Firecracker Workdays
Firecracker Workdays
I got a job with my friend Todd Mackowitz the summer after my freshman year in college. We sat by the side of the road in a waterproofed circus tent selling fireworks and watching the money roll in with the traffic that went down U.S. 19. Todd and I worked for seven days, and we did work. I mean, we sweated and lifted, and stayed awake to watch the inventory until we couldn’t pry our eyes open with the thought of lost cash, and one of us would drop off for a few hours in the Winnebago. We slept as solid-tired as a person can get while he’s making more money than God. That year the 4th of July was a firecracker Monday, and we had the time of our lives.
I guess we both looked like hicks that year. I had gotten a crew cut after my first day at work, and Todd had come back from M.I.T. with long scraggly hair and a beard that would have better suited someone called Bubba. I don’t know how he stood that much hair. It never got below ninety the entire week, and one hundred was not all that uncommon. The Winnebago we had out back had a cold shower; so we could clean up every five or so hours, but we were still always covered in sweat. Todd’s frame didn’t do much to refine his image either. He was about six two, even with his slouch, and had put on a lot of weight since high school. He had always looked like a big roly-poly baby. Now, well now he just looked big.
It hadn’t been easy to convince our parents to let us take the tent. They did have to co-sign on the contract that made Todd and me responsible for about twenty-thousand-dollars’ worth of multicolored explosives. Todd didn’t have much patience for parental lectures. He stormed and pouted, and scowled in a way only really big people can. I just tried to sit there and nod, agreeing with all the advice they gave us, while offering the pen and the dotted line. I don’t know which strategy worked, but it did. We got the stand, and the fireworks, and all the work we could handle.
It started out slow, a trickle, a steady pitter patter of traffic and money to let us know that the customers existed, and business built up and built up, until the day of the 4th when we sold everything but the bunting. The deal that year was a one thousand dollar base plus ten percent of everything sold. After graduating, when Todd had his own startup, he probably made that in ten minutes, but for two kids who were used to making $4.25 an hour, it was a fortune. The owner told us at the meeting, between bites of overstuffed tuna-salad sandwich, that each tent had to gross ten thousand for him to break even. We’d get the thousand plus ten percent of whatever we sold. We didn’t much believe the ten thousand in sales part, but for a minimum of five hundred dollars each we figured we could sit on our duffs for a week. It would be a nice slow summer job.
There weren’t many customers the first day or so, but we sure weren’t sitting on our duffs. We picked up the Winnebago at the central office, then followed the directions the company gave us to a big red and white circus tent set up in the only vacant lot you’ll ever see on U.S. 19. The grass was up to our waists. Every rat, snake, ant, and gopher that had ever been chased off the side of the highway by the march of civilization seemed to have found its way into this one remaining patch of suburban grassland, and every species of plant followed just for good measure. The fireworks company had left us a rusted John Deere push mower to clear the lot.
Luckily for us, Todd’s father was a bit of a lawn nut. The Mackowitzs lived in a huge house on a tiny lot, but Mr. Mackowitz bought every kind of lawn and outdoor equipment possible. We ran the Winnebago up to the garbage and loaded up. Weed killer, bug zappers, fire ant poison, two heavy duty hedge trimmers, a spare generator, and a slightly dusty riding mower were carried off. There was also a drag cutter and a fertilizer/poison dispenser for the riding mower that we would have liked to have, but we couldn’t fit them through the door of the R.V.
Todd and I had always joked about one day gathering up all Mr. Mackowitz’s lawn equipment and clearing a path through the Everglades or Amazon; the first major wilderness expedition ever to be equipped solely by forgotten yuppie toys. Todd’s father was never particularly fond of the comments when we were younger, but he seemed to remember them quite affectionately now that we had actually found a use for his industrial strength insect repellent. He’d stop by the tent periodically, repeating our old stories and pulling out middle school yearbooks that he just happened to have found along with the extra-everything-proof extension cords.
“I thought you might have forgotten these,” he said.
We were about two-thirds done with the field when the fireworks truck pulled up. Todd had gone to pick up dinner, and I was sending the mower over yet another fire ant mound as the flamingo pink delivery truck rumbled and bounced over an uncleared section of field. It was a hell of a sight, a neon bright semi roaring down U.S. 19, then turning abruptly into the field as the driver saw the tent. The driver’s name was Yvon, and he had much to deliver.
“I think all these boxes are yours,” Yvon said.
The inventory list was simple enough, same as the one we had picked up at the organizational meeting: ladders, fire extinguishers, tables, and runner lights, a cash register, plastic baskets, red-white-and-blue streamers and bunting, extension cords, no smoking signs, paper bags, and fireworks, lots and lots of fireworks.
There were two pages listing the types of explosive: Happy Festivals, Happy Firekings, Number Three Sparklers, Morning Glories, Number Six Smoke Bombs, Large Fountains, Small Fountains, Large Assortment, Small Assortment, TNT trays - it went on and on, dozens of types of fireworks. On the list, these items were in plain and simple English, but when we went to find the actual items, all the cases were printed in Chinese, and neither Yvon, nor I read Chinese.
