lategreatfourth

THE LATE GREAT FOURTH

These days, even with all the glorious festivities in Michigamme, the Fourth of July seems more whimper than bang to me. My wife Sharron and I remember the days growing up in Atikokan, Ontario, when the Fourth of July (First of July in Canada ---- Canada Day) wasn't a day but a season, a progressive explosion starting in June, peaking on July Fourth, and fading out in the middle of October. Most of us guys did not recover from our injuries until Halloween. Eyebrows sometimes finished growing in about Christmas. Some of them never did. It was as though we had been born with a secret message recorded in our genes: "On the Fourth of July after the age of eight, your mission is to self-destruct." I'm quite confident that if I had to endure just one more Canada Day, Sharron and I never would had the opportunity to connect again later on in our lives: I'd be part of the senery in Atikokan Ontario.

The big excitement on the Fourth nowadays is when we take the party barge out to watch the fireworks over the lake with a glass of wine, enjoy a glass of wine and converse with friends. You can hear the "oooohhhssss and ahhhhssss" from the people on the shore.

Why, heck. Nobody did that much yelling when I was a kid unless a half pound fragment of flaming magnesium fell down somebody's pants. After the Fourth most of my friend's parents were accustomed to their kids looking like cinders. When Mom reported to ole Dad that Petee had been caught smoking again, it had nothing to do with tobacco.

There's not a kid on Brown's Bay anymore who knows the simple delight of mixing the 75 - 15 - 10 formula for gunpowder, or has the resources to acquire Potassium Nitrate, Sulfur, and Charcoal. These kids don't know the simple joy of having a firecracker go off in the hand before it can be thrown. And it's probably a good thing: the average kid these days would not know how to react properly after such an event --- the first thrust of the fingers into the mouth and taste of still burning sulfur, pulling them out again to make sure they are still attached, then tucking them in your crotch and doing the watusi around the yard, all the time trying to think of a joke to crack so the guys will know you're no pussycat.

Occasionally, going back to Atikokan for a visit around the Fourth, I'll meet a man whose thumb and forefinger are shaped like matching shoehorns, and I'll know that here is a veteran of the REAL Fourths, a person who as a youngster learned too late he didn't possess quick enough reflexes for lighting firecrackers with homemade fuses and throwing them. "The fourth sure isn't what it used to be, is it?" I'll say, in hope of striking up a conversation. "What that?" he'll reply, sporting bald eyebrows, and cocking his shoehorn fingers behind cauliflower ears. "Speak up, boy!"

Even our Michigamme Fourth of July parade of today is but a crepepaper ghost of it's former self. The moose floats, marching bands and vintage vehicles of the area are interesting, but fail to provoke the old reaction from the crowd I'm so used to hearing. I remember back in the 60's my buddy Dave Coulombe and I provided a float for the Fourth parade in Atikokan that is still spoken of in rather hushed tones by the locals. A common practice back then was to use a scrap vehicle as a septic tank .... run a pipe in one lowered window from one's house, out another higher window to a septic field. This concept worked, but could be rather short lived. One year a friend from Lone Pine had replaced his 39 Buick septic tank with a modern 49 Mercury septic tank. Dave and I offered to dispose of the old '39 version, which we hoisted, suspended from a tree, and backed a pickup truck underneath ready for the dump. Dave not being a person to be abreast of local happenings and dates, forgot it was Confederation Day, and down the alley trailing all sorts of glorious septic memorabilia we went, heading for the dump. At 10:30 am we pulled by Marr's Drug Store ignoring all the curious shoppers, took a right turn, and assumed our rightful place RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE SECTION OF THE PARADE ahead of the Canadian Legion's float with the Thunder Bay Highlander's bagpipe band right in front of us !!! I remember Sharron's admiring glance as we passed by, and am convinced to this day this is when she fell in love with me !! Spectators of that year's parade had what I perceive to be an almost religious experience when our float passed .. so many of them turned around, went immediately down on one knee with their hands in front of faces, that they must have been having a very emotional inner reaction to this float. You won't get a reaction like that with a moose float, band or historic vehicle ---- Really people ---- a little imagination goes a long way !!

Then there was the Fourth of July carnival, the most exciting event of the year. And dangerous too. But we weren't a bunch of rubes. We knew carnival people were evil, possibly even criminals on the lam, and that the carnival always attracted pickpockets and wicked, hopefully sleazy women. My pocket went unpicked, but probably only because I dipped my hand in it, clutching my sweaty dimes and quarters. But once, when I was about eleven, I did have a brief affair with a wicked sleazy carnival woman. My pulse still quickens at the memory.

