Ludlow Kissel and the Dago Bomb that Struck Back

I threaded my way through the midtown, midday sidewalk traffic that eddied and surged over and around the clutter of construction paraphernalia. It was desperately hot. My wash-and-wear suit clung to me like some rancid, scratchy extension of my clammy skin. All around me New York was busily, roaringly, endlessly rebuilding itself, like some giant phoenix rising from the red-hot ashes of its dead self. New York's incurable Edifice Complex blooms mightily in midsummer.

Feverishly, I scuttled through shimmering waves of asphalt-scented heat toward the cool, dark, expensive decadence of my favorite French restaurant, Les Misérables du Frites, little realizing that in another split second I was about to savor one of the truly secret subterranean pleasures of the human soul. Elbowing my way into a hunched line of prickly-heated city dwellers plodding single file over a long-planked gangway, tightly jammed between an enormous excavation and a line of throbbing, bright-orange engines of construction, I saw ahead of me a short, stout lady wearing a damp flowered dress, clutching a Bonwit Teller shopping bag in both hands. Ducking her head low, she ran interference for me and those behind me through the wall of ringing sound and metallic heat.

I had reached perhaps the mid-point of the plank gangway, breathing shallowly the rising clouds of cement dust and carbon monoxide fumes—a subtle mixture that forms one of the more insidious anesthetics yet devised, dulling the senses and clouding the soul—and then it happened. It was more felt, at first, than heard—a long, low concussion pushing up suddenly from the gut and exploding in the brain like a giant comber on the beach of some lost, forgotten sea:

KAARRROOOMMM!

For a split second the great concussion hung in mid-air and then, unthinkingly, my long-dormant GI reflexes galvanizing into motion, I hurled myself to the clapboards, digging in as I landed. It was a direct hit! I clung to the boards, waiting for the second round of the bracket, which should come, I hastily calculated, off to my right. Suddenly I became aware of an insistent rapping on the back of my neck, as an elderly citizen behind me croaked:

"Get up, you bum! If you're going to sleep on the sidewalk, at least find a doorway!"

He stepped over me and sheepishly I regained my feet. Up and down the line I saw other ex-GIs brushing themselves off and once again moving forward in the unending stream of 20th Century man, bound for God knows where. I peered down through the haze of the great canyon of excavation that lay just beyond the barricades. And then I smelled it—the acrid, faint, familiar, naggingly pleasant scent of dynamite!

Minutes later I sat pensively at a tiny corner table of Les Misérables, waiting for my luncheon date to arrive and vaguely conscious of an indefinable sense of nostalgic euphoria. It had started immediately after the blasting operation at the construction site. As I sipped my drink, I found myself musing about the first time I had heard that primal, soul-satisfying roar of exploding black powder. And then it hit me. I knew what had sparked those mingled tinglings of regret and exhilaration. The Fourth of July! It had crept up on tiny cats' feet—unnoticed, unsung, unbombarded. Tomorrow was the Fourth of July! In just a few hours it would be the glorious Fourth, and here I was without so much as a sparkler to my name. I ordered another drink and settled down deeper into my eider-down bed of remembrances. The northern Indiana landscape of my youth began to take form amid the bottles behind the mirrored bar. Somewhere off in the distance, the construction crew set off another dull, thumping blast that jiggled the silverware on my table, and it all began to come back.

Dynamite, heat and excitement were all intermingled in that Fourth of July ritual that has long since departed. What is there about a solid, molar-rattling explosion that sends the blood coursing and brings the roses to our cheeks? Nowhere was this indescribable pleasure more honored and indulged than in the mill towns of Indiana. I remember guys sitting on their front porches, lighting sticks of dynamite—real dynamite—and tossing them out into the street, just for kicks. They"d sit rocking back and forth in the swing, snapping dynamite sticks, which come about six inches long, like breaking off a chunk of a Baby Ruth candy bar. Scotch-taping a little fuse on the end, they'd raise it with suitable flourishes to their cigar butts—bbzzzzzzzzz—hold it aloft for a split second, flip it back by the garage, and dive for the floor.