Todd arrived back about twenty minutes after the semi, with Big Macs for both of us, and a couple of extra orders of fries, which we gave Yvon. Yvon still didn’t seem too pleased about having to stay and sort out the delivery, but he thanked us for the fries, and his complaints were mostly about having to drive such an ugly truck.
Our first customer stopped by while we were still trying to figure out what a Blue Bird Star was, and if we had in fact received any. A man in a business suit stepped out of a sports car that had somehow negotiated the smoother sections of the field.
“You guys selling fireworks?”
“Well, we’re not exactly set up yet” Todd started, but Yvon interrupted, saying he would go and get us the price list; the owner had sent it along with some other paperwork.
We talked with the man in the suit while Yvon hunted for the paperwork. He was from Georgia, “a traveling representative for a chemical company I’m proud to say is doing better and better all the time, despite all the unfair European competition.”
The man was driving back to Georgia today, going home to see his daughter in Savannah. He wanted to bring her some fireworks for the Fourth of July. It was illegal to buy them in Georgia, so she’d never seen them up close, never even seen the small ones at all. The man wanted to show her what it was like when he was a kid and could set fire to the whole sky.
Yvon came back with the price list. There, the names of each firework were written out in English and Chinese, a little sketch of the product beside the name and price. We didn’t have change yet; so the man just handed us a fifty, and took the biggest assortment bag we had.
We finished the inventory that day, using the Chinese names on the price list to identify each case of Rebel Sirens and Blue Bird Stars. By sunset we had unloaded, counted, and priced about a thousand pounds of gunpowder and colored paper. We were as hot and tired as you could ever want to be, but we had made our first profit before even opening.
We strung up the lights inside the tent that evening, and we set up a few displays, but that was enough work for the night. There was a bar out across the other side of the field, up against Water Street. It was called Clarence’s. Most of the vehicles we saw pull up into the place were Harleys, and the riders didn’t look like they’d be too fond of college kids, so we let that one go.
Our other immediate neighbors were a used car dealership, a Stuckies, and a supermarket complex across the street. That only was to be expected since U.S. 19 was the elephant burial ground for supermarkets, fast food restaurants, and used car lots. The occasional gas station was thrown in just for aesthetic balance, but Texacos didn’t have much appeal to us either at the time. We really couldn’t go off and leave the tent unattended anyway. We just kicked back and had a couple of warm Pepsis.
The gas level in the generator seemed okay, so we kept all the lights on for a while. The folks at Clarence’s were whooping it up, and the sound of breaking glass regularly tinkled across the small space between us. A fight wandered out into the edge of the field every once and a while, but for the most part, they seemed to be keeping to their side of the property. We wanted to leave the lights on all night, but the Florida mosquitos were fond of the brightness. After losing about a pint of blood we shut off everything but the bug zapper.
Todd and I stayed up talking for a while. We hadn’t heard much from each other during the school year. Both of us were trying to forget about high school as quickly as possible, I guess. Todd said he had settled into M.I.T. quite well. The freshman dorms had been full, so he volunteered to take a row house in the city. He and his housemates had become pretty good friends. Todd’s father had sent them a lawn mower as a housewarming present.
Both Todd and I had girlfriends who had stayed at college for the summer, and we rambled on about them for most of the remaining conversation. During the breaks we’d jibe each other about being whipped, and how in high school we laughed at John for never shutting up about Analisa. Todd mimed a walk with his left foot dragging behind like he was pulling a ball and chain. I nodded smiling, and we both went on some more about how we’d like to head back to college as soon as this job was over.
Our blabbing was disturbed by the sound of one of the tent flaps being pulled up. There were some whispered voices outside, and someone was poking their head under the raised part of the tent. We clicked on the main lights, and the flap went back down. We kept the lights on after that.
When the mosquitoes became overwhelming, we retreated to the Winnebago, We kept the flaps up on the back of the tent so we could still see in through the camper’s side windows. I had just about nodded off when we heard another noise from the tent, this time a crash. The head that had poked in earlier was now visible as a full-bodied, ten-or-twelve-year-old kid, who along with a couple of other boys was trying to run off with a case of Jumping Cats.
Todd stepped out into the tent and yelled “Hey” in his best gruff voice. The kids dropped the case and scurried back out under the edge of the tent. We got out of the Winnebago and pulled all the unpacked cases in towards the center of the tent, finishing about ten minutes before the would-be thieves came back.
Two of them held up the flap this time. A third dashed in, grabbed a package near the edge, and dashed back out yelling yee-haw, taking off as fast as his twelve year old legs would carry him. I gave a token chase for a few seconds, stopping to laugh when they were a bit beyond. They just kept running across that field and into the darkness, carrying a box of packing paper and other bits of trash out toward Water Street. Todd and I laughed ourselves to sleep that night. All our inventory was still there the next morning.
We got up when the sun woke us, and we started back to work while it was still slightly cool. My sister and some of her friends stopped by to visit the next day while we were setting up the displays. Chris Bauck was with them. Chris had gone to St. Paul’s with my sister, the same grammar school Todd, I, and just about every relative I ever had, went to. But instead of going on to prep. schools or an honors program after finishing, Chris had become a small-time drug dealer in high school. He had worked his way up to being one of the more successful acid couriers in Tampa. He never used his own product, and he had saved up enough money to finance himself through an Ivy League education for when he retired.
