In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [100]
“Screeno!”
The crowd titters and the pointer spins again. A constant obbligato of dropping, rolling, and scrunching corn kernels and excited mumblings played like a soft flame under the great pot of edible gold that all pursued. Finally someone inevitably shouted:
“SCREENO!”
And the first prize of the evening was snagged. Doppler, his voice trembling with emotion:
“And now the first Screeno gift of the evening, a five-dollar bag of groceries from the Piggely-Wiggely store on Calumet Avenue, Credit Extended, Superb Meats and Groceries; We Cash Checks. This five-dollar bag of superb vittles goes to.…”
The usher would hurry down the aisle with the winner’s Screeno card and his name, the audience shifting restlessly, distractedly waiting for the next game to begin, and somewhere off in the middle distance the sound of celebration as the winning party, already tasting the Piggely-Wiggely bacon, celebrated the great coup.
The pointer whirled; the action roared on. The kids, not eligible to participate under the strict International rules of Classical Screeno, spent most of the time throwing corn kernels at the balcony and the silver screen.
To the right of the stage glowed a magnificent smoked ham and all the other grocery gifts for the Screeno crowd. During the Depression a seven-pound ham was good for at least four months in the average family, not including 800 gallons of rich, vibrant pea soup, so Screeno was a very serious game. Rising above the usual Orpheum aroma, a rich mixture of calcified gum, Popcorn, hot leatherette seats, steamy socks, and Woolworth Radio Girl perfume and hair oil, was the maddening scent of smoked bacon, fresh pickles, and crushed corn kernels.
Screeno was played for at least forty-five minutes, until the last can of Van Camp’s Pork & Beans had been won. The excitement rising upward until the final great moment, the Grand Award—a year’s supply of Silvercup Bread, provided by the local A & P store. Bread truly was the staff of life to a dedicated Screeno addict. A year’s supply of bread! The very bread that the Lone Ranger lived on and that Tonto used to make the French toast and to sop up the gravy of the Lone Ranger’s solitary chuck wagon beans.
Immediately after the Grand Award, which of course Doppler masterfully squeezed for every last drop of dramatic tension, the lights would go out and on would come somebody with a rich Bavarian accent saying:
“Munngeys iss der cwaziest peebles.”
And once again Culture marched on into the next feature. There was never a recorded instance of a Single Feature playing the Orpheum.
And so went Monday. Tuesday was known as Bank Night. Bank Night was for the really Big Time movie fans, and that crowd usually avoided Screeno like the plague. Every week the Bank Night jackpot rose by hundred-dollar jumps, and every week Tuesday night at Zero Hour, amid a deep hush, the spotlight on stage, the sinister cage containing the Bank Night registration slips was spun as the world perceptibly slowed in its orbital flight around the sun. Mr. Doppler, standing solemn and straight—no razzle-dazzle on Bank Night—waited beside his silver microphone as a shimmering white card was drawn by one of the audience. A moment of agonizing hesitation and in a quiet voice Mr. Doppler would say:
“Tonight’s Bank Night registration drawing for seventeen hundred dollars.…”
A pregnant pause at this point to let the 1700 bucks sink even deeper into the souls of the harpooned congregation, most of whom hadn’t seen a whole ten-dollar bill for five years running.
Seventeen hundred dollars! Everyone in the house had followed the progression of Bank Night from the first 100 dollars to its present astronomical height, and each week Mr. Doppler would change the great red figures on the marquee, and all week—seven long days—the feverish Bank Night dreamers passing back and forth on their aimless errands were constantly reminded. Seventeen hundred dollars! And next week—eighteen hundred dollars!
As each week rolled into history, the sweat, the nervousness, the fear that