Kinda Cranky Pizza Guy

Burt Katz drove home. It was the middle of the day. He worked downtown but lived in Skokie. His wife, Sharon, watched him come through the door. She was throwing a birthday party for their son, who was 5. “What are you doing home?” she asked.
Burt, who was in his early 30s, explained that he had words with his boss, that he threw the guy up against a wall and shouted at him, and so, though fascinated with business, he hated the institutional sensibilities of white-collar work and abruptly quit. He had three kids, a mortgage and no plans. He also stopped shaving on that day, slightly longer than 40 years ago — April 12, 1971. He has not shaven since.

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Tall Order in the Capital

After absorbing a series of historic shocks during the summer, the edifice could take a long time to fix, and its future is uncertain. Congress? No. The Washington Monument, a 555-foot, pointed metaphor for what ails the nation’s political system.

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The Cult of Physicality

INSIDE an unmarked warehouse here, not far from a depressing stretch of fast-food joints and the Southern X-Posure strip club, Robert MacDonald — nickname: Maximus — is torturing a group of people. Or at least that’s how it looks. One man, howling in agony a second ago, has collapsed in a pool of sweat. A woman wipes away tears. A few of the rest are limping.

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Treats Without Calories

I have a belt of adipose tissue lodged around my middle. I’m a bumper car, protected from unwarranted bumping. Need a gently sloping shelf on which to display historical thimbles or wee porcelain Scotties? Call me. The Alford steaks, they are marbled.

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A Raft is his Ritz

Welcome to Blue Springs Creek, in the Ocala National Forest, where Lee Allen Young lives on a raft he calls the Huckleberry Finn with a faithful mutt he has named Becky Thatcher. A barefooted man of 59, he says he is looking for Tom Sawyer — that is, he is looking for the kind of free and irresponsible life all but gone in modern Florida. He has no bank account, no credit cards, no telephone. “Civilization,” Mark Twain once declared, “is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.” Young has no spouse, no commitments, no immediate plans except to fry a few fish for supper.

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Clothing Prices Hold Steady No Longer

More polyester. Thinner shirts. Smaller buttons. The fallout from the cotton crisis looks like 1970s disco with way higher prices.

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A Passageway for Prisoners, 40 Feet Below

Here is a small strip of Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan, and what lies beneath this ordinary patch of asphalt and concrete is a 40-yard boulevard dedicated to murderers, gangsters, villains, thieves, scoundrels. You can stand there all day in sunshine and shadow, never realizing that a river of wickedness runs three stories below your feet.

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