Back when there weren't so many laws against doing stuff, back when you were a kid, the Fourth was grand. Preadolescent children, cigarette lighters in one hand, explosives in the other. You'd wait all year.
"Hey, man, light this one . . . "
It comes back, this small memory of bottle rockets and firecrackers and other illicit flammables, at the sight of the red-white-and-blue fireworks stands that sprout like so many wildflowers along the roadside. An indelible moment of a childhood in another time, back when backyard fireworks did not have a bad reputation.
There was the sound of the match, smell of the gunpowder, the ppffftt, the feel of the bottle rocket taking off (or leaving your fingers, if you were dumb or daring), the dusk and the twilight and the c'mon, c'mon, it's getting late. Time for one more. You didn't watch someone else do it, and you didn't play it on a video game. Bang! The real thing.
Of course, we do not advocate the use of rocket-propelled explosives, even in modest amounts. Yes, Mom, we know, about 10,000 people are injured each year in fireworks-related incidents.
But is it wrong to miss the explosives of lost youth? Back when things weren't so quality-controlled, at the beginning of summer when everything was possible and we'd all live forever, and man, nothing's gonna happen, I'm telling ya, just light it.
Sigh.
Today, consumer fireworks sales are booming, up fivefold since 2000, according to the American Pyrotechnics Association, but it's not the same, it's just not. What are these pyros spending all this money on?
According to regulations, here is what is illegal in D.C.:
"Firecrackers of any kind . . . any fireworks that explode (cherry bombs, salutes, Roman candles, floral shells, artillery shells) or intended to move after the piece is placed and fires (bottle rockets, parachutes, buzz bombs, pinwheels, helicopters, jumping jacks . . . )."
Illegal in Virginia:
"Firecrackers, skyrockets, torpedoes and other fireworks which explode, travel laterally, rise into the air or fire projectiles into the air."
In Maryland, you can pretty much wave a sparkler. But not in Montgomery County! There, they urge you to rat out your neighbor by calling the fire investigator hotline.
Where are the soaring skyrockets of yesteryear, the whoosh that rattled the kitchen window, exploding in a star-burst above the trees? The M80s, cherry bombs? Pretty much gone. It isn't like this all over this great land of ours, but around these parts, now when people say "fireworks," they mean little things that light up in the driveway. The "Tickled Pink." The "Red Devil." The "Night Treasure." They sound like accouterments sold in gentlemen's restrooms at nightclubs and gas stations.
Off to find anyone else who missed the glory days of the bang-up backyard show, we arrive at a roadside stand on Pennsylvania Avenue in Southeast Washington. Fireworks these days, they come in assorted value packs, with tough names such as "Mad Dog" and "Thunder Buster" and "Big Bomb."
Phyllis Thompson, a grandmother of a certain age, is standing inside the plywood booth, keeping to the shade.
"So, these things back there, the Big Bomb, any of those things go up in the air?" we ask.
"No," says Thompson.
"Any of 'em go boom?"
"Nope."
"How much they cost, those packages? The most expensive?"
"One hundred seventy-five."
"One seventy-five, nothing goes up in the air? The Thunder Buster, that one, what does that do?"
"Well, don't none of them go more than 10 feet up. Ten feet. And they don't explode. That's the law in the District. We do not carry anything like that, I guarantee. That's a fine and jail time, and I'm saying, no way. They light up real nice, though. They go round and round. They brought the snakes back."
"The snake? That thing that goes round and round, leaves the black mark on the driveway for two months?"
"Yes, you remember! That's the one."
"I dunno, Ms. Thompson. I always thought fireworks, they had to go up in the air, bottle rockets and such, you buy the gross of them, the whole string of firecrackers, you light the end and fling it and bapabapabap . Something has to go boom ."
She's nodding. Her daughter, manning the tent with her, is sound asleep in a lawn chair, slumped back in the seat, a plastic bottle in the cup holder, a thin line of perspiration on her forehead.
"It used to be like that, back in the day when we were kids. I grew up here in D.C., in Southeast, and it was like that. Everybody would come over to our house. We'd do the grill, the cookout, you know, and then it would get dark and we'd do the fireworks. Over here, you're up on the hill. So you could just come out in the street, something like Pennsylvania, and then you could see the fireworks downtown. It was real nice, your family around and everything."
A few miles away, a young mother named Monica Townes is buying fireworks at the big TNT Fireworks stand at the intersection of New York Avenue and Bladensburg Road NE. She's looking to entertain her three kids.
"I want things that go up in the air, like at the monument," she's explaining.
"This one go up?" She's holding a flashy package called "The Chimes of Freedom" for the salesman to see.
He shakes his head no.
"What these do?" This, the aforementioned Red Devil.
A bunch of things, says the salesman, a schoolteacher from Georgia named James Lynn, manning the booth for his dad, who owns it. They make flashes, go snap, crackle, pop.
Townes spends about $50, but with nothing headed skyward. She leaves, frustrated. Customers come and go. The traffic on New York Avenue is deafening. Only a few hours till the Fourth now.
Lynn is manning the booth with fellow Georgia schoolteacher Jason Skoczylas. They're both in their thirties. They agree fireworks are not to be played with, that they are potentially dangerous things. Safety first.
"But do I remember bottle rocket fights, Roman candle wars?" says Lynn. "Of course! I remember this one time, we were raking leaves and some of these fireworks were still in there and they started going off, and one of the Jumping Jacks came outta there, caught this girl's hair on fire. Wow. Kids do stupid stuff."
Sure, says Skoczylas. Like firing bottle rockets straight down in a pond of clear water, listening for the burp of the explosion.
"You'd see some of the fish get knocked around," he said, "but putting firecrackers in mailboxes, with the mail still in them? No, that would be wrong. That would be a federal offense. "
There are giggles around the booth.
"So you never did that?"
"Of course not."
Giggles again.
Anybody over 30 knows one of these stories. The cherry bomb in the school toilet, the kid with the finger blown off, the bottle rocket that went in the chimney. Some of them are actually true, and today, they're trotted out only as stern, cautionary tales.
But how pervasive and fond the memory, the playing outside in the late dusk, the fireflies and bottle rockets and the blue-black of the sky descending, the flash of fireworks overhead, in your own yard. Perhaps it was no more an American summer than now. Still, in the half-light of memory, the danger of it all seems so safe.