Part III continued

     He remained a waste until a simple quirk in his everyday behavior evolved into a nationally celebrated source of a joy that is purely American. Should one have met Marco in his earlier years, during normal normal conversation, it mattered not where to him, he might casually produce a strike-anywhere 'farmer' match, the kind with the wooden shaft, from his shirt pocket, strike it on his upper front teeth, hold the torch behind himself below waste level to there ignite a silently expelled cloud of flatulence. And accompany this with a simple "skuza," much as he'd heard his parents utter a thousand times in their broken English.
     That in itself, though a bit odd, would never have been a reason for nationwide celebrity. However, Marco did not stop there. As the years passed, Pietro noticed that seemingly insignificant changes in his diet led to alterations in the hue and intensity of his ignitions. Scientific curiosity and artistic sensibility led him to experiment with an accurately measured and carefully documented variety of food stuffs. Combined with a yogi-like method of bowel control Marco could produce at will a rainbow of colors from magnificent magentas to captivating chartreuses. On the 4th of July he would entertain the children of his neighborhood with his version of fireworks. A small but appreciated skill.
     Small that is until the fickled finger of fate lent a hand. And Marco was up to the task when his opportunity knocked. In 1979 a chance encounter with Carl Sagan in the King of Clubs Bar in NE Minneapolis led to a moment of improvised genius. Approaching the noted physicist, author and television personality, Marco introduced himself by simply pulling out one of his ever-present matches, snapping it aflame on his teeth and calmly saying, "Hey Carl, check this out."
     To say the Sagan was flabbergasted, even awe-struck, by the momentarily glowing reproduction of the Horsehead Nebula in Orion, would be an understatement of the first magnitude. In a moment the image was gone. Sagan was speechless. Then recovered to say, "Encore." 
     At that moment Marco's new life as a touring member of Sagan's entourage was born. Planetariums, astrophysicist conventions, an appearance on the Tonight show and a segment of Sagan's PBS series Cosmos in which he illustrated one of Sagan's points with a detailed, rotating, full color reproduction of the spiral galaxy in Andromeda.