From the day
Perspective: The Anxious Local · Sound
The nickel loaf is gone, and six cents feels like highway robbery while my boots crunch over the gravel toward a shop crackling with the static of those new radio receivers. Every newsstand shrieks Lloyd George’s pleas for India, and the tension in the air is as thick as the coal smoke, making me wonder if any lad will ever see "blighty" again. I can’t even escape into the neighbor's parlor without hearing that infernal "Till We Meet Again" wheezing from the phonograph. The sweet melody only makes my heart thrum faster, a relentless rhythm of dread as the world waits for the next casualty list to drop.