Greetings From America's Secret Capitals

(11 of 13)

We have resisted, until now, pointing out the obvious. But given the nature of the news emanating from the nation's capital over the past year, there exist a host of new promotional opportunities in Clinton for the 16th annual Testicle Festival this September. New fields of competition. Look-alike contests. Caravans rolling in from D.C. We can think of one person in particular who would make a great festival queen.

No one is more aware of this than Dr. Lincoln.

"It could be big," he says. "It could be bigger than ever."

A PYROTECHNIC TALE

America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy. JOHN UPDIKE

There is no other way to end the story.

An eye doctor named George Zambelli Jr. makes his early-morning rounds near Pittsburgh, completes as many laser-correction surgeries as he can, then gets in a Mercedes and speeds north 45 minutes. When he gets to New Castle he kisses his father on the cheek, then helps him mix chemicals and explosives.

They call themselves the First Family of Fireworks.

New Castle is the color of tools left out in the rain. Heavy industry died an ugly death here decades ago, leaving behind rust and bricks and George ("Boom-Boom") Zambelli Sr., 73. When 50-year-old George Jr. gets to New Castle at noon, his father has been at work six hours.

The old man is old school. Look at him in his office, a gruff gnome surrounded by papers and notes, lost in a cloud of his own thoughts on the 1,200 Fourth of July fireworks shows that he will produce across the states.

Twelve hundred.

"Computer?" he scoffs, dozens of folders at his feet, on his desk, on chairs. Fireworks shows are electronically fired nowadays, but for filing and accounting, Zambelli lives comfortably in the past. He taps his head with a finger. There's your computer.

The old man has a chef prepare his meals in the abandoned restaurant of the converted hotel that is headquarters for Zambelli Fireworks Internationale. That way, he doesn't waste time going across the street. Especially not with the millennium only 18 months away and the orders already coming in from around the world.

That is the kind of man he is. A man who carries what looks like a 19[cents] comb in his shirt pocket because, he says, it's closer to his head that way.

"I wish I had three like him," Junior says.

Dad gives him a look. He's terrifically proud of his son the big-shot doctor--and of his four daughters, one of whom is a dentist and three of whom work for him, along with 60 other year-round employees. But there is always something in his eye that says this medicine thing is no life for a guy. Not a guy who could be in fireworks. This is art. This is science. This is family. "You know," he says in monotone seriousness, and Junior is rolling his eyes before the old man completes the sentence, "it actually takes longer to become a first-rate pyrotechnician than to be a doctor."