The cops had busted him a couple of weeks ago. They couldn’t really prove anything since nothing was in his name, but they had confiscated two of his cars and all his money. That pretty much put him out of business. The long and the short of it was that he needed a job. We couldn’t pay him the type of money he was used to, but we said sure, we could use him for a couple of hours each day if he wanted to work cheap.
Chris said he’d stick around until something better came along, not too long he figured. The three of us went to work as my sister and company drove off. We set up the big stuff near the back: Flamingo Large Assortments, Rebel Rouser Large Trays, Twelve Inch Fountains, and Morning Glory finale pieces. The medium-sized fireworks we scattered around, and the small things we kept near the register. Smoke Balls, Fire Tops, and the like were right up front. We tried for as much color variety and geometric symmetry as possible in the set up, but the primary concern was always that nothing that could be pocketed was out of sight of the register.
We still had a few cases of fireworks left when all the tables were filled so we wrapped the red, white and blue bunting around the edges of the tables and then hid the extra boxes underneath. For the final touches we set up the cash register, and put the big pink Flamingo Fireworks sign out by the road. No one showed up for the first hour or so, and Chris offered to run things for a little while if we wanted to take off. Todd and I were overjoyed to take him up on his offer.
I used my time off to run home and get some books, and to get a haircut. My long-banged surfer cut was great for the beach, and had been quite a novelty my freshman year in Baltimore, but working in the tent, long bangs were just a pain in the neck. “Hack and slash” I told the barber, and I walked out running my hand back and forth across the odd, fuzzy texture of a crew cut.
Chris had done two hundred dollars in sales by the time we got back. He was amazing. Customers would come in, intent on just checking what the selection was this year. Within ten minutes Chris would have them convinced that buying fireworks was the most important thing they had done for their kids since conception. He did go a bit overboard at times.
When a woman who pulled up in a ’63 Chevy Nova with four kids in the back asked if we could take food stamps Chris tried to sell her a fifty-dollar Large Assortment bag. He figured we could use the food stamps for groceries and put our own cash back in the till. I told the woman to try the Kmart down the street. They had the same stuff as us for half the price. After that we tried to reserve Chris for Yuppies.
People hadn’t started coming in heavy numbers yet, but even on that first day we started to recognize certain standard customer types. First there were the kids. They rode up in packs, on BMX’s and Schwinns. Dumping their bikes in the grass, they would run wide-eyed into the tent, quite often ducking under tables and bunting instead of taking the time to walk around to the main entrance. They’d babble on to us about all the homemade explosives they had made by pouring together the contents of several fireworks. The kids always insisted their parents would be back to buy out the store later, while they themselves tried to pool enough nickels to buy a box of sparklers.
The parents of the BMX kids (Hell’s Cherubs as we’d labeled them) were easy to identify even when they weren’t surrounded by the urchins yelling “see see, over here.” They always had a long list of things they were supposed to buy, which, when asking, they pronounced in long haggard syllables.
“Do you have Ka-wi-san Fountains, or um, is there something called a Blas-er. . . Ma-ster, or something like that?”
We pointed them towards the Master Blasters in the back, and they would wander back, look at the price tags, ask us the price, then wander back toward the front to buy a Medium Assortment. If the cherubs had come along, the parents might be brow beaten into picking up a finale piece and a few Fire Tops. The BMX parents always left muttering about their kids.
The other kind of customers that really stood out immediately were wanderers from Clarence’s. They usually wore black Harley tee-shirts with the sleeves rolled up to reveal a series of tattoos that went all the way up their arms. Todd pointed it out to me if one of the tattoos was a spider web, and we made extra sure to be polite. The biker’s questions were usually pretty standardized.
“You guys got M-80s”?
“No, I’m sorry they don’t make M-80s anymore.”
“How ’bout bottle rockets, y’all got bottle rockets”?
“No, I’m sorry those are illegal in Florida. We can’t sell them.”
“Yea, but like I said, do you GOT bottle rockets”?
The bikers were dubious of a roadside tent that didn’t sell something illegal, but they usually bought a few items anyway. We would see the sparks and smoke when they set off the fireworks on the steps of Clarence’s. The characteristic red and yellow fireballs of a Morning Glory were spraying up the other side of the field when Denis, our area manager, pulled up.
I had met Denis briefly at the organizational meeting, just so we wouldn’t hand over our receipts to the wrong guy, but talking to him for any period of time was something I tried to avoid. Denis was a short man with a mustache and a smile like wax fruit. He never seemed to tire of talking about his job, and about his previous jobs, and how they didn’t appreciate his talents. Denis just never seemed tired of hearing himself speak.
“Hello guys. How’s it hang’n? Hired your first employee already I see. Got at least some customers already too. You’ve got to make sure they don’t set off any fireworks within a hundred feet of the tent, remember? Fire marshal could be all over us any second. How much have you got for me today”?
