firecracker wimps who have made damn near anything that goes boom illegal in the DC metro area. Of course most things were illegal in Illinois as well, but in nearby Indiana you could buy pretty much whatever you wanted, upto and including ‘the big stuff’ that they used for the major shows. I remember in law school one year we were trapped in South Bend on the Fourth without much to do. It was about 7:00 PM on the 4th when we learned there were no city fireworks (‘Who needs that’ was the reply from most locals) so we headed to the fireworks store and bought a few things. We then found out everything was 50% off (last day sale) so we went back to get some more. This time, it was 50% off and 2 for 1, so basically we spent $100 and filled two paper grocery bags full of stuff. We went to our buddy Tom’s house who lived kind of in the country near campus and borrowed his lighter. After about 10 minutes, that ran out of juice and our hands were sore from the friction. So we went through every match he had. Another 10 minutes. We still had 85% of the stuff we bought and we had no lighter and no matches. So then we found a propane blowtorch in the garage (a little one) and lit that using a piece of paper from the stove. Down to about 50% of the stuff left before that ran out of juice. We were pretty tired so we took everything we had left, threw it in a Hibatchi and covered it with lighter fluid. We lit that and ran. Well, that was pretty dumb. The first one to go off blew everything all around so that for the next 20 minutes there were fireworks going in every direction–off the house, into the cars, down the street. It was pretty funny. We stood inside and looked at Tom’s awards for being a cop (another story). Stupid, dangerous…but fun. ]]>
Fireworks are illegal