In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [48]
I clung to the earth, waiting for the second round of the bracket, which should come, I hastily calculated, off to my right. Suddenly I became aware of an insistent rapping on the back of my neck as an elderly crane-like citizen behind me croaked:
“Get up, you bum. If you’re going to sleep on the sidewalk, at least find a doorway, you soak!”
He stepped over me and sheepishly I regained my feet. Up and down the line I saw other ex-GIs brushing themselves off and once again moving forward in the unending stream of Twentieth Century Man, bound for God knows where. My mind raced as I peered down through the haze of the great canyon of excavation that lay just beyond the barricades. And then I could smell it, an acrid, faint, delicious, familiar, naggingly pleasing scent—Dynamite! The real thing!
Minutes later I sat pensively at a tiny corner table of Misérables, waiting for my luncheon date to arrive and vaguely conscious of a difficult-to-define sense of nostalgic pleasure and euphoria. Could it be the Bloody Charlie I was drinking? No, I had barely touched it. As I idly and comfortingly fingered the smooth, sleek surface of my Diners’ Club card—my protection against the world—the way a gunfighter of old must have absently fondled his Smith & Wesson Thirty-Eight, I tried to analyze my sudden sense of warmth and well-being. It had started immediately after the blasting operation at the construction site. Could there be a connection? No man wants to admit that he is a secret Atom Bomb fan, so I hastily rejected this transient thought. Yet somehow I could not deny that the tiny whiff of blue smoke had awakened some ancient memory, some long-dormant pleasure. I absently munched one of the new No-Cal composition cashew nuts which are featured at the boîte as I raked my memory for a clue. The pleasant sound of diners’ voices mingled with the Muzak and the popping of corks. The sizzling of the grill and the hum of air-conditioning lulled me as the Bloody Charlie began its soothing work. Out of the din, voices and sounds of the past emerged, dripping ooze and slime like some ancient creatures unearthed from long-sealed caverns. Dynamite!
Let’s admit it. There are few sounds more soul-satisfying, more frightening, more exciting than an explosion. Explosions of one kind or another have always been part of great Folk celebrations from weddings to Wars. I sipped my drink and mused on the first time I had heard that primal roar of exploding black powder. And then it hit me. My God! Tomorrow was the Fourth of July!
The Fourth of July! It had crept up on tiny cats’ feet on the scale of the calendar, unnoticed, unsung, unbombarded. It was then that I knew where those pleasant tinglings of mingled regret and exhilaration that we call Nostalgia had come from. Yes, in just a few hours it would be the Glorious Fourth. And here I was without so much as a sparkler to my name. I ordered another drink and settled down comfortably into my soft eiderdown bed of remembrances of things past. There are times when you just have to let it go.
As I idly mulled the twin olives in my classical Charlie, the Northern Indiana landscape of the late Depression era began to take form, shadowy and persistent, amid the green and gold bottles behind the mirrored bar directly ahead of me. The blackened stumps, snaggle-toothed and primal, of the steel mills and the oil refineries lay etched against the hazy gray-green horizon of the July skies of the Great Lakes. Somewhere off in the distance the construction crew set off another dull, thumping blast that jiggled the silverware on my table, and it all began to come back.
Dynamite, heat, and excitement were all intermingled in that Fourth of July ritual that has long since departed. What is there about a solid, molar-rattling explosion that sets the blood a-tingling and brings the roses to the cheeks? There are muddle-headed souls who will tell you over and over that Man is