AtD translation: the ladies who work on the line

[Mike Jing]

Found it. Thanks all for replying.

https://books.google.ca/books/about/Women_on_the_Line.html?id=dWPZygAACAAJ

On Fri, Jan 19, 2018 at 9:58 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> I third Jamie's suggestion. I think Pynchon extended the meaning of
> "working on the line"--a factory line is where THIS exact phrase comes
> from, it seems, with such a phrase and concept as 'the chorus line".
>
> From the kitchen use etymology (which might also go back to naval
> origins), the phrase is "working the line" since the workers ARE the
> line itself not just working a manufacturing assembly line.
>
> On 1/19/18, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Jamie's suggestion sounds right to me because of the grouping with
> whiskey
> > and gambling, although I've never heard "on the line" in connection with
> > what Western pulps and 'Gunsmoke' delicately called "dance-hall girls."
> >
> > I Googled Cripple Creek's history of gold mining and labor conflict,
> > thinking there might have been some stage of processing with workers
> lined
> > up along an ore sluice or conveyor belt, but no luck there.
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 19, 2018 at 9:05 AM, Mike Jing <
> gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> I'm thinking the kitchen in a restaurant, as in "line cook", but I'm not
> >> sure if there's any other meaning I'm not aware of.
> >>
> >>
> >> On Fri, Jan 19, 2018 at 8:34 AM, Jamie McKittrick <jamiemckit at gmail.com
> >
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> At risk? Soldiers lay their lives on the line. Women of certain
> >>> professions lay their asses on the line with each new client.
> Oftentimes
> >>> literally. It may be referring to production lines but they came later
> >>> on.
> >>>
> >>> On 19 January 2018 at 08:39, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> P86.3-14   In the broken and soon-enough-interrupted dreams close to
> >>>> dawn in particular, Webb would find himself standing at some divide,
> >>>> facing
> >>>> west into a great flow of promise, something like wind, something
> >>>> like light, free of the damaged hopes and pestilent smoke east of
> >>>> here—sacrificial smoke, maybe, but not ascending to Heaven, only high
> >>>> enough to be breathed in, to sicken and cut short countless lives, to
> >>>> change the color of the daylight and deny to walkers of the night the
> >>>> stars
> >>>> they remembered from younger times. He would wake to the day and its
> >>>> dread.
> >>>> The trail back to that high place and the luminous promise did not run
> >>>> by
> >>>> way of Cripple, though Cripple would have to serve, hopes corroded to
> >>>> fragments—overnight whiskey, daughters of slaves, rigged faro games,
> >>>> the
> >>>> ladies who work on the line.
> >>>>
> >>>> What does "work on the line" mean here?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>
> >
>
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