The Fourth of July was my favorite holiday when I was a kid. I liked to play with fireworks, yet I still have all my fingers. Some kinds of fireworks were legal in Colorado when I was growing up. I loved it each year when the roadside fireworks stands started to pop up - always just outside the Denver city limits, due to tougher laws in the city - and shopping at the stands was a thrill. I liked basic stuff like snakes and smoke bombs. One of my favorite tricks was to light a smoke bomb and then walk into the cloud of colored smoke and feel the warm thrill of confusion. I even liked the smell.
I also liked to shoot off Red Rats. These were skinny inch-long sticks that, when lit, flew around in unpredictable circles in the air and then exploded. What on earth was I thinking?
I liked pop bottle rockets best. They weren’t legal in Colorado, probably because they blew up a little bit after you launched them. So I asked my brother to drive me an hour or so across the state line into Wyoming so I could buy them at a fireworks stand there, and he graciously agreed. They sold them by the gross!
One night a couple of friends and I decided to harass / flirt with the girl across the street by shooting bottle rockets over her house. We aimed the bottle above her roof and lit a rocket. It went straight for her front door1 and exploded there with a tiny pop. Instantly the girl’s father appeared at the door shaking his fist and saying he was going to call the cops.
My friends and I grabbed the remaining rockets and scattered to our houses, terrified. We were sure the police were on their way to arrest us all. I ran in my front door and told my dad what happened. He took the fireworks and hid them in the closet, I guess so that the inevitable police wouldn’t find them. (No police came.)
Fireworks event of the summer
The place to be on the Fourth of July in Denver throughout the ‘70s and early ‘80s was the Denver Bears baseball game, with a huge fireworks display after. Fireworks shows at baseball games were rare then, usually happening only once or twice a year for each team. Many teams now have fireworks every week or so. The July 4th games in Denver drew tens of thousands of fans, way more than typical Minor League Baseball games, eventually attracting a crowd of more than 65,000 for a single game in 1982, the largest attendance for any Minor League Baseball game ever.
Nobody paid attention to the games. People were there for the fireworks. Some folks read books. I once watched someone knitting during the game to pass the time until the fireworks started. One year the Denver Bears were way behind and staged a long, dramatic rally to tie and eventually win the game. But some fans were unhappy with the rally because they wanted the game to end already so the fireworks could start.
Now I’m proud to say my son is Director of Promotions and Entertainment for an excellent Minor League Baseball team that has lots of great fireworks shows and many other wonderful events. I went to two of the team’s ballgames + fireworks shows this week and had a great time. So, the Fourth of July is still my favorite holiday. I still like the smoke and the smell, too.
This recalls the Dutch saying “You have to aim for the stars if you want to hit the clock tower.” But I hadn’t learned that saying yet.
Even with a terrible Major League Baseball team, the July 4th game with fireworks sells out in Denver.