The Bombs Bursting in Air

Americans love to blow stuff up.

My own pyrotechnic history probably began with caps. At some point I dispensed with the gun and got to the good stuff by unrolling the caps and slamming them with a hammer.

Gateway pyrotechnics.

It was a natural progression from caps to fireworks. John Adams wrote that July 4th "ought to be celebrated by pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other." Little did he know this list would become a pretty accurate description of what would go on in the USA on any given weekday.

Like military weapons, fireworks have a sort of pecking order. They are also a bit like candy in that they are all basically the same thing but the people who invent them have come up with thousands of iterations on the basic design.

At the bottom rung are the safest-rated fireworks like sparklers and snakes. Sparklers are for kids but I'm not going to lie: if I have some sparklers I'll light 'em up. Who doesn't love twirling a sparkler around and smelling that gunpowder?

Snakes were an early favorite in the neighborhood. You lit the little black pellet and watched as the twisting ash rose and fell like a living creature.

When we grew bored of sparklers and snakes we moved up to smoke bombs. Smoke bombs are sort of the last step off the cliff before going into full pseudo-military mode.

The next stage were the firecrackers like Black Cats. Being a visual person, firecrackers bored me because all they did was make a lot of noise. This is not to say I did not blow off countless Black Cats in my day, although I grew out of them early. You could tell a lot about kids by the kinds of fireworks they were into. The firecracker kids tended to be the jerk-offs-in-training who always lived a few doors down with angry parents. They would light off entire strings of Black Cats at once because A) it showed they had a lot of ammo and B) made way more noise that way. 

When the Black Cat kids got older they were the ones who set off one of the most fearsome firecrackers we know as the M80.

M80s are actual explosive devices with 80mg of flash powder that were banned in the U.S. back in 1966 because they are basically small sticks of TNT. So the kids I knew probably weren't using M80s but M50s. Either way, they can blow a hole in the ground. 

I hated M80s and everything they stood for. 

Then there were the badass kids with alcoholic dads who made their own IEDs. There was this fad of attaching four soda cans together (hollowed out) to make a simple mortar or cannon to shoot tennis balls by pouring lighter fluid at the base before lighting it. We weren't allowed to make them but we hung out with these kids at the end of the block who always had the garage door open at night and whose dad used to be in the military. They blew those flaming tennis balls into the air at all hours. Simpler and more reckless still, we used to take lighter fluid and squeeze out squiggly shapes and curse words onto the sidewalk and light it up. 

KIDS: if you are reading this you shouldn't be. And don't you dare try any of this at home and tell your parents you read my blog.

My favorites were the rockets. There were Buzzbombs with propellers that in theory guided the missile; where it was supposed to go I don't think anyone bothered to consider. I can imagine some manufacturer saying, "I've got an idea. Instead of throwing firecrackers randomly, why don't we put a propeller on there and send them horizontally toward someone's face?" 

And that's the thing about fireworks. You'd get in trouble lighting a match but somehow it was okay to set off pyrotechnic devices that only worked properly a third of the time.

The classic firework was of course the Bottle Rocket. 

Who doesn't love a Bottle Rocket? The problem, of course, is that you are ten-years old and setting off this explosive that flies over the trees and possibly onto your neighbor's roof. I loved them but shuddered every time one would zigzag erratically into the darkness. There was this pause when I expected to hear fire engines.

The most dreaded of all home fireworks were Roman Candles, which were professional versions of the soda cannons and no less dangerous. Roman Candles ejected fireballs and flames at intervals. You are supposed to plant them in the ground but of course some people hold them and end up without hands or arms. 

  The American Spirit of Recklessness in action. 

Then you have the traditional fireworks rockets that shoot hundreds of feet into the air and create dazzling bloom-like displays. Most people love the classic Chrysanthemum fireworks, which, when sufficiently expansive and in low wind, are truly awe-inspiring.

When I lived in DC I was able to buy two rockets that approximated the classic Chrysanthemum, but to get the full effect you of course have to get into the real deal which are actual mortar shells.

God Bless America.

Shells are only for the most patriotic of Americans. I never saw one shot off at close range, but there is always some guy who lives in some mysterious part of the neighborhood who puts on displays a few stars and bars removed from the official ones. The kind of dad who hands out weird Halloween candy and always has a classic car sitting on cinder blocks in the driveway.

Be safe this 4th of July and keep the garage door open.