Posted on 07/04/2009 5:04:33 AM PDT by Mike Fieschko
"What better way to celebrate the 4th of July than with fireworks - only Ludlow Kissel takes it to a new height by putting on a display that will go down in history." (Quote from the flicklives.com page.)
Shep read this story on the air pretty much every July 4th. You can listen to the story in mp3 audio file format or download it for later enjoyment at the Internet Archive, here (direct link to the mp3).
The story appeared in written form in Playboy, and later, in Shep's first book, In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash.
A classic!
I loved listening to Jean Shepherd as a teen growing up in NYC in the 60’s. Thanks for the memories.
“LEOPOLD DOPPLER AND THE GREAT ORPHEUM GRAVY BOAT RIOT” is another good one.
I'm still looking for two of them that had me in tears. One was about his dad ordering a house in kit form from Sears. When it arrived at the RR station, all his buddies came down to "help" him load the boxes in their trucks. Then they got interested in what was inside and started opening them up and strewing the parts all over the railyard. Then it started to rain and all the buddies said, "See ya". The ending shot panned upwards showing his dad in the middle of the parts crying plaintively "Wait!".
The other was titled "Phantom of the Open Hearth". It was about his boyhood days growing up in a steel-making town. They went out drinking on Prom Noight (I think) and ended up yelling "Hurrah!" into the toilet. He catalogued what came up: "Pork chops? That was last week!" I've just picked up his shows and transferred them to an pocket MP3 player, hooked that up to some speakers, and will take a trip back in time as we travel through Kansas on the way out to visit relatives and Wyoming on the way back home. It's the first time I'm looking forward to those long boring runs.
mark
He certainly had a way with words. Thanks for posting it.
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