KKAAAABBBOOOOOOMM!!

Windows would shatter, crockery would crash for blocks around, old ladies would be hurled into the bushes, but no one seemed to care. After all, the Fourth is the Fourth.

Dynamite was the staff of life to the average hillbilly of the day. He celebrated with it, feuded with it—even fished with it. The sporting instinct runs strong in the hills. When the fishing season would open, the river would literally be aboil with TNT.

POOOOOOOOOOMMMM!

The air for miles around would be filled with catfish, hundreds of the sporting elite fielding them with bushel baskets.

The more civilized celebrants of the Fourth, however, blew their relief checks in an orgy of buying at the fireworks stand. The fireworks stand. Even setting the words down on the page causes my hand to tremble and my brow to dampen in delicious fear—the sort of fear that only a kid who has lit a five-incher under a Carnation Milk can and hurled himself prone upon the earth awaiting the end can know. Cradled in the palm of the hand, the five-incher—a hard, cool, rocklike cylinder of sinister jade green topped by a vicious red fuse—was a thing of cruel beauty. And that was only a five-incher. Fireworks in those days came in even more lethal and exotic varieties. None, however, was more potent, more awesome, than the ne plus ultra of the fireworks world—the Dago bomb. (This was never construed as an anti-Italian name, by the way, being more pro than anything else.) A thing of exquisite symmetry, it came in four sizes: the five-inch, the eight-inch, the ten-inch and the sure death. In more effete circles it was known as an "aerial bomb," but among real fireworks fans it was most often known as "the Dago heister." It actually looked like those giant nonexistent firecrackers that occasionally show up in cartoons—a red, white and blue tube with a wooden base stained dark green, and a long red fuse.

Theoretically, this infernal machine was to be lit by an expert hand. It would then explode with the first, or lesser, explosion, which propelled an aerial charge of pure white TNT into the ambient air, theoretically vertical, for several hundred feet, and then—devastation!—not once, but several times, depending on the size of the bomb. It was not cheap, the smallest going for fifty cents and the largest for around three dollars, which in the days of the Depression was truly a capital investment. The mere sight of one of the larger specimens on the shelves of a fireworks stand sent waves of awe and excitement through the sparkler buyers. It was truly the big time.

It was a Dago bomb that played a key role in the legend that was Ludlow Kissel. Kissel found his true raison d'être in the Depression itself. He worked in idleness the way artists work in clay or marble. He was a true child of his time. He was also a magnificent souse. The word "alcoholic" had not yet come into common usage, at least not in the steel towns of Indiana. Nor were there any pompous Freudian explanations for the insatiable thirst that Kissel nourished. He was a drunk, and that's all there was to it. He just liked the stuff, and glommed onto it whenever the occasion demanded—which was always. And if the store-boughten variety of lightning was not available, he concocted his own—using raisins, apricots, Fleischmann's yeast, molasses and dead flies.

Nominally, Kissel worked in the roundhouse at the steel mill, and for over 30 years had been on "the extra board," being called only in extreme emergencies, which occurred roughly once every other month or so. He invariably celebrated a day of work by holing up in the Bluebird Bar and Grill for perhaps a week, and then would return home, propelling himself painfully forward on one foot and one knee. It took him sometimes upwards of three hours to make it from the street to the back porch. At three A.M., lying in my bedroom, it was kind of comforting to hear Mr. Kissel struggling up the steps of his back porch, inching painfully step by step:

Thump (One).

Long pause ...

Thump (Two).

Longer pause ...

Thump (Three in a row!).

A split-second pause, then ...

Bump Bump Bump K-Thump!

He's back at the bottom.

Many's the time I was lulled to sleep by this inspiring drumbeat of dauntless human endeavor braving overwhelming odds: Kissel trying to make the kitchen door. And then the voice of Mrs. Kissel, a large, flower-print-aproned lady who read True Romance voraciously, would call out:

"Watch the steps, Ludlow. They're tricky." She loved him.

