Some years would see a block party with neighbors combining firework arsenals. The Dagnalls never kicked in the large boxed assortments. In part because I was particular about the fireworks I liked and the ones I didn’t at the local Red Devil/Freedom/Wildcat stands. I preferred to handpick my fireworks. I swore by Piccolo Petes and Ground Bloom Flowers, maybe cunningly constructed pyramids of Black Snakes that left cool scorch patterns like Maori facial tattoos on the concrete for the rest of summer. Why pay extra for boxed sets that cost more yet were larded down with impotent Sprinklers?
Also, in part, because of a streak of rebellion. Others would bring the retail fireworks and play within the bounds of “safe and sane”. Others might mishandle things and suffer burns or cause structure fires, earning our scorn as well as a trip to the hospital. We refused to be bound by rules meant for these other sorts of people. What could be more American, right?
So my father would use his trucking connections to get the Good Stuff: illegal fireworks “up from the border”. A few bricks of tiny, firecracker-on-a-stick bottle rockets, which were more fascinating because they were contraband than because of the results they delivered. They weren’t much better than sparklers, honestly. But there were always a few of their larger cousins, as well: bona fide rockets on thick guide rods with rocketish plastic fixtures–nosecones and fins and such. These looked serious. Aeronautical, even.
Some of the other dads would set down a fountain, light it with their Bic, and scurry back to watch fifteen seconds of sparks. When this petered out, we’d unlimber our family artillery: a man-high length of black PVC pipe, square hole cut in the side down at one end. Scarred and scorched at the muzzle from Fourths of July past.
You know the old movies where they make a big deal out of loading a cannon or a musket? Wadding, powder, shot, whatever, tamp it down, aim, fire? That’s how this felt to me. A throwback to an earlier, more revolutionary era. Less safe and sane, no warning labels.
We boys would stand at the ready with buckets of water, in case an errant round went into a neighbor’s landscaping. My father would drop a rocket down the pipe. The fuse would appear where the notch was cut in the PVC (good design, that). Light, tilt in the direction you want it to go, wait…and foomp! Worked like a charm, trailing sparks to burst fifty feet up.
One year the police helicopter was around, and we kids were in mortal fear that we’d all get swept up for the illegal fireworks. Some of the dumber adults, my father included, decided to use the rocket tube for suburban antiaircraft instead. Larger rocket in the tube, wait ’til Angel One wanders by, don’t fire ’til you see the whites of the searchlight…foomp! No, the rockets didn’t come anywhere near the helo, but it’s the thought that counts. The lingering thought of “WTF, Dad?”
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