Dressed in khaki and wearing a tin hat, the curious man forged his way through the deluge of people pouring out of the subway, and then in the very midst of the surging throng, opened the brass-studded pouch attached to his belt, extracted a single saltine cracker, and stooped over to place it carefully on the sidewalk.
“Watch yourself!” he shouted as he stood up, gesturing impatiently. “Keep clear! Mind your step!” And then, raising the hammer to shoulder height, he brought it down in one horrendous blow on the cracker—not only smashing it to dust, but also producing several rather large cracks in the sidewalk.
Within a few minutes the area was swollen with onlookers—all but the nearest of whom had to crane their heads wildly or leap up and down to get a glimpse of the man in the tin hat now as he squatted to examine the almost invisible dust of the cracker. “Sure mashed it, didn’t it?” he muttered, as to himself, in a professional manner.
“What’d he say?” demanded several people urgently of those near the operation.
“Said it ‘sure mashed it,’” someone explained.
“‘Mashed it’?” snorted another. “Boy, you can say that again!”
Guy Grand was on the scene as well, observing the diverse comments and sometimes joining in.
“Hey, how come you doin’ that?” he asked directly of the man in the tin hat.
The man laid out another cracker, placing it with great care.
“This?” he said, standing and raising the big sledge. “Oh, this is all technical.”