Kissel, one Fourth of July, played a leading role in a patriotic tableau that is even today spoken of in hushed, reverential tones throughout the Midwest. It was a particularly steamy, hellishly hot July. The houseflies clung to the screen doors and the mosquitoes hummed in great swarming clouds among the poplar trees. It was in such weather that Kissel reachied his apogee. There was something about the birds and the bees and the hot sun that kindled Kissel's blood and stoked an insatiable thirst for the healing grape. His stocky, overalled figure reeling through the twilight, leaving a wake of flickering fireflies, was as much a part of the summer landscape as the full golden moon. Parishioners sprinkling their lawns would nod familiarly to him as he wove through the fine spray of the brass nozzles.

The fateful Fourth in question dawned hot and junglelike, with an overhang of black, lacy storm clouds. A few warm, immense drops splattered down through the dawn haze. I know, because I was up and ready for action. Few kids slept late on the Fourth. Even as the stars were disappearing and the sun was edging over Lake Michigan, the first cherry bombs rent the stillness and the first little old ladies dialed the police. (continued on page 154)Ludlow Kissel(continued from page 74) Carbide cannons that had gathered dust in basements for a year roared out, greeting the dawn. By seven A.M. the first dozen pairs of eyebrows were blackened and singed, and already the wounded were being buttered with Unguentine and sent back into the fray. The sun rose higher and higher; the asphalt began to simmer quietly and stick to the tires and tennis shoes of the passing throngs. Lilac bushes drooped fragrantly and the cicadas buzzed in the cottonwoods. And through it all the steady, rolling salvos of exploding teninchers, in counterpoint to the machinegun fusillade of Chinese firecrackers, paid homage to our War of Independence.

As the day wore on, the barrage grew steadily louder; but Kissel had not yet made his appearance. He was undoubtedly stoking his private furnace in preparation for his own pyrotechnical piéce de résistance—which, when it came, was well worth waiting for. Little did we realize that we were shortly to be the observers of a scene that would be recounted around warm hearths through the long winter months of years to come.

Up in Chicago, the White Sox and the St. Louis Browns had worked their way painfully into the top of the third of the first game, a scoreless tie, when Kissel appeared on the shimmering horizon, weaving spectacularly and carrying a large paper bag with the painstaking care of which only a totally committed drunk is capable. At first no one paid much attention to the struggling figure as it inched its way from lamppost to fireplug. Little girls burned sparklers on porches, and I was carefully depleating a string of Chinese ladyfingers. These are tiny firecrackers with pleated fuses, all woven together, and designed for the rich and profligate to fire off simultaneously by simply lighting the main fuse. No kid in his right mind ever did that, of course; instead, we carefully disengaged them and fired them off one by one—under garbage cans, on porches and behind dogs. My mother, at regular intervals, called from the kitchen window the Fourth of July litany of all mothers:

"You're going to lose an eye if you're not careful!" This was, of course, purely ritualistic, and was only a minor annoyance. Bruner had already suffered a flesh wound of a routine nature: His right hand was swathed in grease-soaked gauze, heroic proof that he could hold a three-incher in his hand when it went off and still survive. He was now back on the scene, working as a lefty.

In short, it was a Fourth like any other, up to the moment Kissel lurched to a halt in the middle of the street, reached into his paper bag—and pulled out the most sinister, the most awe-inspiring Dago bomb ever seen in northern Indiana. It was a thing of truly prodigious stature, being fully a foot and a half high and a good three inches in diameter, and it was the first all-black Dago bomb anyone had ever seen. Startled faces appeared at windows; sparklers flickered out for blocks around; kids started converging from woodsheds, tree houses and vacant lots, gathering around Kissel in a growing circle—at a respectful distance. With the maddening deliberation of the perpetually fogbound, Kissel laboriously positioned the black beauty dead in the center of the asphalt roadway and stood back to survey the scene, weaving slightly. The crowd drew back and watched silently, excitement hanging over the multitude in a thin blue haze. The ebony monster stood bolt upright and aloof. Waves of heat from the pavement caused the scene to take on a strange, shimmering unreality. Only the dull grunts of distant cannonading broke the stillness. The skies overhead were gray and threatening.

