Patriots like fireworks
The 4th of July has always been my favorite holiday. My formative years were in Omaha. Every July 4th a local TV channel showed the movie Yankee Doodle Dandy and I have since never grown tired of watching it. My second grade teacher spoke so enthusiastically about George Washington and the Revolution one might have thought she had known him. I had a dream that George and I were both seven and he lived next door. When I awoke, I ran to the window and was truly surprised and disappointed. From those experiences the die was cast. I was a patriot, who by no surprise, liked fireworks.
In anyone’s language fireworks means celebration. The professional firework shows at drive-in movies or municipal parks were spectacular events, with the rockets ascending as they shed sparks then exploded into multicolored Chrysanthemums, audibly emitting either muffled pops or startling booms. They would start off shooting singles, then progress to firing in volley. The smell of burnt black powder would drift in usually after the third salvo. Beautiful.
Shooting off fireworks yourself is a more personal experience, and handling fireworks is essentially playing with fire. They were the first objects of, after one’s first BB-gun, the dire warnings about what they could do to fingers and eyes. The small Ladyfingers and Black Cats were dangerous enough. I had a Black Cat explode in my nine-year-old hand from a short fuse that put a small cut on my finger and thumb. The bigger “salute” class of fireworks, the cherry bombs and silver salutes had the power to send an overturned metal pail 20 feet into the air, and the lacquer-coated fuse allowed it to explode underwater. Such power and capabilities aroused youthful imaginations. I will leave it to the reader to research what creative uses of the salutes there were, except that they have been outlawed since 1966.
I had a cherry bomb that had lost its fuse. I set it on the ground about two feet away. I thought when I lit it the thing would sail away like a rocket with a flame trail. When I put the punk stick to the hole bleeding the flash powder I was blinded by a white flash.
I didn’t hear an explosion or felt any burn, I was just totally blind like in a whiteout blizzard. I sat down. I wasn’t scared, I was blind. I realized I couldn’t hear anything. My ears weren’t ringing, there was just a void. It didn’t seem like a lot of time had passed, but I realized I could see the outline of trees. Then I could see better details. Eventually the colors came back. When I stood up it felt like I had come from a long way off.
I learned to have a healthy respect for things that blow up. Years later while in boot camp, I was laser-focused on everything the instructor was saying during hand grenade training.
The 4th of July celebration is to remind We The People of the Declaration of Independence of 1776 and that we are a Constitutional Republic governed by laws. Fireworks are symbolic of the belligerence that was needed to secure our freedoms. Today our nation is divided to the point of a constitutional crisis. Today it is imperative that we all are informed and knowledgeable of the issues at hand and decide which side of the issues we are on.
“You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” Ayn Rand.
Mike Ralph lives in Benkelman and is an occasional stringer for
High Plains News. He has been Chief of Detectives in the U.S.
Marine Corps; has worked with Denver Public Schools, and was
in transportation management in Denver, Colorado.