This occurred to me when I recently came across a bag of fireworks in the garage. These weren't the safe-and-sane variety, but the kind you get at one of those plywood stands on the Indian reservation. They are on the news the first week of July when kids are shown running around the parking lot, blowing things up.

I don't remember exactly how this bag of explosives ended up in our garage, but I can take a guess. The Johnston children drove up to Marysville with their equally irresponsible friends and purchased the goodies that are illegal in any other safe and sane neighborhood.

Where their plan broke down was when they returned to the house and did one of two things, both of which were incredibly stupid. They either went out in the front yard and lit off something with a name like "The Buzz Bomb of Death," or they walked into the house with their paper bag filled with their evening entertainment and showed the goodies to their mother, the Truly Unpleasant Mrs. Johnston.

The smart thing would have been to sneak around and shoot off the fireworks in some vacant lot and take the chance of being arrested and thrown into jail. Then at least they would have had the fun of seeing some of their ill-gotten gains put to good use.

Or they could have come home and ask if their father wanted to come out and play. Then we could have blown up some stuff and wandered on back home without Mrs. Johnston being any the wiser. (Though she might have suspected something when she smelled gunpowder on us.)

But shooting off fireworks is a family tradition that is a thing of the past, at least as far as I'm concerned. Mrs. Johnston would say lots of family traditions are still left, but they don't involve blowing things up.

I'm going to miss other family traditions now that the kids are getting older. I liked Easter because the Johnston children were loaded down with chocolate eggs and by the second day of eating them, they were so sick of chocolate they were happy to pass along leftovers to their father.

Valentine's Day was like a national holiday around the house. I especially liked it if any of the boys had girlfriends because the girlfriends would load them down with boxes of chocolates.

Of course, Christmas was always fun because the kids would get cool toys and we could play with them all day. Now that they're older, they get only clothes and CDs with sounds of angry people screaming at each other. I can't wear the clothes and I don't understand the music, so Christmas has lost its charm for me.

But the biggest holiday, and the one that caused me to weep as each child announced that she or he was no longer honoring this traditional event, was Halloween. It wasn't unusual for us to have two shopping bags filled with candy after a good haul by the kids. It wasn't unusual for us (or maybe it was just me) to be eating Halloween candy right through Christmas.

Now that free fireworks and candy are out of my life, there is only one thing left to do. Get these kids married and wait for the grandkids to start showing up.

Steve Johnston can be reached at stevejonst@aol.com. Paul Schmid is a Seattle Times news artist.