I handed over a deposit envelope containing the day’s sales.
“That’s great guys. I like how you have the tent set up by the way, but you should put some more of the fountains on the center table. Variety in presentation sells. That was true when I worked for Sears, and it’s true here, variety in presentation.”
Denis ran around the tent moving items from one table to the other. “See doesn’t this look better over here? I could have sold out the store at Fisher’s if they’d let me set things up right.” He looked under the bunting, knocking off some assortment bags as he did. “And you guys have got to get this extra inventory out. We can’t sell it if it’s not on display. Come on guys, I can’t do it all for you.”
Denis kept bouncing around from table to table, rearranging everything he saw and then putting it back to its original form. He looked like a kid who had eaten too much sugar.
“Crystal meth, must be,” Chris whispered under his breath.
Todd winced as Denis knocked over a box of sparklers and set them back up for the fifth time.
“Now if there’s anything you guys need, you just tell me. Do you need calculators? Because it’s going to get pretty busy in here you know, and you might want to have one guy add stuff up before people even get to the register. Here, look how much faster you can do stuff on a calculator. When I worked at Sears, I always used a calculator during the Christmas season. Would have saved the customers hours in line if they had listened to me and given them to everyone.”
A random load of fireworks was dropped on the front table and Denis pulled out his little pocket calculator.
“Go ahead, add it up on the register. I’ll beat you to it though. I guarantee I’ll beat you to it.”
Todd just looked down at the scattering of Miniature Fountains and Jumping Cats. “Twenty-nine eighty-five” he said and looked back up at Denis.
“What? What? There’s nothing in there that costs that much. Just a sec. Hey, aren’t you going to even try to keep up? And the grand total with tax is. . . let’s see, it comes to twenty-nine dollars and eighty-five cents.”
Todd nodded, a slightly bemused look lurking behind his voluminous beard.
“Todd’s good at math,” I explained.
“Yea, I guess he is,” Denis went on, “You kind of surprised me. I must admit I thought you looked like a bit of a Backwater Alex, but I guess you do have a few tricks up your sleeve. But, like I said, if there’s anything you need, you just tell me. I can get it for you. Is there anything you need”?
“We could use a couple more folding tables”, I cut in.
“Great, great, good thinking, that’s what I like. Folding tables, I’ll be sure to get them to you tomorrow. Now you guys get more variety in these displays, and I’ll have those tables out to you tomorrow. I saw a sign for dollar drafts at that bar across the way. Now I think I’m going to take the rest of the day off myself. I’d offer to buy you a drink, but I guess you guys aren’t legal yet. Well, I’ll make this deposit, and I’ll be sure to get you those tables tomorrow.”
Denis signed the receipt for our deposit, and headed back out of the tent, walking across the field towards Clarence’s. I had visions of him being hung from the ceiling by the collar of his fake Izod shirt, but if there were any incidents, they remained inside. Denis came back and collected his car in a few hours.
My sister and her friends had come back and picked up Chris while Denis was still in the bar. Things were quiet while Todd and I ran the stand. I started up on one of my paperbacks. Todd popped a Pogues tape in his boom box and sang along in an affected Irish accent until it was clear that no one else was going to buy fireworks that evening. We let the tent flaps down, took the cash register inside the Winnebago, and set empty Coke cans all around the edge of the tent as an improvised alarm system. They’d make a hell of a racket if someone tripped over them coming in. We slept in shifts that night. No intruder got past the cans.
Business was still slow the next day. We started to get the supermarket crowd, the mothers who picked up hot dogs and charcoal across the street, then figured they might as well finish all their shopping for the Fourth at our tent. The supermarket had a small fireworks display themselves. It wasn’t much in the way of variety or volume, but it served as a comparison for prices, and in that area we invariably lost.
To tell the truth, our prices were absurd. The same assortment bag that we sold for twenty dollars, the supermarket sold for ten. Smoke balls we had priced at thirty cents they sold for a dime. The strangest part of it all was that the company that owned our tent was the same company who sold to the distributors, who in turn sold to the supermarkets. If you considered a standard, eighty-percent markup at each step we figured our parent company must be making at least a thousand percent profit on an average smoke ball. Chris didn’t make that kind of profit on L.S.D. I didn’t think people were really going to buy much, but the company made money last year, so we figured they probably knew what they were doing.
We got a lot of complaints though.
“This is robbery. The place across the street has these things for half the price.”
“You guys are crazy. You’re never going to sell out your inventory with these prices.”
“I’ll come back on the Fourth when you are stuck with all this stuff and have to sell off quick.”
We explained each time that we did not set the prices. Any leftover inventory went back to the warehouse. They shook their heads. They said they’d see. Most bought some little bit or other that wasn’t available at the supermarket.
The parade of supermarket shoppers was steady through the morning and afternoon. We had gotten quite used to the comments about our prices. The cost of our smoke bombs was the most common complaint. All afternoon we didn’t sell a single smoke bomb to anyone with groceries.
Then, around six o’clock, a customer who was complaining about the price of our sparklers bought a bomb. She went on and on for a while about how overpriced we were. We gave our standard responses. When she was convinced that we really weren’t going to haggle, she grudgingly picked up a couple of smoke bombs.
