This Un’s For You!

If I were an investigative reporter, I would have put on sunscreen and gone out into the heat to an outside city limits stand labeled FIREWORKS FOR SALE! and done an in-debth interview. However, I am not of that ilk and, I’m assuming, neither are you. So here is provided for you in the cool and quiet of your own home some details that may be new to you.

All of us have firework stories. I have written of some and have heard personal tales from varied sources. These are the types of fireworks that may be part of a rite of adventurous passage involving some audible or visible reaction and no shrapnel. Alll have constraints to keep them “safe.” Simplest are caps for toy pistols or band snaps to be thrown on the sidewalks. Roman candles and helicopter rockets have restrictions on size. Even those that create smoke screens have curbs. Unless you have a license for a grand production, each firework has an across the counter limit for propellant, casing size, and length.

Down to the nitty gritty ,or to the boom and glow, if you prefer. Selling fireworks restrictions come from various counties and from the Texas Department of Insurance, naturally. In Texas,Six days a year are on the allowed sell now list: Texas Independence Day, San Jacinto, Cinco de Mayo, Memorial Day, 4th of July, and the Christmas to New Year’s week.

All that having been said, remember your own moments with loud and bright. Was one on a sidewalk outside your house with a small box of matches to light a firecracker and throw it in a ditch? Was it being driven as a teen, especially of the male gender, to a stand to choose some to create your own show? Was it sitting on a hillside with family or a handholding special one watching the sky light up? Two bits of music are needed. Remember this day and the moment “when the rockets’ red glare gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.” My favorite is sitting with a three year old at the far edge of a concrete porch lighting a sparkler for him to hold. “Let’s write my name in the dark,” he says.

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine,

let it shine,

let it shine.

“And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave,

o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”