In God We Trust

by Jean Shepherd

  The Fireworks Stand. Even setting the words down stark and simple on the page causes my hand to tremble and my brow to dampen in delicious fear, the sort of fear that only a kid who has lit a Five Incher under a Carnation milk can and has hurled himself prone upon the earth awaiting The End can know. Even the look of classical fireworks was magnificent! The Five Incher—hard, cool, rock-like cylinder of sinister jade green, its vicious red fuse aggressive and yet quiet cradled in the palm of the hand—is an experience once known never forgotten.

  The Cherry Bomb. Ah, what pristine geometric tensile beauty; a perfect orb, brilliant carmine red, packed chockablock with latent tenor and destruction. The Torpedo, an instrument malevolent and yet subtly complex, designed for hand-to-hand celebration. Many a grown man today carries in his shins a peppering of tiny round pebbles buried deep in the flesh from too close familiarity with the roaring Torpedo—a shrapnel victim of the Glorious Fourth. For the uninitiated I at this point must explain that the Torpedo was perhaps an inch high, a half-inch in circumference, symbolically striped in the colors of our country, made to be hurled against a brick wall or a passing Hupmobile, a contact weapon of singular violence that sent its ignitors, tiny rock fragments, showering over an area of fifty yards or more.

  The Pinwheel—an expensive device largely used for flamboyant show and yet responsible for some of the major conflagrations of the past. Whole blocks, and indeed in some cases entire towns, disappearing under the roaring flames to the applause of the multitude. I speak with more than average authority on these matters since my father, a genuinely dedicated fireworks maniac, owned and operated a Fireworks Stand every year during my larval stages.

  The Depression lay over the land like a great numbing blanket of restlessness and frustration, but on the Fourth the sky would be filled with skyrockets, booming aerial bombs, and hand grenades, because nobody had anything else to do in those days. They could scratch, and make beer, and just stand around. Once in a while they’d go down to the Roundhouse and see if they could pick up an extra day somewhere, but mostly they’d just sit on the porch and chew tobacco and spit. That’s what the Depression was. One of the good things about the Depression, and why a lot of people look back on it with a nutty kind of nostalgia, is because nobody made it in the Depression. So nobody had a sense of guilt. Goofing off was just a natural thing to do. In the Depression nobody did anything. It was a license to fool around, and they fooled around in big ways.

  I remember guys sitting on their front porch, tossing dynamite—I mean blasting dynamite!—out on the streets, just for kicks. Northern Indiana is full of primeval types who’ve drifted up from the restless hills of Kentucky and the gulches of Tennessee, bringing with them suitcases filled with dynamite saved over from the time Grandpaw blew up the stumps in the Back Forty. And they brought it to the city with them, because you never can tell, and since they never had any money for fireworks there was only one thing to do. And they did it. They would sit on their porch on a quiet, hot, Fourth of July, rocking back and forth in the swing, breaking dynamite sticks, which come about six inches long, into sizes approximating a green Two Incher, like busting off a chunk of a Baby Ruth candy bar. Old Dad, his cigar clamped in his teeth, would Scotch-tape a little fuse on the end, raise it with suitable flourishes to his cigar-butt end—bbzzzzzzzzz—hold it aloft for a split second, flip it back by the garage, and dive for the floor.

  KKKAAAABBBOOOOOOMM!!

  Rufe is celebrating his ancient heritage. Crockery would crash for blocks around, old ladies would be hurled into the snowball bushes, but no one seemed to care. After all, the Fourth is the Fourth. There would be a slight delay as Rufe fused another nuclear bomb, and:

  BAAARRROOOOOOOM!

  Tin cups would rattle for miles around, windows shatter and smash.

  Dynamite was the milk of life to the average hillbilly of the day. He celebrated with it, feuded with it, and fished with it. The Sporting instinct runs strong in the hills. When the fishing season would open, the river would literally be aboil with TNT.

  POOOOOOOOOOMMMM!!

  An underwater explosion has its own peculiar excitement, a kind of long, drawn-out subterranean gurgle, and then the air for miles around would be filled with catfish, a thundercloud of sunfish drifting over the county for twenty minutes or more, hundreds of the Sporting Elite fielding them in bushel baskets.

