FIREWORKS!!

     I grew up during an era when fireworks were illegal in Utah. If you wanted a show other than sparklers on the 4th or 24th 
of July, you had to make a trip across the border into Wyoming to get fire crackers or other exploding devices and smuggle them back into the Beehive State without getting caught. (I NEVER DID THIS!) The police would actually put up road blocks to catch and ticket offenders. 

    Then the ban was taken off on the ground fireworks so the celebration got more colorful. Finally off the ground restrictions were erased in Utah and July nighttime skies became ablaze with explosions of light and gun powder. It wreaks havoc on my asthmatics lungs and probably damages my hearing, but it is great fun to see the fireworks up close instead of across the infield of a ball park or somewhere near the outskirts of town "for safety reasons." 

     Which brings me to what happened on the 4th of July while my family was watching my son light the fireworks show on the road in front of our house. One of the larger, multi-shot aerial packages tipped over on it's side and shot the explosions toward those of us seated in the driveway. One of them screamed into a bush, exploded and caught the grass and leaves on fire. 

Luckily I had a bucket of water handy that we used to douse the sparklers earlier in the evening. I grabbed it and threw it on the flames.  Nothing exploded and the fire was extinguished. Needless to say a followed up with copious amounts of water from the hose.

     We shot the rest of the fireworks out of a large plastic garbage can with sand in the bottom and a dutch oven on the sand. The dutch oven and sand kept the fireworks from burning the garbage can and the sides of the can focused the aerial displays into the air and not at the audience. It also made hollow booms like cannon fire when the shots were sent into the air.

     Our next door neighbors shot of their fireworks and many of them went into the tall tree across the road. I kept expecting the leaves to catch fire. 

     Maybe those old laws restricting the uses of aerial fireworks displays to only to those who knew how to handle them safely weren't so crazy after all.