The Bureau of Dreams to be Continued by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

The Bureau of Dreams to be Continued

Page 501

misinformed meddling married to its long term partner; accepting ignorance, barreling like a flailing Niagara Falls fool unable to get out of the rapids, toward a rocky and deadly divorce in the bottom territory, so far only efficaciously traversed by “The Maid of the Mist.”

Having Nigel’s in its basement, solidified the Paramount’s prominent position. “Nigel’s Alleys” occupied the Paramount’s subterranean vault with thirty-two lanes, sixteen on each side. The bar and pool tables at the center had hosted more dignitaries than Bayway Town had in residence, making it a truly international bastion, with an unspoken predilection toward the lip synched unpopular and the enticingly illegal.

Inflation was the word most common on the street and constant news of the time. As measured by the consumer price index, the rate of inflation was 18.1% for 1946, an all-time record, and it was heading north/northeast to another contending position which fell short primarily due to a federal government “massage” of the numbers, thereby falling to break another annual US record, coming in at 14.4% in 1947. Harry Truman had just taken the President’s office in 1945 and was making entrees into as well as designing the final Marshall Plan. Ostensibly it was not sufficient that the US had sacrificed lives for Europe’s war; it was further necessary to use US simoleons to rebuild what the