Fireworks and Fireworks Complainers

When I was a sprout, I was the biggest pyromaniac in the county. I used to spend hours emptying Black Cats to make bigger louder firecrackers. Blew up frogs, ant hills, cans, bottles, made various bottle rocket guns, tied all kinds of fireworks onto rockets, put those muffler booby traps they used to make for people’s cars. When we got older we had bottle rocket wars and when we got cars we took our fireworks to the street. I got a ticket and had to go see the mayor when I was 16 for a ticket I got for ‘throwing firewiorksfrom a vehicle’. I asked the mayor to see the city ordinance against it and he threatened my smart ass with upgrading it to careless driviing. I was at least smart enuf to shut up at that point.
I guess I grew out of it or grew tired of it. My buddy Keith never has. He does a huge fireworks show for his family every year and orders his stuff wholesale. The markup on fireworks is stupendous. MY son had some friends whose grandparents made most of their annual income off of a coupe of weeks of a fireworks stand they put up every year.
Two things I’ve noticed this year. There is a fireworks shortage and no shortage of complainers. My town has an ordinance against them in city limits but that has never stopped people from shooting them here. Nowadays, people are bitching their heads off because of people shooting them. I guess I knew it was illegal but it never bothered me that people did shoot them. They say it terrifies their dogs but mine barely lift their heads. I guess its true because there is a rash of missing dogs every fourth of July.

whichever it it for you I hope you have a good 4th this year! with family nd friends the way its supposed to be! Have fun!
But don’t be a curudgeon like Jimmy and his fraidy cats.

BKB

The dog I have now is very skittish about loud noises. Thankfully we have a state law and county ordinance that limits fireworks to roughly the week of the 4th and no later at night than 12:00. It doesn’t stop them all but does help limit the constant banging all summer.


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I’m off all week and will be having a house full for the weekend to hit the lake. It’s rained 11 of the last 12 days but is supposed to clear up for the weekend.

The lake I’m on always has a big fireworks show and so does most of the others around my area. If you sit in the right place on the lake you can see three firework shows at once.


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That’s awesome. I’ve watched fireworks once from a boat on Greers Ferry Lake in arkansas and it was awesome. You just get the whole horizon to horizon fireworks thing.
Y’all must have had the same system parked over you that we’ve had. Expecting more today and tomorrow as a matter of fact.

BKB

We needed some rain because the lakes were really low. They were low at the end of last summer and we didn’t have much snowfall this winter to bring them up to where the levels need to be.

I really didn’t think we needed to make it all up in a week or two though.

I think the worst of the system has passed us, now it’s just the afternoon pop ups because of the humidity. Took the dog on a three mile walk this morning around 8:00 and the temp was around 72, but the humidity was in the mid 80’s.

They are calling for another couple days of the rains then we are supposed to get a break for about a week or so.


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I love this week. We always get 4 to 5 families together and stay at a buddies cabin right on the Yakima River.

Friday we'll sit around and have drinks, and Saturday we'll float the river. I bought a 17lbs ribeye and cut it into individual steaks and everyone else will bring sides for a Saturday feast.

Sunday will be the fireworks shoe. Another buddy has built all the stands and has a license for commercial grade. He puts on a shoe for everyone.... I prefer this..the kids like it, I don't have to worry about anything but helping to pick up the mess after.

Deppity that front has been wavering back and forth over us for a week. One minute the windis from the north and the sun is shining and the next its muddy air from the south and its raining cats and dogs. We’ve had about a half a foot of rain the last five days. Not a typical Okie summer at all!

BKB

My Bahia grass needs a rain. It's so dry it's only growing about 6 inches a day now, I was getting about 2 round bales a week from my yard until it dried out, now it's only about a bale and a half

I’m a big firework guy and Pennsylvania which isn’t that far away will sell out if staters the real stuff. You literally have to have an out of state drivers license and sign an affidavit that you won’t shoot them off in their state. They’re illegal in my county. But, there’s just too many people doing it on Independence Day and NYE for the police to do anything about it.


