Time for some fireworks…

The 4th of July is definitely one of my top 3 holidays. I love the food, love the beer, love the weather but above all else…I love my country.  My pops was always one of the cool ones because every year he would take my brothers and I down to the North End (Fuhget about it!) and buy us a huge bag of fireworks to light off in front of the house. It was all about jumping jacks, firecrackers, whistlers, bottle rockets, tanks and roman candles. Back then, your parents laid out the law and you were entrusted to be safe. If you broke that trust, it was more or less an automatic ass whipping. So we kept it safe….well… until we hit the teenage years.

Once I hit lucky 13 it was time to chop off the end of a Wiffleball bat, load up a backpack full of whistlers and bottle rockets and head straight for the park to do battle with my fellow Dot Rats.

Yeah I know, not the safest thing in the world but damn did we have fun.  There was some natural born pyrotechs among us, one kid in particular knew how to modify a whistler to give it double velocity and he could get it to fly straight. Not fun to take one of those in the turban let me tell ya…..

Pops would have probably knuckled me if he found out.  And to be honest I can understand why, shit can get real quickly if your not paying attention….here’s some examples.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WNE5GIm4TU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hdl86mhxMo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW_O-ZT6RFA