A Fireworks Story
July 4 has always been one of my favorite holidays.
Dead in the middle of the summer. A little bit more than a week before my birthday. Back when my schedule ran on high school football standard time, I used those nine days (give or take) as my yearly “re-charge”, and as a time to re-focus.
I’ve spent July 4 any number of ways, from pools to beaches to ballfields. I’ve been in the middle of a fireworks show, reporting on everything that went into North Myrtle Beach’s annual display, I’ve worked a double-shift for tourists at what was then Myrtle Beach’s nicest hotel, and I went to a house party on a Crescent Beach marsh where a live band played Otis Redding’s greatest hits while the sun sank over the Intercoastal.
I’ve been in the middle of Charleston Harbor, and I’d be lying if I told you there’s not some sobering and monumental feeling about being somewhere that the signing of the Declaration of Independence MATTERED, with a capital M.
I’ve been at my aunt and uncle’s, eating hot dogs and cheeseburgers and homemade peach ice cream, playing with a pop gun my grandparents brought me from the World’s Fair in a far-off place called “Knoxville”, running through sprinklers and catching fireflies until it was time to watch fireworks for as far as the eye can see.
Fireworks, again. See a pattern?
But one of my favorites, one of my very best memories, is a July 4 that taught me about humor, and humility, and that what you have doesn’t matter as much as what you’re willing to share. Oh, and cigars and barbecue. And yeah, fireworks. Names are omitted to protect some feelings.
I was 15 and had the best job a kid ever had, but if I tell y’all too much about that, we’ll be here for an extra thousand words. It was those nine agonizing days from my 16th birthday, with a car I wasn’t yet allowed to drive sitting in the yard. When you’re that age, and nearly mobile, one of the last things you want to do is attend a family party. But we were headed off to celebrate with my Mama’s college roommate and her family, former neighbors and still close by in our tiny community.
Her husband was, simply, one of my favorite people in the world at the time. I learned a lot about something every time I was around him. And that day, the first lesson was about the delights of a pig cooked all night in a cinder-block pit, and mustard barbecue sauce. He could DO It. And while we waited for everything to be just perfect, we started the great Holly Springs Bottle Rocket War of 1990.
I might be exaggerating the importance of the skirmish a little. I will say that we had two-to-three foot lengths of PVC pipe, capped at one end, suitable for inserting a lit bottle rocket and giving you just enough time to fire and aim, sometimes at friends and neighbors. He’d taught us that the year before
Shoulder-mounted bottle rocket bazookas, is what they were.
Nobody got maimed, or even injured, though there was some complaining as sides were picked. But you’ll have that.
The barbecue was phenomenal. The peach ice cream might have even been better than that. The fireworks started before dusk, and another lesson came with them. Tired of repeatedly trying to keep her “punk” lighter going, and hesitant to hand his 10-year-old daughter a disposable Bic, our host taught her how to puff on one of his White Owl cigars, and to light her fireworks with that instead.
Her mama was PLEASED.
As dusk turned into night, we were all anxiously awaiting a fireworks display to rival Boston or New York. One of the other guests had shown up with an arsenal – one of which cost THREE HUNDRED 1990s dollars, if I recall correctly – and wasn’t shy about telling all of us how much they cost, and how great they were, and how great he was by extension.
Y’all know the type.
We lit everything we’d brought. We touched off some of what he’d brought. Somebody ran to the store. Somebody flung Roman Candles end-over-end, making spinning torches.
And then the mythical $300 firecracker was lit, soared high into the July night, and lit up the Holly Springs sky.
It was epic. It was loud. It showered us all with sparks. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen, and it must have lasted near two minutes.
Everybody murmured their admiration, and the entirety of the carport seemed near applause. Our host spoke up.
“Man,” he said. “That was real good! When you reckon you gonna shoot that big ‘un?”
It remains one of the funniest, quickest, most biting things I’ve ever heard.
When I told you that our host that night taught me a lot, I should’ve been a little more specific. The men in that community taught me a lot. And one by one, they’re fading away. He’s gone, too. He died waiting on a heart transplant not terribly long after I finished high school.
He’s one of many reasons there’s a red heart at the bottom of my driver’s license. He’s the reason that I look at a certain spot in my yard and wonder if my HOA would let me stake it out for a cinder-block pit, or if I could hide one. He’s the reason I know how to keep a cigar lit after I’ve set it down for a minute. And he’s the reason I’ll never, ever brag about the cost or importance of something I’ve got.
Because sooner or later, it could go up in flames.
Happy Independence Day, y’all.