Her lips were scarlet, her eyelids blue, and her hair the color of a fluorescent, orange sunset. As I sauntered past her concession booth, she caught my eye and beckoned me over with a sultry smile and a toss of her glowing head. I gave her a knowing grin, which I had perfected for just such an occasion, and started to move on, casually dismissing the sharp pangs of panic that started in my midsection and spread to other extremities. Then she gave me a long, languorous wink that temporarily arrested several of my vital functions. Well shoot, I said to myself, it might be fun to toy with her emotions a bit, since she seems so of enamored of me. I sauntered over and bought a set of darts to throw at her balloon board.

Immediately after I had blown my last dime on her darts, she suddenly realized that I had merely been dallying with her. She broke off our relationship on the spot, and turned her attention to a gullible kid passing by, her wink stopping him like an ice pick through the heart. I laughed throatily, tossed my jacket over my shoulder and sauntered off, secure in the knowledge that I had broken my first female heart. I never told Sharron this story and am sure I can trust you to never repeat a word of it to her.

Much older and wiser now, I'm reasonably certain that the goal of the carnival people might have been to extract every last cent from every last simple soul to fall under their spell. There were even little machines designed like drag lines, with which, for a penny, you could attempt to grab a wonderful prize with the jaws at the end of the line. I blew nearly a buck once trying to fish out a beautiful silver and gold harmonica and ended up with a crummy paper mustache. Somehow, the jaws never seemed quite strong enough to grasp the harmonica. You'd think the carnival people would have realized this unacceptable situation and corrected it.

One of my worst experiences at a Fourth of July carnival resulted from bumping into my former girlfriend, Phyllis Atitchson. Phyllis had terminated our romance in the bud, claiming I didn't know how to treat girls with proper respect. This was ridiculous. She simply wasn't accustomed to worldly men with such suave and debonair manners, poor girl. "Hey Phyllis," I said. "How about riding the Octopus with me?" "Naw" she replied. "The Octopus makes me throw up." "It doesn't either," I said. "Nothing makes you throw up." "Wrong Peterson, sometimes you make me throw up." "I'll pay for your ride Phyllis." "OK, but the Octopus makes me throw up." "Yeah, right."

Well, here the adventure started, because the Octopus really did make Phyllis throw up. What we called the Octopus had eight long steel arms that spun around and swooped up and down. On the end of each arm was a wire basket to hold the riders so they couldn't fall out or escape. At certain points during the swooping and whirling, the basket would spin madly. After the first of these spins, Phyllis said, "I'm going to be sick."

I stared in swirling horror as her rosy complexion changed first to chalk white and then to a pale but ominous green. So there I was, trapped in a spinning basket fifty or so feet in the air with a person about to throw up !!! I yelled at the Octopus operator, "Stop the Octopus !!!! Stop !!! There's a person here about to be sick !" The operator, obviously a criminal on the lam, responded with an evil laugh and threw the machine from fourth to sixth gear. Taking one quick last look at Phyllis's green ballooning cheeks and bulging eyes, I hurled myself to the floor of the basket. But for the lucky combination of a weak stomach, moderately good reflexes, and a working knowledge of centrifugal force, I'd have been a goner. At every violent spin of the basket Phyllis threw up. Crouched on the floor and peering out like a caged animal through the wire mesh, I could see people on the ground fleeing madly away from the Octopus in all directions, attempting to escape the carnival version of acid rain. Once out of Phyllis's range, they turned and tried to make out the identity of the persons in the offending basket. It was embarrassing. Besides feeling faintly green by now myself, I particularly dreaded being recognized when Phyllis and I emerged from the cage after the ride. Phyllis was so nice about the whole affair though, and offered to buy me a hot dog right after this adventure. So long, suave and debonair !

To make that year's carnival complete, Petee Hegler, Dave and me didn't waste any more money on the Octopus, the Sword Swallower, or the Tattooed man. We had a mission on our minds. On the carnival's midway there was a tent featuring a beautiful wicked lady who purportedly danced around on a stage with all her clothes off. If there was anything we felt a compelling need to see at that time of our lives, it was a beautiful dancing woman with all her clothes off. We didn't even care if she danced. She could just stand there an chew gum, as long as she did it with her clothes off.

