Advanced search

Sunday Punch By Steve Johnston

Bombs Away!

Before sanity set in, we boys got a real bang out of our holiday

IT'S GETTING CLOSE to the Fourth of July and that time of year I must digress a little . . .

When I was growing up in Everett, my father would pile my brothers and me into the old Ford station wagon and we would drive a few miles north to the Indian reservation. Then my father would let us do something that today would probably get him a visit from the state child protective agency.

Dear old Dad would allow us to buy fireworks. Real fireworks.

Sure, we could buy fireworks in Everett at a local stand run by some community group. These were fireworks called "Safe and Sane," but what self-respecting Everett kid would want to be associated with anything that was safe or sane? For a few bucks you could buy a box of "fireworks" that included sparklers, a few smoke bombs and some black tablets that, when lit, would uncurl to be some kind of snake made out of ash. The closest these stands came to real fireworks were something called "Lady Fingers."

But the explosion from Lady Fingers was so sissy that we used to hold them in our hands when we lit them. The bang had as much punch as being snapped with a rubber band.

No, our father would let us buy fireworks that should have been called "Unsafe and Totally Insane." You could get firecrackers, but these bad boys came in rolls of 1,000 with the fuses weaved together so when you lit the end of the roll, you would have 1,000 firecrackers going off in less than a minute. So many were exploding that you had to run 50 yards to get away or risk having them go off on your head.

Then there were black balls the size of golf balls. Sticking out the side of each one was a fuse that could blow apart a tin can and made a noise so loud you could hear the bang into the next week. There were always a couple Roman candles that shot colored flaming balls. The Roman candles were fun to play war games with my brothers. We'd run around the backyard, shooting flaming balls at each other. When a flaming ball would hit someone, it would explode into a thousand fiery pieces.

Some of the boxes had sparklers, but these weren't the kind of sparklers that came with "Safe and Sane" fireworks. No, these "sparklers" were foot-long paper tubes that shot out flames you could use to cut open a safe door.

If you bought the big box of fireworks that promised "fun for the whole family," you got all the usual stuff, including the lame Lady Fingers, but also skyrockets and things called "aerial bombs." As advertised, these bombs could light up the whole sky with a flash and a boom so loud every window in the neighborhood would rattle.

But the real attraction in the family pack were the skyrockets. Looking back, I think they were actually dynamite on sticks. The Alpha male in the family would put the stick part in an empty milk carton, take a Zippo lighter to the fuse and run. You would watch it take off in a shower of sparks and then it would disappear into the night sky.

For a couple seconds, you would wonder if the skyrocket was going to ignite. Then, in the middle of the sky would be a flash, followed by BOOM! Then the sky would light up with a million exploding little Lady Fingers rolling across the heavens like a tidal wave. Each explosion came with the required "ahhh" from onlookers. You had to say "ahhh" — I think it was some kind of law.

When all the fireworks were shot and all the grass fires caused by the exploding bombs were put out, my brothers and I would pick up the unexploded firecrackers. Later, we would cut them open, pour the gunpowder into an empty BB-gun pellet tube, put a match to it and hope for an explosion that would rattle the windows for blocks. That never happened, but there was always a huge flash.

I'm through digressing now. If my children should point out that their mother and I never allowed them to play with fireworks, I would just say that's true.

"You could blow your fingers off!"

Steve Johnston is a retired Seattle Times reporter. His e-mail address is stevejonst@aol.com. Paul Schmid is a Times news artist.