GR translation: as little finger sweat-cams off M-1 operating handle

[Monte Davis]

Thank you, Jochen! By the end of the paragraph I was in outdoor playgrounds
-- actually went Googling this morning to learn whether baseball base-bags
had ever been filled with glass beads! -- and entirely missed the
marble/pinball connection.

On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 8:56 AM, jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:

> Didn't you play with glass marbles – they came in bags if I remember
> correctly? (Bigfooted bassett hounds – those I never saw before my 14th
> year, I think.)
>
> 2015-03-01 13:00 GMT+01:00 Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>:
>
>> I'm 99% certain I had never seen "cam" used as a verb before reading that
>> line 42 years ago. i had (have) barely enough mechanical savvy to grasp
>> that a cam (n.) is shaped to turn rotating or linear motion of one part
>> into a specific path for another. I certainly had no image at all of an M-1
>> rifle mechanism opened for inspection.
>>
>> But I had tinkered with things that required several fingers to hold
>> several parts in place at once.  Spring-loaded parts had occasionally
>> snapped down on a fingertip. And sweaty fingers slip on oiled metal. Until
>> you asked, I didn't wonder how I'd understood that line without pausing.
>> Language, the brain, and Pynchon dancing at their best.
>>
>> Now, "bags of chuckling glass"... *that* gives me trouble.
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 1:20 AM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> V584.5-19   If Katspiel had enough energy to leave the sun’s field
>>> forever, then it has left these kind round beings in eternal exile, with no
>>> chance of ever being gathered back home, doomed to masquerade as ball
>>> bearings, as steelies in a thousand marble games—to know the great thumbs
>>> of Keokuk and Puyallup, Oyster Bay, Inglewood—Danny D’Allesandro and Elmer
>>> Ferguson, Peewee Brennan and Flash Womack . . . where are they now? where
>>> do you think? they all got drafted, some are dead on Iwo, some gangrenous
>>> in the snow in the forest of Arden, and their thumbs, first rifle
>>> inspection in Basic, GI’d, driven deep back into childhood as little finger
>>> sweat-cams off M-1 operating handle, thumb pushing down follower still deep
>>> in breech, bolt sshhOCK! whacks thumb oh shit yes it hurts and good-by to
>>> another unbeatable and legendary thumb, gone for good back to the summer
>>> dust, bags of chuckling glass, bigfooted basset hounds, smell of steel
>>> playground slides heating in the sun),
>>>
>>> What does "sweat-cams" mean?
>>>
>>
>>
>
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