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The absolute best fireworks I have ever seen was at a conference at Disneyworld. It was a three day conference and there was a pyrotechnical conference going on at the same time. There was a big show every night and on the last night they really showed off their stuff.
Come to think of it, I think hombre might have been there too.

BKB

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Originally Posted by BarryBobPosthole

The absolute best fireworks I have ever seen was at a conference at Disney World. It was a three day conference and there was a pyrotechnical conference going on at the same time. There was a big show every night and on the last night they really showed off their stuff.
Come to think of it, I think hombre might have been there too.

BKB

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Not sure if you're talking about the WorldCom one, but Kathryn was pregnant with Kenzi at that time when we watched them...Who's now 22 :D

I enjoy watching a good fireworks display but after the past several years I have about had my fill.

Here's the deal: we live just outside of the city limits of a town where it is actually illegal to possess or set off personal fireworks. That being said all fireworks stands are located outside of the city limits, which is also where folks come to set their personal fireworks off. (Remember where I live?)

If it were a day either side of the 4th it would be more tolerable but it lasts days longer. Couple that late night annoyance with a hunting dog who gets extremely agitated hearing loud booms going off with no birds to be found afterwards, who then needs to be put in the basement so as to reduce the noise, and this grumpy old effer has about had it with the folks setting off fireworks in my neighborhood.

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Originally Posted by Hombre

Not sure if you're talking about the WorldCom one, but Kathryn was pregnant with Kenzi at that time when we watched them...Who's now 22 :D

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That was the one!

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Originally Posted by BarryBobPosthole

That was the one!

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Good times. In the early days of marriage those trips really helped me save $$ ... Kathryn and I's honeymoon was the Worldcom Destin trip. ... I think Orlando was the next year and by then we had Kenzi on the way....funny how that works :D

Oh, in case you forgot, it was me who poured a pitcher of bloody marys down you on the golf course one morning and caused you to sleep through a big part of said honeymoon.

BKB

That was before phones had cameras but I think there are pics of that outing somewhere. I distinctly remember there being an alligator involved at some point.

BKB

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Originally Posted by BarryBobPosthole

Oh, in case you forgot, it was me who poured a pitcher of bloody marys down you on the golf course one morning and caused you to sleep through a big part of said honeymoon.

BKB

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Haha I do remember that. I can't even remember his full name but first name was Bob. One of my favorite golf stories comes from that trip. We were probably 180-90 out or so and you had just hit a shot and put it on the green....Bob says "what'd ya hit" and you said "a 9 iron." At this point he looks puzzled since that's a lot of distance on a 9.... He hits his nine and come up 50 yards short, and you looked at your club "hmm guess its a 6"

Hahahaha. Honest mistake if you ask me.

BKB

You girls need to get a room! ;)

Seriously, P-hole, your first paragraph could have been written by me (word for word!) ... including the first sentence of your second paragraph! From making "bombs" (I'd empty firecrackers and CAREFULLY scrape the tips off of kitchen matches and mix the ingredients together) to bottle rocket wars ... been there, done that!

I can't believe the similarities, including one that's a bit tough to admit now, but even the part about blowing up frogs (toads actually).

One Halloween night, four of us were riding around in my buddy's Mom's 60's-something Ford Falcon lighting M-80's (do they still make those?) and chunking them out the windows to scare the bejeebers out of groups of trick or treaters. My buddy in the left rear seat lit one and went to chunk it out the RR window, but didn't realize my buddy in the RR seat had rolled his window up! (it was a chilly October). It bounced back off the window and in a split second, there were FOUR big-ass dudes in the front seat! That thing went off and I think all four of us were stone deaf for a week! But that wasn't the biggest problem, it blew a hole in mom's back seat and to add to our dilemma, that car then had the strongest, nastiest sulfur smell in it, you could barely breath! NOTHING we could do would make it go away, like it was soaked into the interior or something. We finally had to take it back to his house and left it in the driveway with the windows down, hoping the smell would disappear before his mom used the car the next day. It didn't ... and we heard about it! We thought things were finally settling down once a few days had passed, but then she found the hole blown in the back seat upholstery! Man-o-man, the old Southern idiom "madder than a wet hen" comes to mind!

