In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [50]
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,