“Well, I’ll take these anyway,” she said.
We figured she had probably missed the smoke bombs in the supermarket, and we were happy to have gotten rid of two of the things. They started selling pretty steadily after that. There wasn’t exactly a stampede, but smoke bombs were selling.
When I went across the street to pick up food for that evening’s dinner, I found out why. The supermarket had sold out of smoke bombs that afternoon, so people left the supermarket not knowing what the price should be. It still seemed a fair assumption that a tent by the side of the road would have good prices.
I told this to Todd as we put together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He went over to the supermarket himself.
“Nine-hundred-sixty-five and fifty cents,” he said when he got back. “Less whatever they’ve sold in the ten minutes it took me to walk here.”
We counted up the money we had in the register, which came to just over eight hundred dollars, not counting the unrolled change. Five hundred we put aside. When Denis showed up, we told him it had been a slow day.
“Yea, well you have to expect that to begin with, you know. The Fourth is on a Monday this year, so most of your sales will be during the weekend. It’s different when the holiday’s jam-packed in the middle of the work week.”
Denis was a lot more sedate today. His eyes were bloodshot, and he stood in one place the whole time he was in the tent, talking at us through his thick artificial grin. Even dead-tired he held his plastic grin.
“Did you get the extra tables for us?” I asked.
“Dang it. I knew there was something I had forgotten to do. It’s been pretty busy you know. I’m so damn tired. But I’ll be sure to get them tomorrow. You can count on them being here with me tomorrow. But you know what I can do for you now? I haven’t had any fun with this tent yet, so why don’t you break out one of the large bags tonight and go to town? I’ll write you a slip for the missing inventory. Make sure you’re a hundred feet away from the tent, but have some fun with the fireworks tonight. I’ll be sure to get you some extra tables by tomorrow.”
We thanked him and handed over the day’s deposit, three hundred dollars.
“Here’s your slip,” he handed us the receipt. “I think I’m going to head over to that bar again. Interesting place, y’know? Seemed kind of strange at first, lot of Harley bikers in there y’know? Inside they’ve got a Japanese bike hung from the ceiling by a chain and everyone throws beer bottles at it. I hit it a few times myself last night. It’s a strange little place, but they love me in there now. Yea, I think I’ll head over for a few brews. You guys let me know if there’s anything you need.”
I called Chris from the pay phone in the used car lot, and he arrived on the number-sixty-two bus about the same time that Denis drove away from Clarence’s. The large assortment bag was mostly junk, boring fireworks that no one had bought last year. There were a few fun things though, and we set a couple of them off during one of our longer sales lulls.
The little tank was cute. It rolled along-pushed by a rear mounted rocket, and fired sparks out through its miniature cannon. There was also an oversized fountain that wasn’t made this year that we hoped would be interesting. It produced a lot of flame and a horrendous noise, but it wasn’t very colorful and didn’t last long.
Chris was again left in charge and Todd and I headed off for a two hour break. I drove straight home, said hello briefly as I walked in, and dashed off to the bathroom into a wonderful hot water shower. I turned the nozzle on full blast and the warm water pounded away until I stepped out of the shower and directly into my air-conditioned room. I was beginning to think temperature control was the greatest invention since the wheel.
I guess Todd liked the comforts of home too, because he didn’t get back until an hour after I returned to the tent. Chris walked out to my car as I pulled up. The collar of his tee shirt was torn and he was rubbing the back of his head.
“We had a little problem while you were gone,” he said.
The tables inside the tent had all been overturned, and most of the boxes underneath had been opened and dumped out. Chris had shut the tent and started to reorganize right after it happened, but the place was still a disaster. Smoke bombs were spread all through the grass.
“A couple of dudes from Clarence’s took a definite dislike to us”, Chris explained, rubbing the back of his head again. “The one who hit me must of been wearing a ring. It feels like I’ve got a good-sized lump back here.”
“Were you held up?” I asked, remembering the five hundred dollars we had set aside in the Winnebago.
“No. They just said our boss told them he would sell them some illegals. They didn’t believe me when I said we didn’t have any.”
“How’d you get hit”?
“One guy started tipping over tables and looking at the stuff underneath. When I tried to stop him the other one took a swat at me. They both got on their bikes and left after that. I think they were pretty toasted.”
“You call the cops yet?” I asked.
“Me? I’m not the most popular character with the police at the moment. Besides, if you busted these guys some of their buddies would come and toss a match in here. I remember what they look like, and Spam owes me a favor. He hates bikers anyway.”
It was clear Chris wanted me to ask who Spam was, but I didn’t press the point. I nodded and we started gathering up the mess and putting the displays back together. When Todd finally pulled in at around ten o’clock I asked him to drive Chris home. I closed up shop while they were gone.
Todd was madder than anybody about the whole thing. He wanted to call the cops, sick Spam, or whoever, on the bikers, and hang Denis from a meat hook. He stormed and stomped for most of the night, and though he calmed down a bit the next afternoon when we used the money we put aside to buy out the supermarket’s entire supply of fireworks, he was back into a full-swing mad when Denis showed up the next evening.
