Elise asked. “Georgia or somewhere, you told me but I forgot. Going to school you said.”

“She’s getting her master’s,” Kate said, “they send them. She’s a rambling wreck from Georgia Tech. I was going down to visit at Thanksgiving.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I called her and said I was coming and she said but Thanksgiving Day is the game. So I said the game, the game, O.K. I’ll go to the game, I don’t mind going to the game, get me a ticket. And she said but Mother I’m in the flash card section. My daughter the nun.”

“They’re different now,” Elise said, “you’re lucky she’s not keeping company with one of those priests with his hair in a pigtail.”

“Who can tell?” said Kate. “I’d be the last to know.”

One of the men leaned around his partner and asked: “Well, is it working? Are you loved?”

“There was another thing we used to do,” Kate said calmly. “You and your girl friend each wrote the names of three boys on three slips of paper, on the first day of the month. The names of three boys you wanted to ask you to go out with them. Then your girl friend held the three slips of paper in her cupped hands and you closed your eyes and picked —”

“I don’t believe it,” said the second male senior citizen, whose name was Jerome.

“You closed your eyes and picked one and put it in your shoe. And you did the same for her. And then that boy would come around. It always worked. Invariably.”

“I don’t believe it,” Jerome said again. “ I don’t believe in things like that and never have. I don’t believe in magic and I don’t believe in superstition. I don’t believe in Judaism, Christianity, or Eastern thought. None of ’em. I didn’t believe in the First World War even
though I was a child in the First World War and you’ll go a long way before you find somebody who didn’t believe in the First World War. That was a very popular war, where I lived. I didn’t believe in the Second World War either and I was in it.”