BLACK CAT
Based in Liuyang, China, Black Cat is a brand of fireworks popular throughout the world; according to the website for Black Cat, “The history of firecrackers is deeply embedded in the Chinese psyche, in its traditions, its ceremonies and culture. Just as Europeans enjoy the pop of a champagne cork and a sip of sparkling wine to celebrate a birth, a marriage, a home-coming or a business deal, Chinese people prefer something more demonstrative than a single pop and a subdued fizz!”; the website also says: “In China, ‘black cats’ are a symbol of ‘luck and good fortune’”; in America, as in much of Europe, black cats are considered bad luck, especially if one crosses your path; historically, black cats have been associated with witchcraft and black magic; despite your religious beliefs, it is not acceptable to spend Halloween collecting black cats in a potato sack; according to folklore, Benjamin Franklin—a Puritan at heart—made it a requirement that when a court summons was issued, the person delivering the summons would wear black; legions of debtors and alimony-evaders soon were forewarned of a “black cat”—the nickname for the deliverer of a summons—crossing their path; by the late 19th century, the tradition of wearing black clothing when delivering a summons was outmoded, but the fear of black cats lingered; debtors are now okay, and are assisted in their personal journey by helpful credit card companies; alimony-evaders will always be bastards; beginning at age nine, and continuing through my childhood, July 5th held a special meaning for me; with the fireworks remaining from the Fourth of July, my best friends—Scott, EZ, Derek, and Ethan—and I spent the following day engaged in a full-scale bottle rocket war; roman candles, M-80’s, and smaller firecrackers were used as well; the fireworks were usually purchased in bulk during family vacations in Florida, South Carolina, or Tennessee; bottle rockets were loaded into PVC pipes and aimed at each other’s heads; we divided into two teams, but eventually it always became a free-for-all, a pyrotechnic genocide; July 5th was better than July 4th, because instead of shooting fireworks towards the moon (like everybody else in the U.S.A.), we blasted them at our best friends’ faces and torsos; on July 5th, when I was 12 years old, Scott invited a boy named Peter to join our bottle rocket war; I knew Peter from Little League and thought he was a good guy; Peter was a pitcher for “Trust Company,” and he could already throw a real curveball; Peter was an eager addition to our war, and he had excellent aim with the PVC pipe; however, I could not stop thinking about Peter’s father; Peter’s father was the assistant coach for “Trust Company,” and took third base coach duties when his team was up to bat; also, when Peter’s father was a teenager, he blew off his right hand with a firecracker; Peter’s father was the only one-handed third base coach I have heard of, and it was always a source of great inspiration—and humor—to watch him make coded hand gestures with his hand and stump; it was a distracting, hypnotic spectacle, always a mini-performance within the actual game; there are few things I can compare it to for pure, clumsy, animal beauty, but various three-legged dogs and the blind, stumbling ballerinas at the beginning of Pedro Almodovar’s “Talk to Her” come to mind; you see, when Peter’s father made gestures to the batter with his maimed arm, it ceased to be merely about athletics; that flapping, rubbing, twitching limb, deformed by Chinese explosives, was an admonition to each child on the field—and the adults sitting in the stands—that human bodies are frail, faulty, but the heart and mind are defiant; if that stump could speak, it would have said, “Look at me, you motherfuckers! I belonged to a life without fear. Now I dream of tickling piano keys, fingering the seams of a baseball, and massaging my wife’s soft neck”; on July 3rd, 2008, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a voluntary recall of approximately 20,000 of Black Cat’s Screech and Scream Fountain Fireworks, because: “The fireworks can produce a loud bang and unexpectedly scatter debris, posing an injury hazard to the user and bystanders”; it is unknown how many of the consumers who purchased the Screech and Scream Fountain Firework read the July 3rd recall in the 24 hours prior to Independence Day; inevitably, if you search for video clips of Black Cat—or any other brand of fireworks—on YouTube, and continue watching “Related Videos,” you will wind up discovering footage of the world’s largest hydrogen bomb, a terrifying Soviet behemoth tested in 1961, nicknamed “Ivan.”