There was a thick air of anger around Todd as he glared down at Denis. Todd was six four when he wasn’t slouching, and though he was bent slightly as he leaned over Denis’s small frame I wouldn’t call it slouching. He retold Chris’s story in slow detail, emphasizing the word boss as he came to the part about where the bikers got the idea that we had illegals.
Denis’ smile deserted him for once, but his verbosity stood firm.
“I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it. Damn it, I told the people down at the warehouse that this wasn’t the safest spot in the world. I’m real sorry about your friend. I don’t know what to say. I just can’t believe this sort of thing could happen. The world just isn’t safe anymore.”
“What did you say when you were in Clarence’s?” I asked.
“Hey, you know I wouldn’t do anything to endanger you guys here. I told some people that we could sell them M-80′s and bottle rockets if they came down to the warehouse and signed a waiver. But I definitely did not say anything about meeting them here, nothing at all like that. It must have gone around the bar a few times and come out that way. Hey, tell you what I can do? I know some of the guards down at the warehouse. They love me down there. I’ll get one of them to come out here and check up on you guys every once and a while. Hey, I really didn’t say anything to anybody about you guys selling illegals.”
“I suggest you go and clear up the misunderstanding.” Todd was still standing right over Denis.
“Yea sure, of course. Hey, I was going to go over there anyway. I’d buy you guys a drink, but, well you know.”
We never saw the guard from the warehouse, or the tables, or the credit slip Denis promised, but we didn’t have any more trouble with the bikers either, so we just ignored Denis for the rest of the time we were out there. We gave him the deposits once a day. The next time he tried to tell us about how to rearrange the stand we pointed out that our agreement said we were independent contractors.
Denis went on for a bit about his title as manager, and how all the other stands listened to him, and how well they did because of his advice, but eventually he realized we weren’t listening. I later found out he was fired soon after we finished with the stand, so I doubt he did much harm to our references.
Business picked up slowly, but steadily, throughout the week. We could still pick out the bikers, and the BMX mothers, but the supermarket shoppers started to drown them out by Thursday. There were a few new types that we identified wandering through our tent:
The Concerned Parent,
“Now you’re sure all these fireworks are legal?”
“Yes Ma’am, everything in here is legal in Florida. You can set them off anywhere except a gas station or inside our tent.”
“But are they safe”?
“The warning labels say children under twelve shouldn’t light them, but most of our items you can put on the ground and light yourself while your kids watch from a safe distance.”
“I don’t know. These don’t look safe.”
The Pyromaniac.
“What’s the biggest thing you’ve got”?
“Any of the large finale pieces in the back. They spray up sparks about ten to twenty feet.”
“Haven’t you got anything with more real firepower”?
The Nostalgia Buff.
“When I was a kid there was a firework that looked like a chicken and it would walk forward and spray sparks, and then when it was done it would lay an egg that exploded. Do you have anything like that”?
“No Sir, not that I know of.”
“Well, we had these other things that . . .”
We also identified: Budget Minded Eccentrics, “They’re for my kids, honest.” Dads, Gapers, Folks Richer Than God, and standard Hicks and Yuppies. We had the most fun with the standard Yuppies though, mostly because they usually thought of us as standard hicks.
The yuppies could be identified by more than just their polo shirts and BMWs. The ones we classified as real Yuppies always took one look at us and started speaking very slowly, as if they weren’t quite sure of how firm a grasp of English we had.
First we’d sick Chris on them. He’d start out in a southern drawl, and slowly convince them how wonderfully American fireworks were, and how it was almost their patriotic duty to set large quantities of explosives ablaze. They usually bought a fair amount, and we’d keep talking to them while they checked out. They thought it was so charming that we played classical music in a roadside stand. Often as not they’d go about educating us on the life of Mozart.
Their stories invariably paralleled the movie, Amadeus. We’d nod along politely for a while, putting the fireworks in the bag. I’d eventually break in and correct them. I pointed out that although Count Walsegg, who the character of Salieri was based on, did conspire to steal Mozart’s Requiem Mass, it was in fact the student Sussmayer who took the final instructions for the piece from Mozart’s deathbed. Sussmayer completed the Requiem in 1792.
I wasn’t a music expert, but I had read this from the fold-out in the cassette.
“Y’all enjoy tha’ fireworks now, y’hear.” I’d hand them the bag and smile.
Business was fairly steady by the end of the week. Chris came in during the afternoons now, and we never left fewer than two of us in the tent at a time. There were still long lulls of no customers at all, but we used that time to make fliers with red, white and blue magic markers.
Chris posted the fliers around town, and we ran a spotlight out to the Flamingo Fireworks sign by the side of the road. With the light, our logo could be seen for about a mile down U.S. 19 even at night. Business picked up even more, and when the company owner showed up on Friday, a tuna sandwich as always in his left hand, I jokingly commented that we would be sold out before the Fourth of July even came around.
