I remember the first time I saw a sterno in someone’s drum on Bay. It was one of those simple but beautiful solutions to an age-old problem: how to keep your drum warm at least all the way down Bay. By then, everyone had switched from wood drums to metal drums (this was before the advent of Tom Toms of course). Now metal drums would heat up more quickly, but they also came down more quickly. Even if you heat up by the old straw market, you’d be lucky if your drum was still taut by The Nassau Shop (what is now John Bull).
So when I saw the drum with a sterno rack – brilliant! Portable fire! Adrian and I went into the workshop to modify our drums. Back then this was new technology – the sterno racks we saw were custom welded jobs, there was no standard way to do this. Adrian’s solution was quite ingenious it was made from thick wires that could be tilted to point the flame closer too or further away from the drum head, depending on how much heat you needed. I just cut up big tin cans till I found one that fit – a coffee can did the trick – then screwed it on in side the keg. Of course being “scrap”, we didn’t have a group marshall to carry our extra sternos for us. We stored them in a white tube sock and tied it to our belts. We really had quite the system going.
This whole sterno thing was a half baked idea from the start. I mean think about it: an open flame and crepe paper costumes? It was a disaster waiting to happen. And happen it did.
It’s bad enough to have an open flame around all that paper. Sternos are most dangerous when when you first open the can. You see the sterno is like a sponge that is soaked in alcohol or some other flammable material. The problem is they alway fill the cans too high, so there’s always extra liquid sloshing around when you first open it. Once you light it, if any liquid spills out, that’s fire everywhere. Frankly I’m surprised there weren’t more accidents.
Anyway, this time it was Adrian, Mark, Shane, Margot, Nico and I. Back in those days, not many women rushed, and so those who did, well you know the guys were going to try check them. I knew Margot could handle herself though. Anyway, we had just finished heating up and Adrian and I had lit new sternos in our drums. I noticed this guy who had been rushing with us was really trying with Margot. Like I said, Margot can handle herself. She knows how to let a guy down without making him feel bad, but at the same time letting him know nothing’s happening. Anyway, I see this guy talkin, talkin… I remember seeing burning drops on the ground for a split second then WHOOSH! His pants leg was on fire. I can see it in my mind, it was so fast. See when you rush scrap you have that long fringe that catches quick and burns even faster. The funniest thing, though was the guy was not at all fazed by this. Acting like everything was normal, he kept his rap going while slapping the fire out with his hand. The whole thing was over in a matter of seconds. All the fringe on his left pant leg was burnt away. Miraculously he did not get burned – Elmers White Glue is an excellent flame retardant we discovered that day – the only thing injured was the poor guy’s pride. But I got to give him full marks for style, he hardly missed a beat in the whole episode.
These days any open flame is outlawed on the parade so you don’t see sternos in drums anymore. I guess someone finally figured out fire and crepe paper don’t mix. Hmmm, how come they could let off all those firecrackers, though? That’s another story…
I was with yall too, because I remember that day. Was Mark?
The reason why we didn’t go up in flames more often was that our costumes were usually still wet. (Maybe not yours, but pants almost always were, and Adrian’s was. He was the king of the fast paste: flour paste, big fringe pasted inches apart). Good thing too. Sternoes were the most flammable things we carried, but they weren’t the only flammable things; cigars and Matusalem were also pretty evident.
Come to think of it, that might’ve been partly why I believed in last-minute pasting — you know my aversion to fire (unlike some people I could name). That and the knowledge that I would make up my mind about at some point after the shopping wound down, somewhere around Christmas Eve. You were always a better planner.
I don’t think Mark’s costume was ever dry, unless he baked it in the oven. Good thing we normally started pasting so late we didn’t have to worry about putting kerosene in the flour paste to keep out roaches and rats. That would’ve been flammable!
Firecrackers are ILLEGAL and have been for about fifty years — all fireworks are at Junkanoo. And crepe paper is far less flammable than tissue paper.
Will the revelations never end?? I thought that I knew my children and what they were up to… In retrospect, though, thank goodness I was at the time blissfully unaware of all of the hazards of cultural invovlement: I would have been even greyer, even earlier!
“I was with yall too, because I remember that day. Was Mark?” Correction made. Yeah Mark was there, we were laughing about it a while ago.
Yeah, we used to carry wet costumes often – and we also used that (supposedly) fireproof crepe paper. Stuff still could burn easy though – so I hear!