Kissel, at stage center, struggled to find a match—the way drunks invariably do, going through pocket after pocket after pocket fumblingly, finding only pencil stubs and brass keys. It seemed to go on forever, until finally a tense onlooker stepped forward with a book of matches. Kissel took it gravely, paused for a moment, and then belched—a deep, round, satisfying, shuddering burp of the sort that can come only from a vast internal lake of green beer. The crowd applauded and shifted impatiently, all eyes riveted on the dull black menace that stood with such dignity in the center of the road.

Finally he struck a match; instantly, it went out. He struck another. It, too, flickered and died. And another, and another. The audience grew restive, but no one dared to leave. In fact, more viewers of this historic event were arriving by the minute. Kissel, as is so often the case with the serious drunk, seemed totally unaware of the drama he was creating, and with furrowed concentration continued to struggle with the matchbook, lighting match after match. Suddenly, out of the crowd, a kid darted, an experienced detonator of high explosives; shoving into Kissel's palsied hand a stick of briskly smoldering punk, he turned and scurried back into the throng—and into the pages of local folk history. Thinking at first that he had been given a cigar, Kissel gazed at it numbly for a moment and then dimly perceived that here was the means of lighting the fuse of the colossal Dago bomb.

Shuffling forward, punk in hand, he made several futile passes at the fuse. With each lunge the crowd retreated, and then, with the inevitability of Greek drama, in the taut silence, the telltale hiss sounded forth clear and unmistakable. The assemblage rolled back in a mighty wave, then turned and waited, cringing—while Kissel, unaware that the fuse was lit, continued to fumble at it with his punk. Someone called out:

"Hey, Kissel, for God sake, it's lit!"

Kissel raised his head questioningly and said:

"What's lit?"

Time was growing short. Kissel didn't budge. The fuse was disappearing. Then, suddenly and without warning, the ominous hissing stopped. Fuses had been known to lie dormant like this for hours, seemingly extinguished—and then...

Oblivious, Kissel continued his labors with the punk. A moment later the treacherous fuse, in its unpredictable way, began to hiss frantically. Seeing at last that the monster was lit, Kissel began his getaway. Reeling in a half circle, befuddled, trailing punk smoke, he staggered forward—and knocked the black monster over on its side, still hissing fiercely, and only seconds remaining!

The crowd, seeing disaster unreeling before its eyes, hit the dirt en masse. Those on the fringes dove into the bushes; others simply moaned piteously and dug in. It was good training, as events turned out, for later years. The Dago bomb lay on its side, its ugly snout aimed at the houses that stood 200 feet or so away. Cooler members of the mob shouted to those in the houses:

"Look out, it's coming! Close your windows!"

The fuse sputtered on. Kissel himself, now aware of the nature of the rapidly approaching catastrophe, made a courageous but futile attempt to right the bomb. Someone yelled: "Get down, Kissel, you'll get killed!" He fell over backward and lay flattened on the asphalt, waiting for the call of his Maker.

And then it happened. With a stinging, shuddering report, the black monster propelled its deadly cartridge of dynamite out along the earth in a skipping, sizzling, screaming horizontal trajectory that struck terror into the very marrow of the bones of those fortunate enough to be on the scene. Parting spectators like the Red Sea, it skimmed over the sidewalk, across the lawn and, with a whistling sizzle, zoomed under Kissel's front porch. For a long, pregnant moment the universe stood still. Fingernails clawed the earth; heads burrowed into hedges. Then...

KAA-ROOOM!

The thunderous explosion rocked the neighborhood. The slats of Kissel's porch bellowed outward; its floor boards plunged instantly to the ground. A great yellow, swirling cloud of dust rose over the lilac bushes. Another eternity passed—perhaps three seconds—and then another, and louder, detonation thundered over the landscape:

KA-KAA-BAA-ROOOM!—this time caving in the rose trellis of the house next door. The crowd heaved and dug deeper as two more giant explosions—KAA-RAAA-BOOM! BOOM!—sounded almost as one, these two under Mr. Strickland's Pontiac. A heavy cloud of dust swirled for a moment and all was still, except for the pattering of the quiet raindrops—and oil from Mr. Strickland's crankcase.

