In God We Trust by Jean Shepherd Page B

bread and the mustard. Gertz digs deep into his vast file of obscenity.
    “One time there was this Hungarian bartender, and ya know, he had a cross-eyed daughter and a bowlegged dachshund. And this.…”
    At first I am holding back, since I am a kid. The Old Man says:
    “Hold it down, Gertz. You’ll wake up the wife and she’ll raise hell.”
    He is referring to My Mother.
    Gertz lowers his voice and they all scrunch their chairs forward amid a great cloud of cigar smoke. There is only one thing to do. I scrunch forward, too, and stick my head into the huddle, right next to the Old Man, into the circle of leering,snickering, fishy-smelling faces. Of course, I do not even remotely comprehend the gist of the story. But I know that it is rotten to the core.
    Gertz belts out the punch line; the crowd bellows and beats on the table. They begin uncapping more Blatz.
    Secretly, suddenly, and for the first time, I realize that I am In. The Eskimo pies and Nehi oranges are all behind me, and a whole new world is stretching out endlessly and wildly in all directions before me. I have gotten The Signal!
    Suddenly my mother is in the doorway in her Chinese-red chenille bathrobe. Ten minutes later I am in the sack, and out in the kitchen Gertz is telling another one. The bottles are rattling, and the file clerks are hunched around the fire celebrating their primal victory over The Elements.
    Somewhere off in the dark the Monon Louisville Limited wails as it snakes through the Gibson Hump on its way to the outside world. The giant Indiana moths, at least five pounds apiece, are banging against the window screens next to my bed. The cats are fighting in the backyard over crappie heads, and fish scales are itching in my hair as I joyfully, ecstatically slide off into the great world beyond.

IXI INTRODUCE FLICK TO THE ART WORLD
    “It hasn’t changed a bit,” Flick said.
    Two truckdrivers had taken places at the far end of the bar. Flick ambled down; served them up a pair of boilermakers. One of them got up immediately, crossed to the jukebox, dropped in a coin, pressed the buttons, and returned to his stool. Immediately a wavering reddish-purple light filled the room as the enormous plastic jukebox glowed into vivid neon life. Waterfalls cascaded through its plastic sides. I watched it for a moment, and, forgetting where I was, said:
    “Pure Pop Art.”
    Flick paused in his glass-polishing. “Pure what?”
    It was too late to back out.
    “Pop Art, Flick. Pure Pop Art. That jukebox.”
    “What’s Pop Art?”
    “That’s hard to explain, Flick. You’ve got to be With It.”
    “What do you mean? I’m With It.”
    I sipped my beer to stall for time.
    “Flick, have you ever heard of the Museum of Modern Art in New York?”
    “Yeah. What about it?”
    “Well, Flick.…”

XMY OLD MAN AND THE LASCIVIOUS SPECIAL AWARD THAT HERALDED THE BIRTH OF POP ART
    I “hmmmmed” meaningfully yet noncommittally as I feigned interest in the magnificent structure before us. “Hmmmm,” I repeated, this time in a slightly lower key, watching carefully out of the corner of my eye to see whether she was taking the lure.
    A 1938 Hupmobile radiator core painted gaudily in gilt and fuchsia revolved on a Victrola turntable before us. From its cap extended the severed arm of a female plastic mannequin. It reached toward the vaulted ceiling high above us. Its elegantly contorted hand clutched a can of Bon Ami, the kitchen cleanser. The Victrola repeated endlessly a recording of a harmonica band playing “My Country Tis Of Thee.” The bronze plaque at its base read: IT HASN’T SCRATCHED YET .
    The girl nodded slowly and deliberately in deep appreciation of the famous contemporary masterwork, the central exhibit in the Museum’s definitive Pop Art Retrospective Panorama, as the Sunday supplements called it. I closed in:
    “He’s got it down.”
    I paused adeptly, waited a beat or two and then, using my clipped, put-down voice:
    “
… all
of