  The more civilized celebrants, however, on the Fourth, shot their Relief check in one orgy of fireworks buying. Fireworks come in a number of exotically lethal varieties. Among them was the classical Dago Bomb. This was never construed as an anti-Italian name, being more pro than anything else. The Dago Bomb was the ne plus ultra of the fireworks world. A true thing of beauty and symmetry, it came in several sizes, four to be exact: the Five Inch, the Eight Inch, the Ten Inch, and the Sure Death. In more effete circles it was known as an Aerial Bomb, but among real Fireworks fans it was most often known as the Dago Heister. It actually looked like those giant non-existent firecrackers that occasionally show up in cartoons, a red, white, and blue tube with a wooden base stained dark green, a long red fuse, and the instructions printed on the bottom:

  “Place upright in a clear, unobstructed area. After igniting, stand well back. Not recommended for children. The manufacturer assumes absolutely no responsibility for this device.”

  Theoretically this infernal machine was to be lit by an expert hand. It would then explode with the first, or minor, explosion, which propelled an aerial charge of pure white TNT into the ambient air, theoretically vertical, for several hundred feet, and then—Devastation!—not once but several times, depending on the size of the Dago Bomb in question. It was not cheap, the smallest going for fifty cents and the largest for around three dollars, which in the days of the Depression was truly a capital investment in destruction.

  The legends surrounding this mysterious weapon are countless. The mere sight of one of the larger specimens on the shelves of a Fireworks Stand sent waves of fear and nervous excitement through the Sparkler Buyers. It was truly the Big Time.

  It was a Dago Bomb that played a key role in the legend that was Ludlow Kissel. Mr. Kissel had found his true medium in THE Depression itself. Kissel worked in Idleness the way other artists worked in clay or marble. God only knows what would have happened to him were it not for the Depression. He was a true child of his time. He was also a magnificent Souse. The word “Alcoholic” had not yet come into common usage, at least not in the Steel towns of Indiana. Nor were there any lurking Freudian fears or explanations for the classical appetite for potage that Kissel nourished. He was a drunk, and knew it. He just liked the stuff, and glommed onto it whenever the occasion demanded. And if the Store-Boughten variety of Lightning was not available, he concocted his own, using raisins, apricots, Fleischmann’s yeast, molasses, and dead flies.

  Nominally, Kissel worked in the roundhouse, and for over thirty years had been on the Extra Board, being called only in extreme emergencies, which occurred roughly once every other month or so. He invariably celebrated a day of work by holing up in the Bluebird Inn for perhaps a week, and then would return home, propelling himself painfully forward on one foot and one knee. He was compensating for a tilted horizon. The sound of Kissel crawling up the gravel driveway next to his house was a familiar one, and it took him sometimes upwards of three hours to make it from the street to the back porch. At 3 A.M., lying in my dark bedroom, it was kind of comforting to hear Mr. Kissel struggling up the steps of his back porch. Inching painfully step by step.

  Thump (One)

  Long pause.…

  Thump (Two)

  Longer pause.…

  ThuuUUMP (He’s made three in a row!)

  Split-second pause.…

  Dump DUNK BUMP K-THUMP!

  He’s back at the bottom.

  Many’s the time I’ve slipped off to sleep with this familiar sound of human endeavor battling over overwhelming odds-Kissel trying to make the kitchen door. And then the voice of Mrs.
Kissel, a large flower-print aproned lady who read True Romances voraciously, would call out:

  “Watch the steps, Lud. They’re tricky.”

  She loved him.

  Kissel, one Fourth of July, played a leading role in a patriotic tableau which is even today spoken of in hushed, reverential tones in the area. It was a particularly steamy, yeasty, hellish July. The houseflies clung to the screen doors and the mosquitoes hummed in great whirling clouds in the poplar trees. It was in such weather that Mr. Kissel reached his apogee. He was not a Winter Souse. There was something about the birds and the bees and the hot sun that set off a spark in Mr. Kissel’s blood and stoked an insatiable thirst for the healing grape. His stocky, overalled figure reeling through the twilight, leaving a wake of flickering fireflies, was as much a part of the Summer landscape as the full golden moon. Parishioners sprinkling their lawns and snowball bushes would nod familiarly to him as he wove through the fine spray of their brass nozzles.

