"Skipping Fourth" by Troy H. Cheek on Jul 07, 2008
Well, once again we have a year which will be one day shorter for about half of us. That is because, as the evening news solemnly tells me, many cities, communities, and munincipalities are cancelling the Fourth of July this year. I guess that means their calendars will go straight from July 3 to July 5. I wonder when they're celebrating Christmas?
I hope that what they actually mean is that they're skipping the Independence Day fireworks celebrations, not that they're going to jump over the actual day. Although, come to think of it, that might not be a bad idea.
If you get bored, type "firework safety" in any search engine. You'll find links to all sorts of webpages and videos about how to properly enjoy a safe and sane Independence Day celebration. Then page down a few times to find the really interesting tips on how to set your little brother on fire or send the cat flying into another ZIP code.
Here at the Cheek household, we somehow manage to avoid loosing sight, hearing, or extremeties this year. In fact, that's about all there is to know. You can stop reading now.
Now, firework safety is very important to us. All our family members know to use only the safest handling methods and OH MY GOD HE'S ON FIRE PUT HIM OUT PUT HIM OUT!
Ahem. No worries. He's fine. His hair always looked like that.
In the past, I might have spent 40 or 50 dollars on special $1 packs of hundreds of tiny little firecrackers, smoke bombs, or bottle rockets. I'm not even sure why they call them bottle rockets, as the instructions clearly say not to set them off in or out of bottles. However, as I've become more mature and more lazy, I no longer spend 40 or 50 dollars every year on tiny little fireworks.
Instead, I spend 40 or 50 dollars every year on huge fireworks.
While the nephews are setting of hundreds of explosions one or two at a time, I'm buying huge set pieces that fire off a few hundred rounds in one go. Light fuse, get away, watch until you get bored.
My younger brother, T2 (Mom gave us all names starting with "T" so we'd be easier to remember), had much the same idea, but he went with quality instead of quantity. He bought a bunch of those mortar things. He had a very slow rate of fire, but the blasts and booms were fairly impressive. I asked him what would happen if you set off a mortar shell when it wasn't in the mortar tube, but he couldn't talk himself into trying.
Not to be outdone, the nephews started trying to figure out how to set off more and more bottle rockets at the same time. You know, tying wicks together, turing cigarette lighters into tiny flamethrowers, coordinated assaults, that sort of thing. Finally, the oldest nephew came up with the idea of using sprinklers as lighters.
No, not those things in your year that spray water everywhere. "Sprinklers" is just his name for "sparklers." Sparklers: those cute little harmless kids fireworks, the only fireworks designed to actually be held in your hand while they go off. Safe fun for everyone!
Yeah, right. Wire a few hundred of those things together and you've pretty much got thermite. Don't try this at home, kids, but I'm pretty sure you can burn through an engine block given $20 worth of sparklers. Build a bomb by containing those sparklers in a close pipe or half a roll of duck tape, and I'm pretty sure you can send a mailbox flying clear over a house.
I found out later that doing so is a federal offense, so don't do that.
Anyway, the genius nephew, also known as "tall and annoying" to differentiate him from his shorter cousins, discovered that sparklers are good at setting things on fire, so what better way to set 10 or 20 bottle rocket fuses on fire at the same time than a sparkler or two? The only problem was that we couldn't quite get it across to him that you don't need to run away from the rockets, arms pumping furiously, while holding two burning sparklers. We didn't pay so much attention to the 20 rockets he'd just sent up as the red hot bits of burning iron oxide he was slinging all over the yard. By the time we'd get the flames stomped out, the rockets would be finished going off.
By the way, don't wear flipflops when setting off fireworks. On the bright side, the bandages keep my feet nice and warm at night.
