“My father ran a gas farm in the Brosian hill country. At the start of each season, a military airship would hover over the fueling circle, which was the signal for my father to wheel a cramble pole out to the middle of the circle.”
“There is a style of hotel that we in the reviewing business refer to as assisted living, because of its interior stylings, its floral wallpaper, its imperial draperies. An assisted-living-style hotel always has cotton balls in a little ceramic dish in the bathroom, and a scale, because the elderly lobbyists who stay in a hotel like this, lobbyists for the concrete industry or for pork-products trade groups, are constantly worrying about the extra fifteen.”
“He had been Mayor of New York for three terms and, before that, a Congressman for a decade; his was one of the most recognised faces in America. But, out of office for three months and away from the limelight, Fiorello LaGuardia was not a contented man.”