“C’mon!” Larry
hissed, grabbing my arm and jerking me along.
We ran, but not
very far, just around the corner of the grandstand building. Larry adopted an air of nonchalance and I did
my best to imitate him.
We stood there,
leaning against the building, feigning innocence. We waited.
Earlier, Larry
recruited me. He must have worked his
way through a bunch of other guys and been turned down. Being three years younger than he was, I was
quite a ways down the social totem pole.
That thought didn’t
occur to me then. I was flattered to be
asked to assist. Why not help
Larry? Because he was doing something
stupid? That thought didn’t occur to me
then, either. Thoughts of consequences
never entered my mind—until the time came to face them.
We watched a man
serving homemade ice cream from the crank style ice cream maker. The scene was another Old Settlers’ Day at
Walks Camp Park. On the backside of the
covered grandstand, beneath the higher bleacher seats were booths where vendors
could set up and serve a crowd. The
doors to the booths were hinged on top.
When opened, the doors, propped up with rods or sticks, provided a shade
for those standing in front of the booth.
Beneath the lower
benches of the grandstand were two crawl spaces, separated by the hallway that
ran from the back of the grandstand to the small stage at the very front. Once in a while, someone would crawl into one
of the crawl spaces to retrieve an object that managed to get dropped through
the bleacher seats.
Sheets of
corrugated metal ran from top to bottom underneath the bleachers. The metal served to protect the booths below the dirt from people’s shoes as well as whatever might blow into the mostly
open structure. The metal also channeled
water from wind-blown rain or melted snow to the crawl space.
“Pop!” went the
firecracker. Ladies sitting in the
grandstand screamed. The master of
ceremonies was irritated. This wasn’t
the first firecracker set off in the crawl space. Measures had been taken to prevent such a
thing from happening. Dire punishments
had been promised.
“Let’s have the
boys who did that,” the announcer bellowed.
“Let’s get them up here.”
Larry sauntered off and I followed him as best
I could. The emcee’s appeals to
apprehend the miscreants faded, and we reached the safety of the Arikaree Riverbed
beneath the cottonwood trees. There
Larry celebrated his mischief. My own
joy was that we got out of there without getting caught.
Larry needed an
accomplice for his naughty deed because the crawl spaces to the grandstand had
doors hinged on top, like the booth doors.
Sometimes the trap doors were held open by a hook and eye to provide a
little ventilation beneath the seats.
This day, the doors were closed to prevent miscreants from igniting
firecrackers in the crawl space.
The crawl spaces
were attractive nuisances. They made
dandy sound chambers for an explosion.
The explosion never failed to elicit screams from ladies sitting in the
stands. So the doors were closed.
My job was to
hold the door open long enough for Larry to strike a match, light the
firecracker fuse, and throw the lit cracker under the grandstand. I was dumb enough to do it.
Surely someone
saw us do it. There were people all
around. Why hadn’t someone collared us
and taken us up in front of everybody to be disciplined?
After about
thirty minutes or so, we left the shade of the cottonwoods wandered back up to
see what was going on. Things had
settled back to normal. Someone was
entertaining the crowd with music of some kind.
The firecracker was history.
I separated
myself from Larry. I wanted nothing more
to do with any of his projects for a while.
I could only imagine what would happen to me if my parents discovered I
had been part of that firecracker business.
I counted
myself lucky that no one “told on us.”
It would take some time for me to figure it out.
Larry’s father
was the Master of Ceremonies that day.
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