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the bystanders.’ Well, where I’m from, we’re not talking the normal ohhhs and ahhhs of bright-eyed children; we’re talking about blood curdling screams, teeth rattling explosions, blowtorch-like
incendiary devices, and crazy relatives who might slip a firecracker in your hip pocket or randomly shoot a bottle rocket in your direction.
The fireworks stand memo went on to say, ‘If a firework does not burn when you light it, do not try and light it again, this can pose huge injury risks.’ We knew this. That’s why we’d get an out-of-town cousin or unsuspecting guest to light dud bombs. It is an unwritten rule that as soon as that person touches the fire stick to the butt of the explosive, everyone in unison screams ‘BOOM!’ This would lead to uncontrollable fits of laughter and an occasional fistfight.
Being from the country, we were pretty accustomed to ‘blowin’ up’ stuff. Calcium carbide is a chemical used to make acetylene gas for old-fashioned miner’s headlamps. A select few of us brainiacs used to fish with ‘carbide bombs.’ We had no idea it was illegal…we just knew that we were getting to blow something up and would get a mess of fish to boot! All we needed was some car-bide, some sand and a mayonnaise jar. The underwater explosion would knock the fish unconscious to where they could be easily gathered into a gunnysack as they floated to the surface. This is not something game wardens, game fishermen or people who work for Michael Chertoff look favorably on.
Was there such a thing as the ATF when I was a kid? It wasn’t uncommon for a thirteen or fourteen year-old friend to come by in his daddy’s old pickup truck to go remove a stump, a beaver dam or the occasional abandoned vehicle. I remember vividly wading through snakes to put a whole box of dynamite under one giant beaver lodge, then hiding behind the stump of a fallen oak. When, after several shots with his nylon twenty-two, my friend finally managed to hit the blasting cap nestled amongst the sticks of TNT, a reverberating explosion that jarred every bone in our bodies ensued. It rained chunks of earth, stinking swamp mud and beaver-gnawed tree limbs for what seemed like forever. We stayed hunkered behind that stump for thirty minutes, dazed, deaf and shaking uncontrollably. I don’t know if we got wiser or just got some of the stupid knocked out of us, but we never did that again.
Please don’t try any of the above. The safest way to see fireworks on the Fourth of July, is to attend a local event, where you can watch a fireworks display created by professionals, not by numbskulls. |