  The Fourth in question dawned hot and jungle-like, with an overhang of black, lacy storm clouds. In fact, a few warm immense drops sprinkled down through the dawn haze. I know, because I was up and ready for action. Few kids slept late on the Fourth. Even as the stars were disappearing and the sun was edging over the Lake, the first Cherry Bombs cracked the stillness and the first old ladies dialed the police. Carbide cannons which had gathered dust in basements for a year roared out, greeting the dawn. And by 7 A.M. the first dozen pairs of eyebrows were blackened and singed, and already the wounded were being buttered with Unguentine and sent back into the fray. Long lines of overheated Willys Knights, Essexes, and Pierce Arrows inched toward the beaches. Babies cried, mothers wept, and husbands swore. Parades fitfully broke out, and the White Sox prepared to battle it out in the big Fourth of July doubleheader with the St. Louis Browns, Futility meeting Hopelessness head on. The sun rose higher and higher and at its zenith blazed down with an intensity of purpose and effectiveness equal to its best work in Equatorial Africa. The asphalt simmered quietly and stuck to the tires and the tennis shoes of the passing parade. Lilac bushes drooped fragrantly and the cicadas screamed from the cottonwoods. Through it all the steady, rolling barrage of exploding black powder in one form or another paid homage to our War of Independence.

  As the day wore on, this barrage grew in intensity, because all true fireworks nuts learned from infanthood the art of rationing and husbanding the ammunition for the crucial moment, which came always after dark.

  Kissel had not made his appearance throughout the long morning and early afternoon. He was undoubtedly stoking his private furnace in preparation for his gala, which, when it came, was worth waiting for. Shortly after noon a few drops of rain sprinkled down, just enough to dampen the shirt and the rosebushes, but not the spirits. Little did we realize that we were shortly to be the observers of a scene that would be discussed and recounted through the long Winter months of years to come. The event became known simply as Kissel’s Dago Bomb.

  The White Sox and the Brownies had painfully worked their way into the top of the Third of the first game, a scoreless tie, when Kissel appeared on the shimmering horizon, weaving spectacularly and carrying a large paper bag as carefully as a totally committed drunk can. Kissel was about to celebrate the founding of our nation, the nation which had provided such a bounteous life for him and his.

  At first no one paid much attention to the struggling figure as it inched its way from lamppost to lamppost and fireplug to fireplug. Little girls burned sparklers on porches, and I was carefully de-pleating a string of Chinese ladyfingers. These are tiny firecrackers with pleated fuses, all woven together, and designed for the rich and profligate to fire off simultaneously by simply lighting the main fuse. No kid in his right mind ever did that, but instead we carefully disengaged, fuse by fuse, the ladyfingers and fired them off one by one, under garbage cans, on porches, and behind dogs. My mother, at regular intervals, called from the kitchen window the Fourth of July watch cry of all mothers:

  “Be careful! You’re going to lose an eye if you’re not careful!” This was, of course, purely ritualistic, and was only a minor annoyance. Flick had already suffered a flesh wound of a routine nature, his right hand was swathed in grease-soaked gauze, the result of demonstrating that he could hold a Three Incher in his hand when it went off, and still survive. He was now back on the scene, working as a lefty. In short, it was a Fourth like all other Fourths, up to the moment that Kissel took his stance.

  He had disappeared into his house to prepare for his massive statement of Patriotism. Shortly afterward he reappeared on the front porch and stumbled down the steps, carrying in his right hand the largest Dago Bomb that had ever been seen in the neighborhood. It was a Dago Heister of truly awesome stature, being fully a foot and a half high and a good three inches in diameter, and was the first all-black Dago Bomb anyone had ever seen. This point has been argued over many a cold Wintry afternoon. Some reports have it that Kissel’s Dago Bomb was not a Dago Bomb at all, but some sort of mortar shell. Others maintain that it was indeed a Dago Bomb, but of a foreign make, possibly Chinese, as the somber menacing color was highly unorthodox. Suffice it to say that no one ever really determined just where Kissel obtained the weapon, or its true nature, as Kissel himself was hazy on most details of his life, and this was no exception. His only comment later, which was never disputed, was:

  “I sure got one!”

