Among the American journalists who covered the Second World War, the best writer was A. J. Liebling. Here is he describing his efforts to get to the airport to take a flight to Lisbon:
At that period — it sounds like talking about stagecoach days — the Clippers still left from a yacht-club setting at Port Washington, Long Island. A friend of mine named Fred Schwed … had asked to drive me out to my plane in the early morning. Passengers were supposed to be at the plane with their luggage at eight o'clock. Schwed picked me up at an hour I never had experienced while sober, at the door of the house where I was living, and headed in what I took to be the direction of Long Island because the sun was rising over it. He drove me over one bridge, which was all right, and then around a wild farming country, in which I distinctly saw a hen and on another occasion what I took to be a cow — in one jump more I figured he would have me among the coyotes and Republicans — and then over another bridge, which was all wrong because it landed us in Westchester County. By then I had only an hour or so to catch the plane, so I began to curse, which I do well. The secret of good cursing lies in cadence, emphasis, and antiphony. The basic themes are always the same. Conscious striving after variety is not to be encouraged, because it takes your mind off your cursing. By the time Schwed got me to the landing he felt what a proper swine he was for having gotten up early in the morning to take me to the plane, and if the experience had broken him of volunteering to do favors for people it would have been worth while.
And he’s Liebling, some time later, at work in rural France:
