Manicured lawns and ranch homes gradually replace South Gate's
jerry-built homes and chicken coops; residents enjoy the benefits of new federal housing and infrastructure programs and Los Angeles' postwar industrial boom.
"
Jerry-built" refers to anything hastily and haphazardly constructed, and while there's some controversy concerning its origin, its most plausible derivation is nautical.
Herewith a few examples of Wills's own
jerry-built contrivances.
Outdoor jobs no longer require a
jerry-built arrangement of extension cords the farther you get from the house.
No running water, no rations,
jerry-built humpies, no school for kilometres, not much work -- and no manager.
Too many attractive Web sites are just nice facades on
jerry-built structures, he added.
Wanamaker's devotion to the theatre of Shakespeare took root in another visionary moment, when he saw a play performed on a
jerry-built replica of the Globe at the 1935 Chicago World's Fair.
The resulting
jerry-built portables powered everything from streetlights to vaccine refrigerators.
It seems likely - as suggested in a dust-cover blurb - that one or more of the
jerry-built models outlined in Chapters 2-6 of the Hahn and Solow volume will interest some economists.
But it makes perfect sense within the context of a crusade, where reasons and arguments are
jerry-built to justify the quest, where catsup is a vegetable, as Reagan famously claimed, if it gets you any closer to the Grail.
As it was, the nation plunged into the rationalization of its ratlier
jerry-built nineteenthcentury manufacturing establishment; in the conversion of the steel industry from cutthroat competition and overproduction in marginally efficient plants to "cooperation," as Morgan called it, he had the dedicated assistance of men like Robert Bacon, George Perkins, and Charles Steele.
The foundations might have been solid but his tarte au citron was
jerry-built, with judge Paul Hollywood displaying a merciless streak as he added the cherry on top: "How the mighty fall."
THIS PAST JUNE, a sprawling,
jerry-built plywood protrusion sprang up in the middle of a South Bronx housing project with the suddenness of a mushroom patch after a spring rain.