Posts
In 1979, if you were an unskilled, unemployed
pyromaniac you were always assured of work at one of the many Red Devil
Fireworks stands that sprung up around LA County in the weeks before
Independence Day. The only job qualifications necessary were a moron’s grasp of
arithmetic ,and being crazy or desperate enough to work twelve-hour shifts at
the height of summer in a screened-in, corrugated aluminum shack surrounded by
roughly three tons of explosives.
I didn’t have to fill out a job application.
At the beginning of every summer, my roommates and I threw wild all-night punk
rock parties that went on non-stop for days on end. When one of the drunken revelers
asked me how I could possibly manage do
this and still hold down a job, I explained that I was unemployed. Back then it
was tough to get work if you had pink hair. He said he could help me out,
scrawling an address on the side of a Coor’s carton. I reported there the next
morning, bleary eyed and hung over, along with five other guests who’d spent
the night and were in the same condition. We were hired on the spot.
The firework stand was located
on a vacant lot at the intersection of Venice Boulevard and
Robertson in Culver City. Though we were a motley crew with our unevenly
cropped and dyed hair, Blondie and Clash T-shirts, stiletto heels and
motorcycle boots, our co-workers all appeared to be fresh from the county
correctional facilities. There was a cholo who showed up every day-no matter
how hot it was- in corduroy house slippers and a plaid wool Pendleton buttoned
all the way up. He had his girlfriend’s initials in gold pierced into his ears, an 18th
street tattoo on his neck, a jailhouse tear in the corner of his left eye, and
a crude cross with C/S for “Con Safos” inked into the web of skin between his
thumb and index finger. There was a trailer trash woman of indeterminate age
who was never without bubblegum pink rollers in her hair. She must’ve weighed
an easy two hundred and seventy-five pounds, and complained constantly in a whiny
South Carolina accent about how her feet hurt. And then there was Roger, a
genial septegenarian who did nothing but guzzle beer all day in the corner
while he pulled apart dozens of Piccolo Petes and Sonic Screamers, added new
fuses, and with the precision of a skilled surgeon, joined them all together to
make bootleg Roman Candles. He turned out to be the boss of the operation.
The six of underage punks,
artists, alcoholics fit in perfectly. We soon learned the difference between
Ground Bloom Flowers and a Cave Of Pearls, Serpent Charmers or Witches Cauldron
fountains, Smoke Pots and Magic Rainbow Snakes. It took me under two days to
get on a beer-sharing basis with Roger, and soon there was an industrial sized
cooler full of booze on ice, available to anyone who wanted some. We knew from the
many posted signs that it was illegal to smoke within three hundred feet of the
stand, so cigarette breaks became a frequent group affair, and we took them
even more often once we discovered that Julio, the 18th Street guy,
was never without killer buds.
One of the girls I brought in made long, lovelorn
calls on the stand’s payphone to her rock star boyfriend in England, charging
them on a hot credit card. She shared the number with me and I got in on the action
too, also calling the UK to talk to my English Teddy Boy flame plus the famous punk star I was having a
simultaneous affair with. I shared
the bogus credit card with Julio, who started calling a homie who was incarcerated.
Since nobody else but us ever used the payphone, after a half pint of Jack
Daniels, Roger just looked the other way.
The day I decided to show up
for work in a skimpy halter top, Roger singled me out as a protégée, carefully
teaching me his secret to make Bottle Rockets. Occasionally, a sleek, ominous
looking black sedan would pull up to the side of the stand. A swarthy man in a
crisp white shirt and Rayban Wayfarers would step out of the car, open the
trunk, and all the employees and most of the customers would cluster around,
waving money.
Naively, I asked Roger what
was going on.
“Oh,” he said, taking a long swig of his beer
and wiping his mouth on his sleeve,
“He goes down to Mexico and
gets real fireworks…none of this
candy ass shit we sell!”
You could buy a quarter stick of dynamite from
the guy for thirty cents. Next time the sedan showed up, I was there, cash in
hand.
We’d come home every night
drunk out of our minds, exhausted, blackened from head to toe in gunpowder,
flash powder, sawdust and shredded
strips of Asian newspaper, our under-the-table pay stuffed into our pockets in big gangster
rolls. By the end of the first week, I knew that while Chinese fireworks had
the most amazing colors, American fireworks were much louder. I also learned that a Boilermaker was bourbon
and beer mixed together, how many strategically placed M80’s it took to blow up
a two-story house, and whom the 18th Street gang was going to hit
next. I discovered that a Cherry Bomb
wasn’t just a Runaways song, but a highly potent illegal explosive that had been
banned in the USA under the 1966 Child Safety Act. My bootleg Bottle Rockets
were starting to look pretty damn professional, too.
One of the guys I’d brought
in found out how to fudge the inventory and was bringing home a case each of
Ground Bloom Flowers and Sparklers every day. He told Roger he was moving and
needed the boxes. I’d sit bored at the
cash register, my hands coated with a thick, scaly, shiny mixture of dried Elmer’s
Glue mixed with Bonne Bell lip gloss in grotesque peeling layers. When an innocent customer
would ask if the fireworks were safe, I’d reply, “Safe And Sane!” before pushing
the change through the cashiers grate with my mangled looking paw, delighting
at the look of shock and horror registering on their faces. Inside the stand, my
friends and I would bend down over stacks of Family Pack Displays and whistle
descending notes long and low through our teeth, watching the rest of the staff frantically scramble on
top of one another trying to get through the lone exit before the place blew
sky high. As Independence Day approached, we pulled a string of all nighters,
blasting The Sex Pistols and The Ramones, which almost- but not quite- drowned
out the Southern woman’s bitching about her aching feet.
The Fourth of July was an anticlimax.
We spent it on the beach in Santa Monica, but
now, being insiders, we just couldn’t
really get into the city-sanctioned
display…we wanted volume, we wanted fire power, we wanted Total Destruction.
Besides, Roger had passed out inside the stand, and we were all a little too chicken to blow up all the gigantic illegal Roman Candles and Bottle
Rockets he’d so lovingly prepared.
Instead, we dropped a trail of lit up stolen Ground Bloom Flowers out
the back window of our battered Honda, all the way from the beach to Hollywood.
We stayed up all night drinking at my place Disgraceland, lighting fireworks in
the bathtub and on our porch, throwing them out the windows at random to
startle the late night revelers passing
by.
The next morning, we returned
to the firework stand, but like Brigadoon, it had vanished. The site had been
returned to its original state: an abandoned lot. It was completely desolate
and sad, with nothing left but a few shreds of red, white and blue bunting
blowing in the wind, empty beer bottles and a couple of dud Lady Fingers
scattered among the weeds in the sandy dirt.
Later that week, I received a
final check for overtime and a
handwritten note asking if I’d like to work at a Christmas tree lot in
December.
I declined.
#
The story you’ve just read is
from my forthcoming book, Good Girls Go
To Heaven, Bad Girls Go Everywhere, slated for publication on Punk Hostage
Press in January, 2015.
You can
purchase a signed copy of my latest
book, Showgirl Confidential: My Life
Onstage, Backstage And On The Road
Here:
 |
| Photo by Maharet Cristina Hughes, GraphicVibeLA |
Find me on online:
No comments:
Post a Comment