Fourth went forth, virus or not

Another July 4 has come and gone.  This one was a bit different, as the virus swirls about us and most business and public pleasure has been locked down.  But not completely different.

No public fireworks display over Lake Union this year, which I usually attend -- by walking to it from my house, the traffic and lack of parking being prohibitively terrible.  But as I walked about my part of town in the early evening, I heard firecrackers and other noisy explosions going on all about me.  And -- a nice sight -- families gathered on their front yards having family picnics.  Or family noises and laughter coming from back yards. 

In fact, in some ways, Seattle's Fourth was like Fourths you see in old movies, like Fourths of July as they were celebrated before I was born, before everyone had an automobile in which to high-tail it out of town.  When families did everything together, and neighbors were neighborly.

When I was a kid, the picnics, although fun -- and tasty -- were important mainly for the adults.  For us younger people, it was all about fireworks.  The public display at the lake in the center of town was great and a lot of fun, of course.  We always attended it as a family, lying on our blankets. 

But much more important, and long awaited, were the personal fireworks that we set off ourselves. 

There were the "pretty" fireworks, the ones most approved of by the adults -- rockets, Roman candles, miniature volcanoes (fountains).  And for the youngest, the somewhat contemptible (but always secretly enjoyed) sparklers, and those little things you lit on fire and watched as they evolved long ashen "snakes."

But the real fun were the firecrackers (not the child-friendly lady fingers, puh-leeze!), the buzz-bombs, the scary Red Devils that skittered around below everyone's feet before exploding, and -- for the truly brave and semi-criminal -- the powerful M-80s.  Fireworks stands went up, wherever legal, at least a week before the Fourth, and we spent whatever cash we had, or could beg from our parents, on massive arsenals of explosives.

The fly in the ointment, of course, as in so many fun activities, was the government.  Government entities hated fireworks -- I'm sure now they had their reasons -- and were constantly getting in the way of our fondest dreams.  I don't think there was ever a uniform state law, although I may be wrong.  During my earlier childhood, no one seemed concerned about fireworks -- they were openly sold at stands inside the city limits.   But by the time I was 12 or so, cities certainly prohibited either all fireworks except, maybe sparklers, or all the fun ones.  Many counties did the same.

I kept a mini-diary for about three years as a teenager, an original source on which I can now rely to reinforce my memories.  Fireworks were prohibited in both my city and my county by the time of my first July 4 entry, when I was 15 years old.  All I could document for the day was winning a couple of ribbons for races at the park -- and the fact that we had no fireworks other than sparklers and "caps" (those red ribbons with tiny explosives that you threaded through your cap guns).  We discovered how to make a Big Bang by hitting an entire roll of caps with the end of a baseball bat.  Necessity was the mother of invention.  All I can say is that it was better than nothing.

My diary entry when I was 16 mentioned disdainfully a band concert and a parade.  But fireworks appear to have been effectively suppressed.  I described that year's Fourth as "rather glum."

When I was 17, folks apparently had suffered enough under the nanny state.  Sale, possession, and use of all fireworks were still prohibited throughout the county.  But a neighborimg county was more obliging, and a virtual city of fireworks stands was thrown up on their side of the county line. On July 2, my brother and I and a friend bicycled some twenty miles to the county line, loading our carriers up with contraband that we gleefully hauled home.  My diary exulted: "There may be a law against fireworks, but everyone ignores it.  Banging constantly, all day and night."

That was my last diaried Fourth, and probably the last Fourth I enjoyed unselfconsciously as a kid.  Yesterday, during my walk, I watched some youngsters set off a whole string of firecrackers.  It recalled the debates we used to have -- should you explode one cracker after another, individually, making them last?  Or squander an entire package in one glorious series of explosions? 

I envied those kids yesterday.  I would have been doing the same thing, even now, if I'd had the explosives.