Nowadays seeing a naked lady is not big deal to any kid old enough to surf the web or toddle past a newsstand, but to us, it was a glimpse of the other side of the moon !! To us, female anatomy was just a rumor we hoped was true. And now was our chance to find out!

Alas, the barker at the tent said absolutely no children allowed. Adults only. Guards were posted at all corners of the tent, he said, to prevent youngsters from sneaking in and getting their brains petrified by the worldly sights inside. We decided to try our luck anyway. "How much?" we asked the ticket seller. "Two bits --- the line forms to the right men." Inside the tent, we squeezed into the bleachers with the other men. The tent lights dimmed, music honked from the loudspeakers, and the ratty stage curtain rattled open. The crowd tensed, twittered, tested its leers.

But what was this !!!! The lady had danced onto the stage alright, but she was wearing about ten layers of clothes !!! Our bewildered eyeballs settled back into their sockets, and we blinked for the first time in five minutes. In sullen silence, we watched the lady twist and twirl about the stage, not that easy for someone dressed like an Arctic explorer. Suddenly, with a flick of her finger, the outside layer floated to the floor. So THIS was it !! She would take off the clothes !! This might be worth a quarter after all! The lady stopped dancing, the tent lights came up, and the barker and several of his henchman worked their way through the audience collecting the quarters for the "second act."

To us: "You men got any quarters."

You bet !!

By the eighth act, the farmers and loggers around us were shouting, stomping, and trying to whistle through dry lips. Only about two layers of clothes, three at the most, to go.

I extended a sweaty palm. "Loan me another quarter Pete." Petee's voice squeaked with panic: "I was gonna ask YOU for one!" "I ain't got none either", Dave squeaked.

The barker loomed in front of us. "Lets' have them quarters, men."

Wrenching our eyes away from the stage, we tried to plead with him, to beg . If he had even a shred of decency he would let us .. !!

"Hey !! What you kids doing in here anyway ? This ain't no kinder show for kids. Wanna get your brains petrified? Clear out and NOW !"

We shuffled glumly out of the tent into the harsh afternoon sun, flat broke, without so much as a dime left for a cotton candy. The veil had almost lifted for us on the wondrous mystery of female anatomy, but then had slammed back down with a steely thud. For three measly quarters more, we could have matured ten years in that tent.

Every fourth of July my Uncle, Lars Gustafson, would show up at our camp with eight or ten boxes crammed with a delicious variety of high explosive fireworks. Fireworks far beyond the technology of those we could make ourselves. One thing about Lars, was that Lars knew how to celebrate the Fourth. "How can he afford all those expensive fireworks?" my Mom asked my Dad one memorable Fourth. "Maybe he's given up drinking." "It's possible" my Dad replied. "I read the other day where hell itself had just frozen over."

Several of our relatives and friends always showed up to watch Uncle Lar's fireworks display at the lake. A gargantuan picnic supper was spread on tables and blankets across our lawn, and everybody sat there and ate and watched Lars ignite his arsenal on the driveway, the rockets arcing up and bursting into fiery blossoms over the hayfield. Part of my uncle's showmanship consisted of assuming an air of great gravity as he lit each fuse and then dashing madly back to savor the cries of "ooooooohhhhh. Look at that one." This maneuver also gave him a quick shot at his hip flask of Yukon Jack, while the audience was distracted. Uncle Lar's degree of intoxication thus paralleled the increasing size of the rockets. As my father observed, watching as Lars breathed alcohol while wildly stabbing a glowing punk at a rocket fuse, one never knew which was going to be shot off ---- the rocket, Lars, or both.

At the culmination of the fireworks extravaganza, Uncle Lars staggered forth with a rocket that looked as if it could bring down a B-52. It was a squat, ugly green projectile, armed with multiple warheads, three in all, each only slightly smaller than a tennis ball. "Oh my !!" Spectators cried. "Be careful Lars !!!" Uncle Lars proudly placed the monster on the old picnic table he used for a launching pad. In his usual fashion at this stage of the evening, he grappled with the rocket for several breathless seconds in his efforts to get the glowing punk in contact with the fuse. At last succeeding, he turned, bowed to the applauding spectators, and said "Tuh -- Taaaaaaaa !!!" Then he tripped and fell flat, accidentally kicking the leg of the picnic table. The rocket toppled over, its warheads covering the startled picnickers like the guns of the James Gang. A second later, the rocket went off with a POW !!! WOOSH !!! Like a cruise missile during the Gulf War, the screaming warhead streaked over the prostrate Lars and exploded in rapid sequence at ground zero.