Kissel slowly pulled himself to his knees and made his statement, which has become part of the legend:

"My God, what a doozy!"

He had said it for all of us. As the crowd got slowly to its feet amid the quiet tinkling of glass and the heavy, sensual smell of oxidized dynamite, they were hushed with awe; they knew they had been eyewitnesses to history.

• • •

I idly stirred my third bloody mary as off in the middle distance another muffled blast from the construction gang bloomphed and jiggled the bottles behind the bar. A passing cab sent a reflected shaft of light across the mirror behind the bar. It broke into a thousand colors amid the bottles, and subtly I was reminded of yet another historic moment in the annals of Fourth of July celebrations—my father's showdown with a Roman candle.

The Roman candle, a truly noble and inspired piece of the pyrotechnician's art, is a long, slender wand that spews forth colored, flaming balls that arch high into the midnight sky, one after the other, with magnificent effect. Held in the hand, it is one of the few pieces of fireworks that call for real talent and skill on the part of the operator. The Roman candle is graded according to the number of fireballs it can discharge, ranging from eight to, in some cases, as high as two dozen, but these are very rare and expensive. There are few experiences that rival for sheer unadulterated ecstasy the feel of a Roman candle in full bloom, launching its fireballs into the heavens with that distinctive PLOCK ... ssssssss ... PLOCK ... ssssssss ... PLOCK ... sound, and the slight recoil as each missile arches heavenward.

My father was unquestionably one of the great Roman-candle men of his time. That is, until that awful night when he met a Roman candle that was fully his match, if not more. He was so irresistibly drawn to fireworks that he actually became the proprietor of a fireworks stand—a unique commercial establishment that has, like the May fly, a short but very merry life. For those who have never seen a fireworks stand, a brief description would not be amiss. They were usually wooden stands, ex-roadside fruit dispensaries, festooned with red, white and blue bunting, over which was a large red-on-white sign reading simply Fireworks. And the shelves were lined with the greatest assortment of potent pleasure this side of the Biltmore bar.

Space does not allow a full enumeration of all these magnificent creations: the Mount Vesuvius, for example—a silver cone that when lit and placed on the ground spewed forth a glorious shower of gold, blue and white sparks high into the air, emulating the eruption of its namesake; the racks of slender, sinuous Roman candles of several calibers; and arsenals of Dago bombs, of course. And there were the cherry bombs—ah, what pristine, geometric, tensile beauty; perfect orbs of brilliant carmine red, packed chockablock with imminent destruction; and the torpedoes—malevolent weapons designed for hand-to-hand celebration.

Many a grown man today carries in his shins a peppering of tiny round pebbles sustained from too-close familiarity with this tiny terror. For the uninitiated I should explain that the torpedo was perhaps an inch high and a half inch in diameter, made to be hurled against a brick wall or a passing Hupmobile—a contact weapon of singular violence that showered its shrapnel—tiny rock fragments—over an area of 50 yards or more. But the lordly monarch of them all was the skyrocket. Skyrockets were available in a tantalizing variety of pay loads—from the tiny 25-cent variety, hardly larger than a five-incher, which was wired to a yellow pine stick topped with a red nose cone and made to be launched from an upright, empty quart milk bottle; up to the mammoth five-dollar rocket that stood a full four feet and was launched from a special angle iron and handled with extreme care—it being possible to bring down a DC-3 with the proper hand on the sights.

There were pinwheels, too, which came in many sizes and colors and could, if misused, be no less spectacularly disastrous. I personally saw one pinwheel climb right up the side of a garage, over the roof, and spin a block and a half down the alley before it finally fizzled out—after burning down 300 feet of fence and two chicken coops. There were many other fireworks of a lesser nature, such as red devils, which were a particularly unpleasant piece of business: red, paper-covered tablets designed to be scratched on the pavement or ground under your heel to a sputtering, hissing nastiness. They didn't explode, merely hissed and burned and gave stupendous hotfoots to anyone who happened to step on them. There were also prosaic firecrackers of all sizes and degrees of destructiveness, and sissified odds and ends for grandmothers, girls and smaller kids—sparklers, caps and those strange little aspirin-size tablets that when lit produced a long, sinuously climbing ash and were called "snakes." All of these and more my father dispensed over the counter at his fireworks stand on the state highway, where the heat waves rose and fell and the big-time spenders bought the stuff by the bagfuls for their blondes and their egos.

