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Show -186 I'll try to explain. Nathan Weinstein's factory took up the sixth floor of a lower Manhattan building older than the Statue of Liberty. There were brick walls two full feet thick, floor joists of twenty-by-twenty pine timbers, pine flooring covered with aisles of iron plate for the fork-lifts to roll on. Wide, grimy metal-framed windows let in streaky sunlight; steam-pipes big as tree-trunks ran along the walls and ceilings and hissed, rattled, clanged or were silent according to the season. Weinstein the owner was a thin short happy man; a dozen times every day he popped out of his office and roamed the aisles giving out serious advice and pats on the back. He loved the heat the noise and the stink of solvent and hot plastic, and he was certain we all loved them as much as he did. Fancy, who became my girl, was nearly six feet tall, came from West Virginia, could have been Jerry West's pretty sister. She had a strong nose and slightly hooded, intelligent eyes. Her job was to weld plastic petals on the round plastic centers to make Weinstein's lampshades, and she was quick and elegant at the pedals and levers of her machine. When she was happy, three of us tacking on the petals with masking tape could barely keep her supplied; when she was despondent her machine slowed and stammered, and the |