Light Fuse; Get Away

NOT what my neighborhood fireworks
shows were like.

The Fourth of July — or, as we sometimes call it, July Fourth — doesn't excite me the way it did when I was much younger. This year it means I'm off from work and I might go to the beach in the morning and a party in the afternoon and I will likely get drunk, so it's not that bad, but still, the fireworks shows don't exactly light my fuse.

During the typical summer vacation that I enjoyed between the ages of six and fifteen — the years after I was first allowed to roam the neighborhood sans grownup and before I started working — July 4 marked one of the few milestones in a season when every day seemed to blend into another.


There were always a couple of reliable folks on the block who every year would blow up a ton of crap they bought from Pennsylvania (when fireworks were still legal) or Maryland or Virginia, states that seemed as faraway and exotic as Alaska or Hawaii to a kid in the single digits of age.

My friends who lived two doors down, the Larrys, had a decent firecracker extravaganza, and Mr. Larry was a responsible host, armed with a small Bic lighter. Other than a giant mortar being incorrectly launched, ascending about two feet in the air, and landing on the street, where it vomited a rainbow that remained there for days, Mr. Larry ran a very tight show that usually ended at 9pm.

After that, we'd head around the block to where the Smiths ran their pyrotechnics show with what I'll call semi-reckless abandon. The Smith kids were at least five years older than us, and they wore T-shirts featuring bands like Yes or the Rolling Stones, and lit their fuses with the cigarettes they were smoking. They liked to aim at least one Roman candle at the street light, and midway through the show they'd sweep the detritus into a brown paper bag and then light the bag.

The Smiths would continue the display while the bag burned undisturbed, except for when the occasional unspent firecracker, rocket, or jumping jack would ignite and rock the bag toward a random location. One time one of their friends, who'd recently received his drivers license, drove by and idled his car over the lit bag for an uncomfortable amount of time.

Every July 5 morning, my brother and a few friends and I would roam the littered streets like it was 1945 Berlin, looking for still-live merchandise and grabbing some of the cooler spent stuff like cones or fat rockets like battle trophies. We did this until we were old enough to realize it was a waste of time to spend an hour collecting garbage.

LET ME TRY THIS
There were a couple of years, when we actually had our own money, where we bought some fireworks for ourselves. This meant buying off a photocopied list of items from a guy who knew a guy and the prices were always jacked up and the list always included some items that were really expensive but sounded intriguing and in a pre-Google era we could not easily identify.

They had names like Shanghai Battleship or Happy Fun Exploding Foot but anyone risking the purchase of such an item would be disappointed because the fuse would fall out of or the thing or you wouldn't know how to properly set it up so you'd ignite it while it's upside down or not nailed to a tree like it's supposed to.

The result: as much entertainment as lighting a ten-dollar bill, which is pretty much what you're doing.

At least I never injured myself (or others) during the holiday, other than wearing out the tip of my thumb on a rickety lighter.