BOOM!

by Rob Lopresti

We interrupt our usual display of wisdom and erudition to wish you all a happy Independence Day, two days early. This is, of course, the only American holiday so nice they named it twice.

If you need that explained, I refer you to that excellent debating society, the regulars at the OJ Bar & Grill. In each of Donald E. Westlake’s novels about John Dortmunder these five or six nameless philosophers explicate some complicated subject. (If it isn’t complicated when they start, just wait.) This particular discussion appeared in the book Don’t Ask.

When Dortmunder walked into the OJ Bar & Grill on Amsterdam Avenue at ten that night, the regulars were discussing why the big annual automobile race called the Indy 500 was called the Indy 500. “It’s because,” one regular explained, “they run it on Independence Day….”

“They do not,” a second regular responded. “Independence Day is the Fourth of July….”

The first regular reared back and stared at the second regular in aggressive astonishment. “What boat did YOU get off? The Fourth of July is THE FOURTH OF JULY!”

It certainly is. And as John Adams predicted, it is celebrated with “pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other…”

Bright lights in the night

So let’s talk about fireworks. I come from New Jersey where it was forbidden for anyone but professionals to mess around with fireworks. One of the shocks involved in moving to Washington state is that, come July, anybody with a few bucks can go to a stand in a parking lot and try their luck with explosives. I have a friend on the fire department who says they don’t get much time off this week.

1 My cats aren’t too fond of this holiday either. I have to keep them in for fear that a sudden explosion might send them racing blindly into danger. And then there’s my personal favorite side-effect: what could be more festive than seeing half-burnt shreds of firecrackers on the street and sidewalks for weeks to come? Way to clean up after yourselves, guys.

Remembrance of bangs past

But the fact is, I do have one blemish in my record as a non-exploder. Time for true confessions.

When I was a kid in the aforementioned New Jersey my father was the principal of an elementary school. One day he caught a boy with a brown paper bag full of firecrackers. I’m sure somebody out there knows their name, but I can’t find them on the various firework pages … probably too tame. They were brightly colored balls the size of grapes. You throw one on the ground and you get a satisfactory bang.

My father confiscated the bag and the kid got suspended. Then the question arose: what to do with those bad boomers?

Dad brought them home. I don’t remember what my mother said on the subject — a frosty silence might have been the sum total — but Dad and I had a great time throwing them on the driveway in front of the garage. Bang! A classic male-bonding experience.

The next morning I was at school and my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Wredon, was droning on about something of minimal interest to me, probably math, and I started wondering what my mother had packed for my lunch. So I picked up the brown bag from under my chair, opened it up, and —

Uh oh. Yup, I had picked up the wrong bag. Now I was the miscreant about to get suspended. My father would no doubt be fired, our family would be left homeless and my dreams of ever getting a hit in Little League would be shot to hell.

I’m sure Mrs. Wredon was very pleased to see me suddenly paying attention, but she shouldn’t have felt flattered. In the proverbial fashion of the condemned man I was paying close attention to everything. Adrenalin bursts will do that for you. I sat there sweating bullets, waiting for the principal to march in with explosive-sniffing dogs and a squad of rit cops.

That didn’t happen. What did occur is that Mrs. Wredon got a phone call from the principal’s office. It seems my mother had arrived and wanted to see me. I picked up my bag and hustled to the office (be assured that, due to previous experiences, I already knew the way).

Mom was standing there with a brown paper bag in her hand. We made the exchange silently. Then I croaked “thanks.” She nodded. I didn’t hear the conversation my parents had later, but the bag of explosives vanished forever.

So on Independence Day. if you offer me a cherry bomb or even a sparkler and I turn it down, now you know why. I’m a reformed criminal trying to stay on the straight and narrow.

Another thread from the web

We all know that a picture is worth a thousand words. This means that a single word is a millipicture, just as a millihelen is the amount of facial beauty needed to launch one ship.

But i digress. I want to tell you about Wordle, which turns any group of words into a beautiful picture. You may remember that in my anniversary column I used Tag Crowd to show a diagram of the words I had used most in a year of blog entries. Wordle takes this to its illogical extreme by turning all the words in a given work into an art work. For example, the following masterpiece is based on the very column you are reading. Enjoy, and if you must explode, please don’t do it near my cats.

http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/37746/Boom!

1. Not Rob Lopresti’s cat. Cat shown for purposes of illustration only. —JLW [↩]