With the first daylight or, in the winter, even before, the lights came on in the lunchroom, and Alice steamed up the coffee urn (a great godlike silver effigy which may, in some future archaeological period, be displayed as an object of worship of the race of Amudkins, who preceded the Atomites, who, for some unknown reason, disappeared from the face of the earth).6
With the first daylight or, in the winter, even before, the lights came on in the lunchroom, and Alice steamed up the coffee urn (a great godlike silver effigy which may, in some future archaeological period, be displayed as an object of worship of the race of Amudkins, who preceded the Atomites, who, for some unknown reason, disappeared from the face of the earth). 6
Footnote
6 the race of Amudkins, who preceded the Atomites: Steinbeck coins names for two races—Amudkins or “kin to mud,” a term that evokes the Genesis creation myth of Adam and Eve, and Atomites, or the race of people who live in an atomic age.
