Jean Shepherd Tonight: Part 2 of "Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid"

"Winter Visits the Mills, Hammond, Indiana": oil painting by Lenore Condee Lawson (born 1899), c. 1930

"Through my brain nightly danced visions of six-guns snapped from the hip and shattering bottles -- and a gnawing nameless frenzy of impending ecstasy."

-- from tonight's installment of "Duel in the Snow,
or Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid"

by Ken

We're working our way through Chapter II of In God We Trust -- All Others Pay Cash, the first actual story in the book: Ralph the narrator's recollection of the Christmas he got his Red Ryder BB gun.

Throughout the fall young Ralph has been seduced by full-page back cover ads in his teenage bible, Open Road For Boys, for the Official Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-Shot Range Model Air Rifle. Last night we learned that winter has come early and hard to Hohman, Indiana, with the first of the season's great blizzards striking in early December.

Scattered out over the icy waste around us could be seen other tiny befurred jots of wind-driven humanity. All painfully toiling toward the Warren G. Harding School, miles away over the tundra, waddling under the weight of frost-covered clothing like tiny frozen bowling balls with feet. An occasional piteous whimper would be heard faintly, but lost instantly in the sigh of the eternal wind. All of us were bound for geography lessons involving the exports of Peru, reading lessons dealing with fat cats and dogs named Jack. But over it all like a faint, thin, offstage chorus was the building excitement. Christmas was on its way. Each day was more exciting than the last, because Christmas was one day closer. Lovely, beautiful, glorious Christmas, around which the entire year revolved.

FOR PART 2 OF "DUEL IN THE SNOW, OR RED RYDER
NAILS THE CLEVELAND STREET KID," CLICK HERE


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, and JEAN SHEPHERD TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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