I was traveling on one of our nation’s interstates recently and I got a warm fuzzy slash chubby. What gave me this feel good moment was a billboard, actually multiple billboards every few miles telling me about a great fireworks emporium/factory/kiosk not too far down the road. Now I really haven’t dabbled in any kind of fireworks since my youth but those roadside signs usually displaying multiple Bottle Rockets, Firecrackers, Cherry Bombs, etc. took me right back to when I was 10 when school was out for the summer and it was time to take explosives inventory. Now I don’t remember the legality or illegality of fireworks in the Chicago area back then but I do recall that there were a lot of fireworks mules working my neighborhood. A lot of guys, it was always guys because girls didn’t give a damn about blowing things up, were available to take whatever fireworks order you gave them. You gave them cash and a few days later they returned with your arsenal of Lady Fingers, M-80’s, Quarter Sticks, what have you. I always loved the packaging of firecrackers, tightly wrapped in that rice paper with very sharp corners and a cool label on front. Say what you will about the Chinese but hey they invented gunpowder and without that the 4th of July would end with no bang whatsoever every year. So the ramping up of said powder started right after school let out and the stash was kept in a shoebox in my closet and it was really hard to not blow off anything until the 4th. The other activity surrounding this time was deciding what I was going to blow up which was mostly plastic car models I had poorly assembled over the year and stuffed animals. And then the day arrived and you assembled with your friends and their cache of Smoke Bombs, Snakes, Sparklers, and punks to light everything with. Of course barely 15 minutes after sunset we had lit everything up, and thank God I can type all this not having to use a hook as a hand.

Gunga galunga,
Garry