  When Kissel emerged from his front door and came down the steps carrying his work of the Devil, the neighborhood almost magically knew that something big was about to happen. Sparklers flickered out; kids ran through vacant lots and over driveways; heads appeared at windows. The crowd gathered. Kissel, with that peculiar deliberateness of the perpetually fogbound, laboriously prepared to detonate the black beauty. He placed it dead in the center of the concrete roadway and stood back to survey the scene, weaving slightly as he worked. The crowd drew back and watched, silently, excitement hanging over the multitude in a thin blue haze. Fireworks of that magnitude rarely were seen and commanded instant respect. The ebony monster stood bolt upright, silently, with a cool quality of the truly lethal; understated but potent.

  Shimmering waves of heat caused the scene to take on a strange unreal, flickering quality. The neighborhood fell silent, and only the dull mutterings of distant fire barrages broke the stillness. A few errant drops of tepid rain sprinkled the concrete as we waited. The skies overhead were gray and threatening, with ragged edges of black cloud shimmering in the July heat.

  Kissel, at Center Stage, struggled to find a match the way drunks invariably do, going through pocket after pocket after pocket; fumblingly, maddeningly, and finding only pencil stubs and brass keys. It seemed to go on forever until finally someone—this point later was also much in dispute; no one quite knew who actually handed him the book of matches—solved the problem. Kissel took the book of matches in hand, paused for a moment, and belched, a deep, round, satisfying, shuddering burp of the sort that can only come from a vast internal lake of green beer. The crowd applauded and shifted impatiently, all eyes riveted on the dull black menace that stood with such dignity in the center of the concrete roadway.

  Finally Kissel struck a match, which instantly went out. He struck another. It too flickered and died. Another and another. There was, I might add, a slight breeze which puffed fitfully from the Northwest. The audience grew restive, but no one dared leave. In fact, more viewers of this historic event were arriving by the minute. Kissel, as is so often the case with the massive drunk, seemed totally unaware of the drama he was creating and with maniacal intensity struggled with his match-book, lighting match after match. Suddenly, out of the crowd, a kid darted, an experienced detonator of high explosives of all sorts, who shoved into Kissel’s palsied hand a stick of briskly smoldering punk. The kid, according to witnesses who testified later, uttered one word: “Here,” then turned, and scurried back into the throng and into the pages of local Folk history forever.

  Ki
ssel, thinking at first he had been given a cigar, gazed at it numbly for a moment or two and then dimly perceived that here was the means of lighting the fuse of the colossal black Dago Bomb.

  The fuse on this type of insanity is of the coated variety, and in this case was about three inches long, a black, stiff, powder-impregnated length of fiber. It doesn’t take much to light them, and once lit, the die is cast. Kissel shuffled forward, punk in hand, and made several futile passes at the fuse, the magnificent bomb remaining aloof and cool throughout. With each pass the crowd retreated, and then, with the inevitability of Greek drama, in the muttering silence the telltale hiss sounded forth clear and unmistakable. The fuse was lit!

  Immediately the assemblage rolled back in a mighty wave, turned and waited while Kissel continued to attempt to light the fuse, totally unaware that time was growing short. Someone called out:

  “Kissel! Hey Kissel, for God’s sake, it’s lit!”

  Kissel raised his head questioningly and said:

  “What’s lit?”

  The ominous hiss continued and then, suddenly and without warning, stopped. Occasionally these fuses are tricky, and extremely dangerous. They have been known to lie dormant like this for hours, seemingly extinguished for no good cause. Obviously this black menace was one of the treacherous.

  Kissel returned to his fight, again touching punk to fuse. And this time the fuse, in its unpredictable way, hissed frantically. Kissel, at last seeing that his monster was lit, attempted his getaway. He reeled in a half-circle, befuddled, trailing punk smoke behind him and then, staggering forward, knocked the black monster over on its side—hissing fiercely with only seconds remaining!