In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [75]
Tic tic tic tic tic tic tic
As we marched silently forward, Wilbur then, with great deliberation, holding both batons out before him, began to spin them in opposite directions.
Synchronized! Like the blades of a twin-engine plane, twin propellers interleaved before him, gaining speed. Faster and faster and faster, until the batons had all but disappeared into a faint silver film, the only sound the “tic tic tic” of Ray Janowski’s snare and the steady, in-step beat of feet hitting the pavement.
His back arched taut as a bow, knees snapping waist-high, at the agonizingly right instant, with two imperceptible flips of the wrist, Wilbur would launch his twin rapiers straight up into the icy air, still in synchronization. Like some strange science fiction bat, some glittering metal bird, the batons, gaining momentum as they rose, would soar thirty or forty feet above the band. Then, gracefully, at the apex of the arc, spinning slower and slower, they would come floating down; Wilbur never even for an instant glancing upward, the band eyes-front. Down would come the batons, dropping faster and faster, and still Wilbur marched on. And then, incredibly, at the very last instant, just as they were about to crash into the street, in perfect rhythm both hands dart out and the batons, together, leap into life and become silver blurs. It was Duckworth’s Capper!
The instant his batons picked up momentum and spun back to life, Janowski “tic’d” twice and the drum section rolled out our basic cadence, as the crowd roared. Unconcerned, unseeing, we marched on.
Wilbur rarely used the Capper more than once or twice in any given parade or performance. Like all great artists, Wilbur gave of his best sparingly. None of us realized that Duckworth had not yet shown us his greatest Capper.
The high point of our marching year traditionally came on the Thanksgiving Day Parade. And that fateful Thursday dawned dark and gloomy, full of evil portent. The last bleak week in November had been literally polar in its savagery. For weeks a bitter Canadian wind had droned steadily off Lake Michigan, blowing the blast-furnace dust into long rivers and eddies of red grime on the gray ice that bordered the curbs and coated the bus stops and rutted the streets. These are days that try a sousaphonist’s soul to the utmost. That giant chunk of inert brass gathers cold into it like a thermic vacuum cleaner. Valves freeze at half-mast, mouthpieces stick to the tongue and lips in the way iron railings trap children, and the blown note itself seems thin and weak and lost in the knife-like air.
The assembly point for the parade was well out of the main section of town, back of Harrison Park. Any veteran parade marcher knows the scene, a sort of shambling, weaving confusion. The Croatian-American float, the Friends of Italy, the Moose, the Ladies of The Moose, the Children of The Moose, the Queen of The Moose, the Oddfellows’ Whistling Brigade, the Red Men Of America (in full headdress and buckskin), the Owls, the Eagles, the Wolves, the Imperial Katfish Klan, the Shriners (complete with Pasha and red fezzes), the A. F. of L., the C.I.O., Steelworkers Local 1010, all gathered to snake their way through the ambient Indiana-Sinclair Refinery air, for glory and to thank God that there is an America. Or maybe just to Parade, which seems to be a basic human urge.
This gathering point is always known as a “rendezvous” in parade-ese. On the bulletin board the week before, the usual notice:
THE BAND WILL RENDEZVOUS AT 0800 ON HOHMAN AVENUE OPPOSITE HARRISON PARK. EACH UNIT WILL BE NUMBERED. LOOK FOR THE NUMBER PAINTED ON THE CURB—TWELVE. WE