As the Fourth drew close, his stock of fireworks slowly dwindled until the day itself arrived. The outfit from which my father ordered the stuff wouldn't take any material back that wasn't sold, which meant that as the Fourth drew to a close, what was still left on the shelves was ours to detonate and revel in. It was the Depression, of course, and few families had more than a couple of dollars or so to spend on gunpowder, so our entire neighborhood would wait for our return from the closed stand on the last moments of the Fourth. About 11:30 P.M.—the sky above filled with bursting aerial bombs and skyrockets, the rattle of cherry bombs and musketry thrumming darkly in the distance—my father would say, "OK, let's close up," and immediately begin to load what was left of his 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.

When we arrived home on this particular Fourth, the neighbors were already standing on the porches and in driveways and lining the curbs and watching from windows. My father unpacked his weaponry in the vacant lot on the corner. Surrounded by his boxes of ammunition, he was a magnificent figure of a man—ten feet tall, at least—as he prepared to bombard the heavens on behalf of freedom and the Stars and Stripes.

An artist of pyrotechniques, he programed 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 fully five feet in length and two inches in diameter. He rose to his absolute fullness of artistic power when clutching one of these 24-ball beauties, 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.

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 silhouetting him against the night sky as he took out the two magnificent Roman candles that he had saved for last—the largest and most powerful of his arsenal. He was one of the few Roman-candle men who ever dared to fire two candles at once, using both hands simultaneously; timing each to alternate launching 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. Milking the moment theatrically for all it was worth, he lit both candles. The crowd surged forward. Then the first ball—PLOCK—arched green and sparkling from his left hand, high up over the telephone wires toward a distant cloud. PLOCK—his right hand spit a golden comet, even higher than the first. His timing was magnificent! PLOCK—the left hand shot a scarlet streak upward even higher. PLOCK—again the right hand. PLOCK PLOCK—now they were coming faster and faster as my old man picked up the beat, and the crowd sensed a performance in progress that was to become classical in its execution.

On the horizon flickered the lightning of a gathering summer storm. PLOCK—my father sent another ball blazing white into the northern skies. PLOCK—a blue one, this time toward the Big Dipper. PLOCK—a green arrow darted toward the moon. The audience swayed in unison as my father, both arms weaving magically, paid homage with his synchronized Roman candles to General Washington and the Continental Congress, to the Boston Tea Party and the Minutemen. It was almost midnight now and my father, displaying the bravura of a Roman-candle Beethoven, knew that he was down to the last three balls.

PLOCK—the right hand sent a yellow star blazing into the firmament. PLOCK—the left; but something was wrong. A few tiny sparks sizzled briefly from the mouth of the left-hand candle. He flicked the tube out and upward again; then, suddenly, without warning: K-TUNK! From the left-hand candle a flaming red ball emerged—but from the wrong end! The old man dodged aside, but it was too late. The ball skittered along his forearm, striking his elbow sharply, and disappeared into the short sleeve of his pongee sport shirt!

The crowd gasped, women screamed, children wailed, as my father imperturbably launched the final ball from his right hand toward the North Star. At that moment, the red ball reappeared between his shoulder blades, and his pongee shirt burst into spectacular flames. With a bellow he raced up the sidewalk, over the lawn and—trailing smoke and fire—disappeared into the house with a resounding slam of the screen door. After a brief second of silence, the sound of the shower could be heard going full blast from within the darkened house. Stunned for an instant, the crowd remained silent, then loosed a great roar of cheering and applause. They knew they had witnessed the finest performance of a great artist.

• • •

Outside Les Misérables in the clanging street, the blasting continued; the bottles rattled behind the bar. Raising what remained of my bloody mary, I said quietly to no one in particular:

"Well, here's to the Fourth."