Happy 4th of July
in the late evening on Friday, the 4th of July 2003 by Scott
Just a quick post. The neighbors shot off some fireworks tonight. The guy is a retired fireman whose son followed in his dad’s footsteps. The local cops know him and besides, it was just sparklers and screamers.
Man I miss the smell of black powder. There is simply nothing as American as a hot humid evening with fireflies in the air along with the smell of barbecue and cheap Chinese fireworks. I came of age just after the M-80 had been banned – making it a legend of sorts among my crew. While fireworks were illegal in the burbs where I lived, it was kind of the “illegal” that meant that cops really only bothered if the neighbors complained. And then they only confiscated what you had on you at the time and didn’t care about the stash that you would reload with as soon as they were gone. Dad would always pick some up on the way home from fishing, so we were always well stocked. Cherry bombs, Black Cats, smoke bombs, snakes, bricks upon bricks of firecrackers, grosses of bottle rockets. I remember being a kid and buying my first gross of bottle rockets. It took months for me to shoot all of them off because I used them so sparingly.
Are fireworks dangerous? Of course. I’ve had them blow up in my hands and burn my arms. I’ve had ear drums that sang for hours after one had blown up in mid-throw. Would I want my kid to do all the stuff I did? Probably not. But still, he’s missing something special. It’s hard to quantify in these “safety conscious” times. There’s something to be said about doing dangerous stuff. Well, dangerous to the point where you might get a nasty burn for a day or two, but nothing fatal. How many kids lost fingers to fireworks or eyes for that matter? Was it all that many? Can I see the data?
Being a “rascal” is part of growing up, and I want my kid to take risks. Do I want him doing everything that his dad did? Of course not. I damn near got myself killed on a dare involving a train trestle and a freight train, and enjoyed rafting down rain swollen creeks. But watching a roman candle shoot sparks high into the air, or seeing a bottle-rocket sail into the sky on a hot Summer night is a wonderful experience for a boy, and a brilliant memory that the smell of black powder awakens in a man’s mind.
Happy 4th of July.
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July 5th, 2003 at 8:05 am
Interesting thing on the drive out to my parent’s house last night.
Right over the Maryland line was several tents set up selling fireworks. Of course, you can’t set off fireworks in Maryland, so they won’t sell to you if you have a Maryland driver’s license.
So since I live in Delaware, I can buy some. But they’re illegal in Delaware too. So theoretically a state trooper can site right on the DE side of the state line and nail you coming back. So your only hope is to not live in Maryland, buy there, and then keep driving into Virginia or someplace else that isn’t a nanny state.