Kitchens were different then, too--not only what came out of them, but their smells and sounds. A hot pie cooling smells different... from a frozen pie thawing. Oilcloth and linoleum and apples in an open bowl and ruffled rubber aprons make a different aromatic mix from Formica and ceramic tile and mangoes in an acrylic fruit ripener and plastic-coated aprons printed with "Who invited all these tacky people?" And the kitchen sounds. I am not sure that today's kitchen is noisier. But the noises are different. Today you get the song of the food processor and the blender, the intermittent hum of the reefer and the freezer, the buzz-slosh-and-grunt of the dishwasher, the violently audible digestive processes of the waste disposal in the sink. Then it was the whir and clatter of the hand-powered eggbeater, the thunk-thunk-thunk of somebody mashing potatoes, or, in green-pea season, the crisp pop of pea pod and the rattle-rattle-rattle of peas into the pan.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man you ought to see his plans for allsteel buildins. He's got an idea the skyscraper of the future'll be built of steel and glass.... We've been experimenting with vitrous tile recently... crist-amighty some of his plans would knock you out... He's got a great sayin about some Roman emperor who found Rome of brick and left it of marble. Well he says he's found New York of brick an that he's goin to leave it of steel... steel an glass.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Come see the north wind's masonry. Out of an unseen quarry evermore... Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roofLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Yet oh! the tempting flatness of a book, To send it sailing out the attic window... Till it caught wind and, opening out its covers, Tried to improve on sailing like a tile By flying like a bird (silent in flight, But all the burden of its body song)....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At the stumbling of a horse, the fall of a tile, the slightest pin prick, let us promptly chew on this: Well, what if it were deat...h itself? And thereupon let us stiffen and fortify ourselves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Only a male intellect clouded by the sexual drive could call the stunted, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped and short-legged sex the... fair sex.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
through the Sumner Tunnel, trunk by trunk through its sulphurous walls,... tile by tile like a men's urinal, slipping through like somebody else's package.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »