From the day
Perspective: The Anxious Local · Sound
The thunder from South Amboy still rings in my ears, a low, guttural roar that makes my knees shake every time a motorcar with those new hydraulic brakes screeches to a halt outside. Between the terrifying cost of six-cent bread and the whispers of a hundred dead at the Gillespie plant, I can hardly focus on the crackle of the superheterodyne radio receiver as it hums "Till We Meet Again." I stare at the newspaper headlines, wondering if any poor soul will ever see blighty again or if we’re all just living in one giant extension of the trenches. My hands tremble while I try to distract the children with their Lincoln Logs, but even the air feels heavy with the secret click-clack of that new Enigma machine and the smell of distant, burning TNT.