The 4th

I need to take a short step back to the beginning of July, 1971 to talk about fireworks and such... By the end of the 1960s the concept of "safe and sane" had spread to most of the states. Texas was almost there, but you could still get things that would blow your fingers off... So a few days before the 4th I stopped by the fireworks stand in Argyle.

Aside: I couldn't believe the racial terms they used to describe some of the fireworks. I shall not repeat them here - I remember shaking my head in disbelief. Not cool...

After careful consideration I ended up just buying a few packages of firecrackers... The fuses were intertwined (forming strings) but it was really easy to separate them and I figured it would be a lot more entertaining to set hundreds of them them off individually than to light off entire strings in a matter of seconds. (Yes - I've always been that cheap...) And since I'd never had the opportunity to experiment with fireworks before I spent the next few days figuring out exactly what those tiny little explosive devices were capable of... (Not much, it turns out.)

First - there were these spiders that lived in underground nests in the back yard so I dropped firecrackers down their holes... Unfortunately, it didn't produce the chaos I was hoping for. Their reaction was more like "Seriously? You can't think of anything better to do?"

So I switched my focus from fauna to inanimate objects. The thing that really triggered my OCD was seeing how high I could launch a mayonnaise jar lid off the patio using a single firecracker. (BTW: I got the mayo lid from the garbage, not the fridge...) It was impossible to launch it without some spin so I experimented with controlling the degree of rotation by altering the placement of the firecracker under the lid - and once I got that "dialed in" I started placing small objects around the firecracker to decrease the chamber volume and direct the force upward.
I no longer recall exactly what "recipe" produced the highest altitude (it was only like 9 feet), but I do remember being frustrated by the variation between the firecrackers. (Darn those Asian factories and their substandard quality control.) ... Nonetheless - it kept me entertained for many hours :-)

Of course, I did save some of the firecrackers for the evening of the 4th of July. I started out setting them off on the ground but that just wasn't very satisfying - they needed to be airborne... I tried throwing them but they were too light to go very high. So I taped some to paper airplanes, but it was hard to get the plane balanced properly and the explosion did almost no damage. (I was hoping for confetti...) And paper plates were too unpredictable when used as a "flying disc toy". (I'm avoiding using the trademark so I don't get a "cease and desist" letter.)

Aside: It just occurred to me that some of the terms in the prior paragraphs might set off triggers in the software that the FBI and/or NSA swear they don't use to analyze every bit of network traffic in the U.S... So in case they're reading this: "I'm talking about paper airplanes and tiny little firecrackers - and it was over 40 years ago... So lighten up!"

I finally settled on taping the firecrackers to small rocks and tossing them skyward, but I still had to figure out how long to hold the rock after lighting the fuse so the firecracker would explode at the peak of the trajectory... It was tricky because the fuses didn't burn at the same rate and the weight of the rocks varied. But the biggest issue proved to be the consistency of my throwing arm... Still - did I know how to have fun, or what??? :-)

The following year I was in an apartment in Dallas, followed by a couple of years in military barracks - then marriage and more apartments... Debbie and I did buy a house in the spring of 1976 but I was on TDY in Boston over the 4th of July and the following year we had an infant son to look after... So July of 1971 was the first time - and the last time - I ever played with fireworks.