In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [56]
It was the Depression, of course, and few families had more than a couple of dollars or so to spend on gunpowder, and our entire neighborhood would wait for our return near midnight from the closed stand on the last moments of the Fourth of July. About 11:30 P.M., the sky above filled with bursting aerial bombs and Skyrockets, and off in the distance the rattle of Cherry Bombs and Musketry thrumming darkly, my father would say: “Let’s close up,” and immediately begin to load what was left of our stock into the Oldsmobile. Usually we had left a few of the greatest, heaviest, and most expensive pieces as well as several pounds of torpedoes and Sons O’Guns, a few huge rockets, and a couple dozen big Pinwheels and a rack or two of heavy-caliber Roman Candles.
My Old Man, eyes gleaming, cheeks flushed, would hurl us homeward through the dark, on his way to the most glorious moment of his entire year. He was in the saddle and was prepared to split the skies with a shower of sparks and fireballs and the eardrums of the neighbors with giant Dago Bombs. Every year the neighbors waited for this great moment, and the Old Man knew it. He was a magnificent sight, surrounded by boxes of ammunition as he singlehandedly bombarded the heavens on behalf of Freedom and the Stars And Stripes. He was a true artist of pyrotechnics, and rose to his absolute fullness of artistic power when clutching a Roman Candle, his body swaying sinuously with the innate rhythm of the born Roman Candle Shooter as he sent ball after ball arcing higher and higher into the midnight skies, to the roar of the crowd.
Fourth of July was almost always a day of intense, ragged excitement for everyone, usually skirting danger on one side and ecstatic celebration on the other. It caused a kind of homicidal recklessness to set in to the Individual, and certainly the Mass. The night my father encountered his devilish, avenging Roman Candle was no exception. All day cars had carried off great loads of our wares, but now it was over, and the neighborhood was about to witness my father’s annual debauch. They stood on porches and in driveways and watched from windows as in the vacant lot on the corner my father hauled out his boxes of surplus fireworks.
He programmed his displays like a true showman, starting off with a few nondescript Pinwheels and Mount Vesuviuses, gradually working up through the lesser Skyrockets and Aerial Bombs to his final statement, a brace of great Roman Candles, twenty-four-ball beauties fully five feet in length and two inches in diameter; spectacular examples of the ancient art of fireworks.
I stood in the darkness with my brother and the other assembled urchins of the neighborhood, watching my father in his finest hour. He was ten feet tall, at least, the biggest father in miles around, until that incredible moment the Roman Candle struck back.
The applause had grown from stage to stage, through the Skyrockets, and now he stood in the center of the arena, the flickering lights of distant aerial displays outlining him against the night sky as he took his last two magnificent Roman Candles that he had saved purposely for the last, the largest and most powerful of the lot. He was one of the few Roman Candle men who ever dared to use both hands simultaneously, timing each ball to rotate one with the other, thereby achieving an almost continuous display of spectacular Roman Candle artistry.
It was now no more than a minute or two before midnight, and another Fourth of July would be history. He was a stickler for time, and the dramatic effect. Carefully, and of course theatrically milking the moment for all it was worth, he lit both Roman Candles, held his elbows sharply out from his body as they hissed briefly. The crowd surged forward, waiting for his usual masterful display. They knew this was his Grand Finale.
The first ball—PLOCK—arched green and sparkling from the left hand, high up over the telephone wires and toward a distant cloud, PLOCK—the right hand spit a golden comet.