It was morning rush hour, and the island was more lively than I had seen it: housekeepers in frilly yellow outfits walking to work, street cleaning machines sweeping along already immaculate curbs, landscapers unloading the hedge trimmers so vital to local society and financial advisers entering work at the amazing row of private banks and wealth-management firms of Royal Palm Way.
The tsunami ravaged Meiko's most sophisticated circuit board factory, here in Ishinomaki, mangling machines and sweeping a mountain of debris onto the factory floor.
Walking in four lines across a no man's land of thistles, wild flowers, self-sown mustard and wheat, the men of the 15th slowly advanced into sweeping machine gun fire and artillery.
Until then he can take pleasure in his other triumphs: an Ives Johnson Sweeping Machine patented in 1857, a 1940s Electrolux that looks like something Buck Rogers could fly to the moon and a pre-electric vacuum donated by an arms dealer who had mistaken it for a bazooka.
Charles Armstrong was set up in business by the presentation of "two sets of sweeping machines capable of reaching the tops of the highest chimneys built".
There were blocks where the melting snow exposed a discarded coffee cup or two, along with evidence that dogs had made their rounds in the snow, even if the street sweeping machines had not.
Armed with petitions signed by people tired of moving their cars to make way for street sweeping machines, Community Board 6 lobbied for years to persuade the city's Department of Sanitation to reduce the number of cleaning days.
"I went through that thing a number of times and only got a fast return on my fear once, a too classic hot landing with the heat coming from the trees about 300 yards away, sweeping machine-gun fire that sent men head down into swampy water, running on their hands and knees towards the grass where it wasn't blown flat by the rotor blades, not much to be running for but better than nothing".
It's explained here: Slide to shut down brings the shutdown action from Windows Phone to the desktop: set it up and you'll be able simply to close down your machine with a single sweeping gesture.
He also called on residents to save water by turning off the taps while brushing teeth or shaving, running only full washing machines and dishwashers and sweeping driveways and sidewalks rather than hosing them down.