Yvon pulled up the next morning with another load of fireworks. I thought it was silly, but I knew it was my own fault. We unloaded the truck and stuck the extra cases under the tables. We had all of the first delivery on display by then, but we had been saving the old boxes in case we had to pack up the extra product when the job was over. We had to flatten some of the old boxes, but we eventually got everything hidden nicely. That was Saturday, which was also the day of the big storm.
The weather during Florida summers is pretty standardized. You can listen to the morning report on any day in June, July, or August and here some anonymous meteorologist say “warm and humid today, with a fifty percent chance of rain toward the afternoon and evening hours.”
We had adapted to the afternoon showers. They announced themselves with a low rumble of thunder. Then there were the electrical fireworks in the clouds, brilliant in a way with which we could not compete.
At the first signs of rain, Todd and I would rush to let down the flaps around the tent. We kept the extra inventory under the center tables so only empty boxes got wet when the water blew in under the edges. The top few items in the display were sometimes knocked over by the wind blowing through the cracks in the tent flaps, but damage was minimal.
We were a little worried Saturday when the first thunderclap sounded, because, with the extra inventory Yvon delivered, we had been forced to put cases of fireworks under the outermost tables. But the storm was mild. It passed within ten minutes, and no significant water flooded the vulnerable merchandise. We were most of the way through the process of once again rolling up the side flaps when Chris got off the number-sixty-two bus.
“Looks like a mother of a storm off that way,” he said.
Looking to the east we saw the squall line. It stretched from horizon to horizon and blackened the sky for as far back as we could see. Our little shower had been just a herald to the real storm.
“Oh, shit”, Todd said, a deafening thunderclap answering the profanity.
A tropical thunderstorm is a wondrous thing to behold -- if you are safe and dry within a stone-and-shingle-roofed beach house. From inside a circus tent in the middle of a vacant lot, other adjectives come more readily to mind.
The first gusts of wind buckled the entire tent, knocked over our displays, and sent fireworks sailing across the floor.
“I’m sorry. We’re going to have to close for a little while,” I announced to the small number of customers still in the tent. At the same time, we started dropping the flaps back down and pulling tables in towards the center of the tent.
We piled boxes onto the tables and tossed loose items in as quickly as possible. The empty cases left near the outside were already soaked by the tide of water that was creeping in under the lowered flaps. A gust lifted the roof of the tent again, and a peg let go from the mud, leaving its tie down rope to flap randomly in the violent wind.
We got everything on to the center tables as high above the seeping waters as possible. Anything left on the floor was soaked wet as a sunken ship. The floor of the tent was rapidly turning into what looked like a miniature offshoot of the Amazon River, little clumps of ants clinging together and floating by. Even the center of the tent was now six inches under water.
A loud pop came from Todd’s tape player by the cash register. It was barely audible over the pounding rain and wind.
“Shit, there went the fuse,” Todd cursed.
The same thought came to all three of us as we looked down at the web of power cords strewn around our feet, completely submerged in water.
I rushed outside into the rain and punched the emergency shut off switch on the generator, never so thankful for Mr. Mackowitz’s waterproof extension cords. The whining motor spun down into silence. All the tent lights went out. The long streaks of lightning continued to illuminate the sky.
We climbed into the Winnebago while the storm raged, watching the darkened tent and the empty boxes that floated around the tables. One corner-support in the tent collapsed where the first tent peg had let go, but the rest of the stand stayed sound. Like most tropical storms this one passed quickly, leaving still air and clear skies as if the storm had never appeared at all. The floor was still squishy wet, but we let customers back in an hour after the storm passed. We had most of the displays back up by eight p.m..
Denis still hadn’t shown up that day, so I went across the street and gave the main warehouse a call from a pay phone. The storm had hit everybody. We had actually done better than most. A couple of the tents in parking lots down by the beach were two feet under water, and one of the stands in Palm Harbor had a tree fall in through their roof. The tent repair crews were overwhelmed. They couldn’t get to us before morning.
“What about the stuff that got wet?” I asked.
“Unless they’re really soaked, the fireworks should still work. Let everything dry out, then try a few things. You can put out a sign saying you will exchange any duds. Save the ones that people bring back and we’ll count them as inventory returned.”
I was skeptical, but we lit a few fountains that had been dampened by the maelstrom. They worked perfectly, spraying up colored sparks and magnesium fireballs into the night air without a fizzle. We couldn’t even tell the difference between the dampened fountains and the ones that had been sealed in plastic the whole time. A sign about exchanges was put up, and we set the fireworks out on the tables.
Sunday the customers came in droves. A lot of the local stores were closed for Sunday and the holiday, and many of the ones still open had sold out of their small inventory of fireworks. A good number of the other stands had been shut down by the storm, so we got the extra customers from everybody. The sign went over really well too. People still realized we were overpriced, but since we also guaranteed our product, they assumed we were selling higher quality fireworks. We didn’t correct that particular misnomer.
Chris was hired for the whole day now, and each of us had an assigned position. Todd ran the cash register and answered questions about prices. Chris wandered around the store making sure nothing was pocketed and answering questions that might improve sales. I bagged the fireworks as people left, and answered questions as people came in and out the main door.
“Do you have TNT trays”?
“Yes Sir, fourth table down on your right.”
“How much are these please”?
