Peking Dust (1923); OT: I almost die

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

OT:  I ALMOST DIE

   It was going to be a day of work like any other day.  Maybe it would be
another 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. monster like I had last week.  Why I do parking
tickets and earn nothing at all for research is another story.
   It snowed in New York City all weekend; they generally didn't issue
parking tickets (for street cleaning), but you usually get your "angle parking" and
"traffic lane" tickets associated with the snow.
   I worked in the Bronx, in the building with the permanently barred fire
exits.  (This was banned in New York 90 years ago after the Triangle factory
fire.)  I was assigned the room with no air, formerly occupied by my best friend
(who was fired this summer).  I usually get sick in that room--you'd get sick
in any room for 13 hours--and I was getting sick after the first few minutes.
Someone came around:
   "You have to leave now."
   "Why?"
   "There's a fire."
   There's a fire?  There are no alarms?  There's a fire--pass it on??
   The building with barred emergency exits has a fire--with me in it!
   We all got out.  The fire department came.  After about ten minutes, we
were told to get back in the building.  There was no fire--just smoke!
   The public, however, wasn't allowed back in.  Why were we allowed back in
but not the public?  Surely, someone cares about us, too?  We hung around a
little while and...
   THEN THERE WAS AN EXPLOSION!
   We left the building again.  The manhole cover just outside the
building--where I had been standing moments before--had burst into flames from a gas
explosion.  I decided to go home, type this, and do some quiet library work on
"point guard."
   Now, about "growler" that appeared in Safire's column last Sunday.  Yes,
I've been "growling" that I work in a Triangle Factory workplace for some time.
 I almost died there today.
   But before Safire wrote that, he should have spent some time with me this
past Thanksgiving.  I would have liked to have introduced him to my mother and
father, but they both died of horrible diseases.  They would never see my
name mentioned in his column.
   Safire could have met my nephew with autism.  We were Thanksgiving guests
at someone's West End Avenue apartment.  My nephew went out the door and broke
into other apartments.
   Before Safire called me a "growler," maybe he could have seen to it that
his New York Times kindly published the 1920s "Big Apple" columns I had told
him about--something that should have been done twelve years ago.  I still wait
for that.
   Going through what I've been through is horrible, and being insulted is
worse.
   Then there's today, when New York City almost killed me!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
GRINNY/SQUINNY

   No "squinny," but here's a "grinny."  (See DARE for "grinnie.")


   26 August 1930, CHARLESTON DAILY MAIL (Charleston, West Virginia), pg.10,
col. 6:
   Buster started after a grinny that scrambled off a log at their approach.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------PEKING DUST

WANDERING IN NORTHERN CHINA
by Harry A. Franck
New York:  The Century Company
1923

   Yes, there are still a few Harry Franck books to go through, but I've done
most.  See "Peking Dust" in the ADS-L archives.

Pg. 184:  There is that infamous "Peking dust," a wall of glaced fruits
enclosing a mound of grated chestnuts of exactly the consistency, though by no
means the splendid taste, of sawdust, and doted on, unfortunately, by that member
of the family with most influence in the kitchen.