In ringing silence, the clouds of smoke slowly rose and drifted away, revealing a desolate scene: potato salad strewn about, smoldering rocket confetti fluttering into the remains of the strawberry shortcake, half-eaten pieces of fried chicken scattered hither and yon, Aunt Fredulie's lasagna hanging from tree branches. Fortunately, no one was hurt. This was due to the prompt and orderly fashion in which the yard was evacuated by my father. The orderliness, perhaps, did not amount to all that much, but the promptness is what stands out in my memory. I am still moved by so many family friends and relatives rising as a single unit and flying for cover like a glob of humanity fired from a giant slingshot, prestretched and hung on a hair trigger. Although the immediate impression after was one of togetherness, participants in the event later recalled the spirit of the moment as being that of every man, woman, and child for himself. One thing I recall vividly was Bob Moffat, a next door neighbor, jumping over his fence with a ham sandwich still in his mouth.

The next fourth of July, Lars was forced to set off his fireworks display a hundred yards out in the hay field. Even then the spectators did not feel entirely safe, but as Aunt Fredulie pointed out, they would have much more room to get evacuation traction.

A Fourth incident a little more serious (lost me a finger on my left hand) involved a croquet ball and sewer pipe cannon. Petee and I decided that our homemade firecrackers were getting a little mundane, and decided to make the customary upgrade to a cannon. We settled on a four inch ceramic sewer pipe for the barrel, and plugged one end off with a concrete cap, with a small hole drilled in the rear of the pipe for a fuse. In our search for a steel cannonball which would fit snugly we failed miserably. What we did procure however, was a croquet ball which fit a touch snugly, but was possible, with enough impact adjustment, to force it down the barrel with a rod and a hammer. We made the gun carriage out of a baby carriage from the town dump. The day before the Fourth, we mixed up about two pounds of 75 15 10, inserted the fuse, and after charging the propellant, jammed the cannonball down the muzzle of the sewer pipe. We got carried away with our enthusiasm over modern ballistics, and decided to test it out the day before the Fourth if it worked we would just charge it up again !!!! I put on my fur trader's mountain voyager cap with the beaver tail, and left with Petee who by this time was starting to exhibit a little nervousness with the situation at hand. We decided that the local golf course would be a good location for our first shot, and few people would see us pushing the baby carriage through town that way. We arrived at the 9th hole about one in the afternoon, and sighted our cannon in on the flag from about one hundred yards distant. We lit the fuse, and ducked behind a bank in a sand trap awaiting the report of the cannon. Nothing. Waiting about thirty seconds, I stood up and walked toward the cannon to ascertain what our problem could be. The second I stood up, the cannon discharged, or should I perhaps use the term "exploded". Later we heard that all the livestock within a five mile radius sprang two feet in the air and darted about in all directions at that altitude. Apples rained off distant trees on the golf course. Three golfers swore off drink, and two atheists were converted to religion. My own interpretation was that I had just been struck by a meteorite or lightning. When my vision cleared, I knew Petee and I were in trouble. My left hand was a bloody mess, and smoking debris from the carriage and cannon was everywhere: all except the croquet ball which probably vaporized. Time stood still. After what seemed like an eternity, our local constable Tommy McMillan pulled up in a police car. " You boys know anything about an explosion hereabouts?". "No sir, Mr. McMillan". "Well, you had better jump in the car and we'll go get that hand looked at." "Oh by the way boys" Tommy said, pointing at my smoking hat, "I'm really sorry about your dog." I'm sure it was a coincidence, but later that summer the "Atikokan Progress", the local paper had a little blurb about damage to a pump caused by a croquet ball jamming in the impeller of the pump ....... Little Falls, the town reservoir was two miles distant from the golf course, but I still wonder ....

Those late, great Fourths are gone forever now, leaving Sharron and I with only the memories, not to mention missing fingers and a dozen scars. We discovered too late that pyrotechnics are best left to the experts. It's probably just as well. I even yelled at a few kids visiting our place during last year's Michigamme Fourth "Be careful with those sparklers !!!!! Don't hold them too close to your face. Watch out !!! You want to look like a little cinder ???" It seemed the least I could do to stir up a little excitement.