“Those are Fire Tops Ma’am, forty cents each or three for a dollar.”
“No, I’m sorry we can’t haggle over prices.”
“Yes, we’ll be here tomorrow and packing up the morning of the fifth.”
“Try the Roaring Tigers. They’re about as loud as you could hope for.”
The customers kept pouring in and the money piling up. When the bills begin to overflow our cash register, we would gather up a sack full of money, and I would carry it into the Winnebago and count it into deposit envelopes. We had about five-thousand dollars sitting in the glove compartment by two p.m.
“I don’t know if I like having all this money sitting around,” I whispered to Todd while I opened another case of smoke balls.
“You think we can trust Chris with it?”
“He’s been a friend of my sister for ten years,” I said.
I gave Chris the deposit envelopes and the keys to my car. He drove to drop the money off at the night depository at the bank during his break. We pulled in another few thousand while he was gone, which we gave to Denis when he came by. We were busy all day.
“Shouldn’t Chris be back by now? It’s been three hours for Christ’s sake,” Todd asked as we bagged another sack of Small Fountains and Happy Firekings.
It was actually four hours before Chris returned, two other gentlemen were with him and he was grinning from ear to ear.
He tossed me my keys and the deposit slip. It was for a hundred dollars more than I had given him.
“I put my salary for the week in with the deposit,” he said. “And I’ve already paid these guys to help you out for the remaining time you have the stand open.”
“You could have told us,” I said.
“You’re back in business?” Todd asked.
“I tripled the money you gave me, which will give me a start. Sorry, I know I shouldn’t have risked it, since it didn’t belong to me.”
“You are retiring from your firecracker workdays then?”
“Yea, so to speak. Say hello to your sister for me, won’t you?”
I said I would.
The two young men Chris had hired for us were named Mike and Rico. They weren’t the best conversationalists, but they worked hard. We had them bagging fireworks and putting out new products as the old displays were brought down. They also volunteered to stay up and guard the tent that night, so both Todd and I got a decent night’s sleep.
Mike tapped on the window of the Winnebago about six a.m.. The sun was just coming up.
“Your first customers are here,” Mike said.
“What? Oh, yea, right. Happy Independence Day. We’ll be out in a second.”
The Fourth made the previous day’s business look slow by comparison. From the time that first customer came in at six a.m., to midnight when we finally sold the last of our multicolored explosives, the tent was never empty. Todd and I ran the cash register constantly, with Todd occasionally opening a second line, handing out only written receipts. We did our own bank runs every two hours, often not having time to count all the small bills, but just sending twenties, fifties, and hundreds off to be deposited.
“Hey, are y’all out of Medium Assortments?”
“I think we have a few more of those somewhere. Rico, could you check on that?”
Rico shook his head back.
“No?” I continued. “Well, I think we still have TNT trays. They have most of the same stuff in them.”
The city of Clearwater’s fireworks display started at the beach at nine p.m. The traffic got heavy on U.S. 19 around eight. Everyone seemed to want to stop in and bring some of their own fireworks to the show. By around eight thirty the cash register line stretched all the way around the inside of the tent.
“Yes, sir, I know the display at the beach starts in thirty minutes. We’ll try to get everyone rung up as quickly as possible.”
We’d figured the selling was mostly over when the show started downtown. The few remaining customers in the tent seemed to be just browsers. We had already folded up half the tables, and those left set up had displays that were rather thin. We watched the big plumes and rockets off in the distance and thought about calling it a night.
Todd and I were debating our closing time when the traffic started returning home from the beach. A new hoard of customers flooded the store. We recognized a couple of the supermarket shoppers from earlier in the week. They asked if we were lowering our prices yet, and we told them sorry, the prices were still the same. They grudgingly bought a few things and left.
As long as we had inventory, we kept selling. We let Rico and Mike go around ten though. There wasn’t much of anything left in the store by then. A few customers were still milling around picking up the leftovers, but there wasn’t enough product left to allow for another buying frenzy. We packed empty folding tables into the Winnebago as the last of the Morning Glories disappeared.
The company owner visited the stand just before midnight.
“Hello gentlemen. Would you like some tuna salad?”
“Love some,” I said.
The owner motioned to his secretary in the car, who came out with a couple of sandwiches for Todd and me.
“Looks like you had a good day. How much business do you reckon you gentlemen did”?
Todd looked over the deposit slips and inventory lists.
“Just over twenty-nine-thousand dollars. The only thing we’ve got left is a couple of dozen Large Fountains and a case of sparklers.”
“You did well.” The owner took another bite of tuna-salad sandwich. “I think you gentlemen set a record this year.”
“It was a good holiday,” I said.
“Well, if you want to ring up those last few fountains and sparklers, I’ll buy you out. What do you say?”
We said that would be great. Todd bagged the last few items, and I put the closed sign up by the register.
“Happy Fourth of July,” the owner said. He and his secretary carried the last of our fireworks out toward his car.
“Happy fireworks holiday,” we answered back, and folded the last of the tables.
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This story and others can be found in the collection I Awoke One Morning to Find Three Psychoanalysts in the Closet on Amazon.com
