Summary
A Prohibition-era gum plant, all clanking rollers and pastel wrappers, becomes an accidental speakeasy when a panicked bootlegger’s flask glugs raw moonshine into a towering vat of molten chicle; the next shift unwraps a product that fizzes, pops, and inebriates on first chew. Word travels faster than a Model-T backfire: the entire workforce, from floor-sweepers to bean-counters, stuffs cheeks with the spiked slabs, and the factory floor mutates into a delirious carnival of tipsy acrobats, conveyor-belt can-cans, and quality-control chemists waltzing with ladles. Temperance crusaders storm the loading dock, convinced Lucifer himself has flavored their licorice; strikebreakers arrive armed with fire hoses, only to find themselves pelted by pink gum-balls that burst like tiny grenades of proof. In the chaos, the bootlegger—now half hero, half scapegoat—leads a conga line of secretaries through a labyrinth of chutes, each woman tearing invoices into confetti that drifts like snow over the inebriate throng. Management, desperate to quell the ferment, opens the rooftop tanks, unleashing a pink tsunami that sweeps the town square, baptizing mayors, newsboys, and spinster librarians in a sticky, perfumed tide. At dawn, the factory whistles its requiem: workers awaken beneath machinery, jaws sore, heads thunderous, but eyes agleam with the knowledge that for one effervescent night they chewed through the veil of industrial servitude and tasted a giddy, illicit freedom.
Synopsis
The action takes place in a gum factory. By a peculiar accident, a bootlegger attempting to avoid the keen eye of an officer of the law, holds a bottle of liquor so that its contents drop into a vat in which the gum is being prepared. It is when the gum is finished and ready to chew that the riot starts. The folks discover before long that it includes fire-water and you can imagine the rest.
Cast
