July 7, 2009

Don’t try this at home, kids

By Sam Craig
of The Chronicle

     Those forbidden kabooms, whistles and colorful sparks that twinkled as they fell from the sky were always just out of reach.
     Fireworks always had an illicit mystique for me as a kid in Northern California. Anything that exploded, flew up in the air or offered even an iota of fun was illegal in the suburb of Oakland, where I grew up, but that just made me want them more.
     Every year on the news, just a few days before the Fourth, they’d show the ubiquitous white, faceless dummies whose fate had been sealed. These brave mannequins had been sentenced to die in a spectacular burst of fire by the local fire department. One of the human analogues would be grasping an M-80, one was looking directly into a mortar shell and another would be pointing a roman candle directly at a puddle of gasoline for some reason.
     After a fireman lit the fuse and the dummies exploded into a pile of foam rubber and burlap, the news anchor’s voice, filled with a very stern gravitas, warned the children in the audience that this very same fate could befall them if they were to play with such dangerous fireworks. Then they’d cut to a watermelon filled with firecrackers.
     As I’d watch the slow motion replay of seeds, rind and watermelon viscera bursting into a starburst pattern, I realized two things. First, firefighters know how to make things blow up in a hilarious way, and second, the fireworks I had just seen made the California-legal fountains, ground blooms and sparklers seem about as exciting as an unscented tea candle.
     Each Independence Day, I’d watch with jealousy as rockets, mortars and missiles would shoot off into the night sky from a couple blocks over. As poor little 10-year-old me was stuck trying fruitlessly to get one of those pellet snakes to start growing with a disposable lighter, I saw the other, better fireworks exploding into colorful fireballs. I wanted to be a part of that club.
     Sure, I would occasionally find a firecracker that had strayed away from the brick, but that wasn’t enough. I needed to get my hands on a whole flock of forbidden fireworks.
     It wasn’t until I was in my early 20s that I was able to lay my hands on a firework that would have landed me a $500 fine back in California. Driving down Interstate 80 across Nevada on my way to Chicago, an empty tank led me to my first visit to firework Shangri-La.
     Battle Ground, Nev., a tiny town halfway between Winnemucca and Elko, looks like an oasis at 1 a.m. There was a Shell station right off the freeway that, from the outside, looked fairly unassuming. On the inside, it was anything but.
     A liquor store/smoke shop/firework stand/gas station — in essence a 24-hour combustibles and intoxicants market — might not sound like the brightest idea ever, but that the thought never crossed my mind as I filled a shopping basket with jumping jacks, Black Cat firecrackers and missile bricks and skipped down the three huge aisles crammed with ‘works.
     “You can’t light ‘em here,” warned the clerk, as I plunked down an amazingly fair $20. Good advice, so I headed out deeper into the Nevada desert.
     Getting off the freeway and finding a place to park felt like an eternity. My legs were shaking and my heart was pounding as I opened the door, pushed the wooden stem of a rocket into the sand and lit the fuse.
     The rocket made a terrifying —but ultimately satisfying— “Fwoooooooosh” as it left the desert floor and headed straight for the full moon before popping and showering eastern Nevada with shimmering, green sparks. I fell to my knees, holding my stomach, laughing. There’s something hysterically funny about an explosion echoing through the quiet of sand and sagebrush.
     Over the past few years, I’ve purchased and set off fireworks at other states across this country. Wyoming, Indiana, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Iowa. Much of the Upper Midwest loves fireworks.
     Now, as a resident of Oregon, I’m amazed by what I see. Fireworks sold in Fred Meyer and Wal-Mart? Incredible. California only allows them in stands, and even most of the states that sell the dangerous fireworks have dedicated shops for them.      Knowing that I can buy milk, a pair of jeans, a DVD copy of “Three Men and A Baby” and a box of smoke bombs in the same store makes me very happy.
     And, while this is great — believe me, it’s a wonderful thing — just across the river there are fireworks that offer so much more. The warnings on the side get so much more fascinating.
     Oregon fireworks warn consumers, “Caution: Emits showers of sparks.” While that’s pretty exciting, please remember, a bench grinder against a bolt can do the same thing.
     Washington fireworks don’t warn, they boast. “Caution: Shoots flaming balls with report.” All fireworks should be lucky enough to have something like that to brag about.
While I’d love to have a collection of dangerous fireworks to keep at home on prominent display, that doesn’t discount the fact that they are very illegal in Oregon. It’s illegal to own or fire off anything that shoots more than a foot into the air here, so for this Fourth, the choice is between getting a ticket and watching a sad, piddley fountain while people across the river enjoy their sky candy.
     I’d much rather risk looking like a dork holding a sparkler than paying $500 for 30 seconds of greatness.