“The unfortunate part,” she shouted back, “hasn’t begun!”
She spoke briefly with her son.
She then dialed the offices of the Green Prairie Transcript, in which she was a majority stockholder. She asked for Coley Borden, the managing editor, and soon heard his crisp, “Yes, Minerva? How’s things?”
“Things,” he learned, even before she finished a preliminary clearing of her throat, were not good. “This business has got to stop, at once,” she began.
“What business?”
“This Civil Defense nonsense!” She began to talk.
She was angry. She was very angry. It was not unusual.
He argued, but to less than no avail. He pointed out that it was Transcript policy to back up CD in Green Prairie, that she had her River City paper in which to condemn it.
Minerva was not moved, not moved at all. He had never heard her more furious, more determined, or more irrational:
“Two of the biggest cities in America,” she thundered, “blocked up for hours!” Green Prairie and River City, together, added up to one of the largest twenty or thirty American municipal areas. Minerva always spoke of them, however, as if they were aligned just behind New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. “You know what it is, Coley? It amounts to sabotage! Sabotage left over from the imbecilities of Harry Truman’s Administration! It wastes millions. It squanders billions of man-hours. For what? Absolutely nothing whatsoever! Do you know what I suspect about Civil Defense, actually?”