Harrumph File #075 07.03.2011_My Hometown Has Finally Legalized Fireworks

     So, I’m sure you all remember a time, oh say when you were 9 or 10.  It was late June… school was out, the days were long, you rode your bike all over town exploring various dry storm canals or culverts; playing “combat” with your buddies; checking out what was new at the hobby store; having a giant burger and chocolate shake at the local Dairy Belle, then pedaling home at sunset to play “dodge the car lights” with your friends who lived in the neighborhood.  And, as you hopped on your bike for the trek home, holding the latest P-47 model in a bag on the handlebars, that’s when you saw it.  Twenty-five feet wide, ten feet high, five feet deep.  All plywood and two by fours with chicken wire windows, a huge sign proclaiming it was “Safe & Sane,” and chock-full of every imaginable sparkling, spinning, fire-spewing, smoke-generating pyrotechnic ever designed by the evil genius mind of man.  Yes, they even had snakes…

     Unfortunately, you were over the city line where fireworks were legal, and last you checked the fire chief of your town decided long ago that fireworks (yes, even snakes) were nothing but a menace to society and that if you wanted to see fireworks then you should go to the Giants game or the county fair this weekend but in no circumstances were you allowed to bring those fireworks that were being sold four blocks away from your house into his town!  Yeah, right.

     Well, you know the rest of the story.  You still had eight bucks left over from shopping in the hobby store (you were saving it until you had the twelve bucks to buy that really big B-17 model) and since fireworks dealers are kind of like carnies anyway, you decided that the B-17 could wait ‘till Christmas because the Fourth of July only comes around once a year and those piccolo petes are only 99 cents each and you can also get four boxes of sparklers (eight to a box and in different colors) for a buck!  Man, you would even have enough left over to get a bag of six smoke bombs (that kind of look like hand grenades and maybe you could throw one to cover your movement the next time you’re playing “combat” with your friends and it would be sooo cool and you could claim to be Sgt. Saunders and everyone else would have to be just regular squad members or even, uggg… Germans!)

     Anyway, after you got home what did you have to do with your now-illegal booty?  Put it in your strong-box of course!  You had to lock them up because you had to wait until the actual “fourth” to set them off.  You see if you set them off on the second, or even the third of July, the cops were out there looking for you.  Everyone knew that.  Everyone had heard about some kid who was still in jail from last year because the cops caught him on the third of July setting off one of those cool cardboard tanks that shoot sparks out of the gun barrel.  Every kid knew that you had to wait until the fourth because then everyone was doing it and the cops couldn’t arrest everyone!

Patton?  Ummm...no.

     And if you waited until the actual holiday, even your parents couldn’t tell you that you couldn’t light them off!  It was some kind of constitutional amendment or something.  And, even though your parents might tell you something about “blowing your hand off if you’re not careful” they still came outside to watch you set off the piccolo petes and roman candles, and even they wanted a sparkler (green for dad, blue for mom.)  But, you know, the joy was always tempered because you still had to keep one eye on the end of the street for a police cruiser so you only had one eye to watch the fireworks with.  All because of that sour-apple fire chief who hated fireworks.

     So now, even forty years later, we’re still buying our contraband over the county line, still teaching our kids to keep one eye on the fireworks and one eye on the street corner for that cruising police car… but wait!  What is that?  What can that possibly be going up in the parking lot of the local supermarket?  The familiar lines, the chicken wire, the smell of plywood, and yes, even the small packages of snakes in the front row.  The firework carnies, the wads of cash in hand, the “Safe & Sane” sign, even that huge “Block Party” box of fireworks that you remember from so long ago.  And here, in my own hometown!  Could it be that that old fire chief has had a change of heart?  Perhaps the piccolo petes are even safer & saner than they were forty years ago?  Maybe kids now-a-days are just more responsible than we were way back when.  No, it turns out that it’s really none of those things.  The fire chief still hates fireworks (no one ever found out why) even if he did retire ten years ago.  Fireworks can still blow your hand off if you’re not careful.  And as for kids today being more responsible?  Don’t make me laugh.

     No, what really is driving the legalization of fireworks is… the taxman.  Yes, the hometown honchos finally realized that they could make a little bit of scratch from all those roman candles and block parties.  Yet another “dumbing down” of our culture.  First it was getting straight “A’s” just for showing up at school; then it was trophies for everyone on little league teams; then rounding off “Pi” to 3 because it’s too hard to calculate the circumference of a circle using the actual value of “Pi;” now it’s the hometown selling out for a buck or two to help pay for that downtown transportation center that has yet to have a train or bus pull into it.

            And buying the fireworks is just not the same anymore.  There’s no thrill of opening your “strong-box” and showing your friends your treasure.  Heck, if you buy them you just throw the bag on the kitchen counter until the fourth… anyone could see them sitting there!  There’s no newspaper story of a kid being sent to the pokey, or of anyone having their thumbs blown off.  You don’t have to post a sentry at the street corner for cops and you know, those cool tanks spewing sparks from the gun barrel are actually pretty lame.  Even snakes don’t sound very fun anymore.  *Sigh,* think I’ll go to the Giants game or the county fair this year.  Harrumph…