I love fireworks. I never pass up the chance to attend a fireworks show. Some of my earliest memories are fireworks shows at Pontchartrain Beach in New Orleans (long closed) - my mother and father, and we three girls (no brother then), would all go to Pontchartrain Beach for 4th of July and Labor Day. We didn't have much money - my dad was in dental school and my mother was a legal secretary, but we never passed up the fireworks because they were free. You had to pay to go to the amusement park, but you could sit out on the wide open areas outside the park and watch the fireworks for free. We'd pack a picnic, and bring blankets, and Pic, which is a spiral sort of incense/punk stuff that you burn, and it repels mosquitoes.
My mother always dressed us girls in identical outfits, except that we each had our own color. Mine was blue, of course, and Lydia's was purple, and Jean wore red or pink. So we would all be wearing little sunsuits, all the same except different colors. We couldn't swim because of the polio thing, I think, although after we had the vaccines, we could. I think.
My father was young, and handsome, and my mother was young, and beautiful, and Eisenhower was president, and God was in heaven, and all was right with the world, and at the end of the day, when the sun went down, there would be fireworks.
We didn't set off fireworks ourselves, I don't know why, perhaps my mother thought it was too dangerous. And now in Virginia, you can't buy the kind of fireworks that explode, you can only buy the types that fizzle and spit and hiss. No firecrackers, no Roman candles, no starburst shells. You can buy them in North Carolina, and West Virginia, so people go out and buy them and bring them back in as contraband. But we never do that. One year I wanted to drive to West Virginia to buy illegal fireworks, and on the way I saw a stand in Virginia, and decided to see if I could buy some of the illegal kind. The old man who owned the stand told me he might have some, but he couldn't sell me any unless I promised I wouldn't use them in any place where they were illegal, wink wink. So I said, sure, and he went for the private stash in a garbage can under a blanket, but the kids started complaining that I was lying to the man, so I didn't do it. They were irate at me for lying to the man, and I was irate at them for ratting on me, especially since I knew the man didn't really care.
Anyway, I gave up.
But you can still buy the kinds that explode in Louisiana. A couple of years ago my brother, Val, happened to be in Baton Rouge at the same time I was, and it was Labor Day weekend, so we drove across the river and I bought a couple hundred dollars worth of fancy fireworks, and we brought them back to my dad's house on the lake, and set them off along the lakeshore. It took hours to set them all off. I might be exaggerating, but it was over an hour for sure. Val discovered that if you launched the bottle rockets into the lake, they would still burn for a little while underwater, and make the most amazing *zoooop* noise.
Yes, I love fireworks.
But the most amazing display I ever saw was at the New Orleans Worlds Fair, put on by the People's Republic of China, on Fourth of July. That was incredible. George Plimpton was the announcer, and the United States Marine Band played John Phillip Sousa marches. The fireworks were launched from a barge in the Mississippi River. We watched from the steps on the Spanish Plaza, at the foot of Canal Street. I can't do it justice, so I won't even try. |
