1) I lived here nearly 5 years before i could meet the middle western day with anything approaching Dignity. It's a place that lets you understand why the Bible is the way it is: Proud people cannot live here.

2) The land's flat. ugly sullen and big it pounds men down past humbleness. They Stoop at 35 possibly cringing from the heavy and terrible sky. In country like this there can be no God but Jahweh.

3) In the mills and refineries of its south side Chicago passes its natural gas in flames. Bouncing like Bunsens from stacks a hundred feet high. The stench stabs at your eyeballs . The whole sky green and yellow backdrop for the skeleton steel of a bombed-out town.

4) Remember the movies in grammar school? The goggles men doing strong things in Showers of steel-spark? The dark screen cracking light and the furnace opening with a Blast of orange like a sunset? Or an orange?