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Show Saving for the Fourth Old-time-- Recalls Limited j Firecrackers of His Youth JCT9KHIS was about th" fc-V-Y 'JL ,ime when 1 wa" Vjj-J V: '-'"'-vl growing up, when us JKT? fellers 'd begin to gure on how wo 3 were going to grab ,iBi out a cw pacs H 1. firecrackers for th ra 1 .-, Fourtu of July." - 'KV-'.BP''' Jo f: served Mr. Faltipose vBkp j . J to a New York Sua fest "The y !l"s sters V -Jo'Qj growing up now & sQjCJPIr days don't know anything any-thing about the plans and schemes the tykes of another generation bad to work to have any fun. The parents of most of the young "uns of to-day stake them to about all of the Fourth of July firecrackers they need and can use, but only the extremely opulent parents of my growing-up period did anything so reckless as disbursing real money to provide for the amuse-ment amuse-ment of their progeny, and most of us had to cook up some kind of a dodge to get our own firecrackers. "At that day, too. firecrackers were ten cents a pack, whereas in recent years I've seen em sold for as low as two packs for a nickel a heap of difference dif-ference in those figures to a boy ambitious am-bitious to get all the noise that he can out of his money. They were three packs for a quarter then and three packs were usually as many as we ever dreamed of. We bad to sort o' nurse our firecrackers along, you see, and stretch 'em out through the long long day. The first time I ever saw a boy fire off a whole pack of firecrackers fire-crackers at once he was a Fauntle-royish Fauntle-royish kid let of the rich in our town I was so profoundly impressed with m the barbaric lavishuess of the per-' formance that I could hardly get over it. "But we had the nursing of our small supply of firecrackers down to a fine art. We'd crawl out of bed just about the rosy hour of dawn on Fourth of July morning and repair to an old disused cistern, covered over, antt with a heavy rock on the planks to hold 'em down, and we'd begin oor celebrating there. There wasn't any kick from the older folk about the "Ge-mun-ently, but how fine that first pack of firecrackers, when stripped of its smooth red paper covering, cov-ering, did look in the light of the dawn of those old Fourth of July mornings! early morning racket. "Specially the green and yellow firecrackers that were fastened, one of each, to each package. We'd always save the green and yellow ones till the very last, for every boy knows pcr- 3 We'd Fire a Few Firecrackers Under the Tin Wash-Basin. fectly well that the green and yellow ones made a terrible lot more noiiw than the red ones. Nobody ever told us that, hut we just naturally knew it. "Well, after setting off three or four out there on the old cistern very stingily, and with the idea of making 'em last just as long as possible we'd get the tin wash basin that rested on the bench back of the kitchen and that the whole family washed In of mornings; morn-ings; and we'd fire a few firecracker tinder the tin wash basin, so as to get fuli action 011 the noise. "The day after the Fourth of July was always a day of enormous gloom for us fellers, just like the day after the circus. We took a melancholy pleasure in trotting around the ruins of the vanished circus ring on the day after the circus, and on the day after the Fourth of July we'd extract the same kind of dreary pleasure in scouting scout-ing around among the ruins of the firecrackers that had been let off 00 the great day, trying to pick up one here and there that had failed to go off. Once in a great while we'd actually ac-tually pick up a whole firecracker that had been accidentally dropped on the day before. "And say, right now. to-day, I wouldn't have half so much fun 1b f picking up a bright new $20 gold piece j 1 on my way to the- office as 1 did od a few occasions on the day after the Fourth of July when I came upon a sure-enough alive ami charged firecracker fire-cracker II:;. t ha! got lost out of the da H |