As for your ticket for throwing fireworks ... I also had a similar situation. I had just smoked my tires for practically a whole city block after stopping at a red light (trying to entice some dufe in a Roadrunner to a race). I can't believe I didn't see that cop watching me! He hit me with the lights and wrote me up for "over acceleration"!! WTF??? Like you, a bit of smart-assery kicked in and I questioned the (what I felt was a bogus) charge and he told me if I continued to run my mouth, it would be "upgraded" to "exhibition of speed". I wasn't sure what the (monetary) charges would be, but "exhibition of speed" sounded more serious than "over acceleration", so I shut my trap! I went to court, the cop didn't show up and the charges were dropped .... BUT, I still got a stern warning from the judge that he'd remember me if he ever saw me in his courtroom again!

Like you, I grew up a bit and I have no problem with organized fireworks displays, but the a-holes in the neighborhood who start blowing them off three days before and continue for three days after a holiday, kind'a piss me off these days. We live across the lake from the stadium that is the Spring Training site for the Detroit Tigers and they have a big fireworks display after EVERY game. We can watch the display across the lake almost every night! You mention Disney, they have ALWAYS (and still do) had a huge fireworks display EVERY night of the week. My ex-wife and I had free Disney passes back in the day and used to go out there just for the fireworks. We'd park, then take the monorail to Disney’s Contemporary Resort Hotel and watch the fireworks from the observation deck on the roof, then return home. These days, I've pretty much gotten over the excitement for fireworks and nowadays, this old curmudgeon would rather stay home yelling at the neighborhood kids to stay off my f'ing grass! ;)

Man, I miss the days of blowing shit up and drunken corporate boondoggles…


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Ha! Speaking of corporate boondoggles, I remember attending a 2-3 day National (Cadillac) Parts & Service Manager's conference in L.A. at the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles years ago. As per usual at these things, a group of us went out the night after the first conference and hit the town (with the usual drinking, chasing wimmins, etc.). I returned to my room alone (luckily) and when I walked in, Lynn was asleep in my bed! We had only been dating a couple of months and she knew where the conference was being held, but I had no clue she was going to show up! SUPRISE!! (That could'a gone badly!) :hair

Anyway, during the week, she'd go to work during the day, then spend the nights with me at the hotel. I'll admit I enjoyed the company, but I think back about how things were in those days compared to now. These days, the desk will not even give out a room number of a guest, although they will put a call through to the room. Heck, they not only gave her my room number, but actually let her into the room! And the Bonaventure was a hoity-toity hotel back then (most likely still is), but that was pushing 37 years ago and things are much different now. It worked out well as we ended up living together shortly after that! :thumbsup

Thump - Not just how different the hotels are but the conduct at the boondoggles has changed light years. Nowadays a person is careful not to have too many drinks so they aren't perceived wrong or don't do something slightly foolish.... At the one BBP and I were just talking about (at the awards ceremony) a guy/girl had a few too many and decided to sneak off to the mens bathroom for some fun. It wasn't long before word started passing around the tables and before you knew it the hall was lined with people. When they came out they got a standing ovation!

Yessir, I remember the days when if you couldn't get laid at a company Christmas party, there was something seriously wrong with you! (I'm talking singles of course ... well, mostly). Booze was a major "excuse" for some employees getting a little "loose" and hooking up. In the later years, the companies I worked for would no longer even allow alcohol to be served due to legal responsibilities. If an employee got tanked, then had an accident, the company could be held liable. Christmas parties became pretty boring after that and it felt more like we were just working late.