Buzz bombs and sparklers were battling the dark,
Folks sat on coolers and in pickup truck beds,
While mortars and rockets sailed over their heads...
I grew up setting off fireworks on the Fourth of July. It was one of my favorite holidays, maybe tied with Halloween for second place after Christmas. The smell of black powder on your hands as you eat a hot dog, the ringing ears, and so on.
I haven't bought fireworks for maybe fifteen years now. I think the first year I was married was the last Fourth we bought fireworks for. It cost so much and the pro displays were more satisfying anyway.
But picking up the girls today, I was told by my ex that fireworks are still legal for sale and use in Edgerton. I started to say they were too expensive, no thanks, but then I got to thinking: my eleven and twelve year old offspring have never lit a fuse. We've done Gardner's commercial display most years, but that's it.
This had to change.
Em was four square against my stop at the fireworks tent, convinced we'd all be burnt into 'french fries' and so on, but I realized I've neglected a certain fatherly duty in not teaching my children to safely enjoy fireworks on the Fourth.
I was pleasantly surprised at how much mayhem I could acquire for $30. I didn't get anything big, no single item over $2.50, and even with bulk things (like a brick of Black Cats), I stuck to the stuff under $5.
So after me and Mo did sidewalk chalk and a couple of model rocket launches at the Purple Park, we kidnapped Em and headed to Edgerton.
I really have a distaste for the term 'shooting off' to describe a rocket launch. It seems to imply a certain recklessness, a random and possibly violent act.
To 'shoot off' a rocket does not convey the control, the safety, the intent to recover and reuse the rocket. You launch model rockets; you shoot off fireworks.
Anyway, we got to Edgerton as it was getting fully dark, and found everyone out on their lawns, lighting off fireworks like I remember when I was a kid, before more and more cities just outright banned them.
The park there was freakin' packed, too. I about couldn't find a place to park. People, it turns out, had come from miles around to one of the few places where they can burn it up without fear of the law. Edgerton is a small town: it's a one gas station, one tavern, one liquor store sort of joint, truly a bedroom community and not a very big bedroom at that. So I figured that by keeping it legal and encouraging people to gather in the park and blaze away with their roman candles and whatnot, the city got a display without having to shell out big bucks for a commercial display.
So the girls sat on the trunk of my car and I commenced to light off fountains and whatnot, while around us buzz bombs and small mortar type fireworks blazed away.
I helped Mo light a fountain, but Em wasn't up for that. She was convinced, many times, that I was about to be burnt to a crisp, but I honestly didn't even have a close call with anything tonight. I think because she didn't know for sure what to expect out of a given item, it looked scarier to her than it is. I tried to tell her, yes the stuff can burn you, you have to be careful, but that doesn't mean you can't get close enough to light the fuse.
Then I was trying to light the fuse on a 'strobe light' piece when I heard a series of concussions that rocked me to my gut, accompanied by a near-day brightness. I look up and see the enormous spiders of some very Big Boy fireworks.
I think they're actually supposed to be flowers, but they always struck me as spiders, going clear back to Baldwin's displays I remember going to. And my family moved from Baldwin when I turned five, so I guess they've always appeared to be spiders to me. Maybe the one kind of arachnid that doesn't freak me out.
Kudos to Edgerton, too, for waiting until it as fully dark to start. I don't get why Gardner (and other displays I've been to tend to be guilty of this, too) starts up fifteen to thirty minutes too early. You've dropped all this coin on the fireworks, got all these people waiting for the show. Guess what: they're not going to leave because you waited a few more minutes. The blacker the sky, the brighter the display.
Louder Than Bombs from Chixulub on Vimeo.
What followed was a very solid commercial display. Granted, the trains coming by (about 100 feet from where we parked) were louder than bombs half the time, but still, a lot of fun. My still-shots turned out for crap as usual (fireworks are hard to shoot, especially when you don't have a tripod, and I didn't this evening), but I got some video. Too much video, I know. I didn't include all the footage I took, but I should have edited it down a bit more.
Em's resistance turned to her begging for more.
Plus, we still get to do our regular Fourth thing tomorrow, including the Gardner display. Yaaaay!
And my fingers smell a bit like black powder and smoke. It's a sulfury smell that ought to put me off, but it just makes me proud to be an American.
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