A forth of July Tale

I seem to say the same story every year about the forth of july and a friend that would take the money from watching the place while we were gone on vacation and blow it all on firecrackers..  He was the firecracker kid, but strangely if no one else had any it was only fun to have some for a short while.. I remember him lighting one at a  time and then shooting the rest of a package.. Was he bored or what?? Well anyway, yesterday I heard firecrackers being shot off and I thought of the old days.. We would go into the drugstore and that's where they were sold, fireworks I mean.. How smart is this.. Back when i was in grade school they had fire works for sale, they had a no smoking sign there by the sales rack.. Then there were booths where my dad and his friends would sit, drink coffee and smoke cigarettes...   Strangely enough it wasn't until the nineties before they stopped this and made her move the fireworks out of the store.. You can't have smoking in the same building as fireworks.. But anyway back when I was little we would bother dad for a quarter for some fireworks.. that's right 25 whole cents would buy you the same size package as $1.40 will now... And also get you a punk.. You had to buy two punks because they were half a penny each..  Me and my older brother and his friend would have firecracker wars.. We had this old greyhound bus (kids ask your parents what that is) and it was an old cast iron thing, we'd light the fuse and then try to time it out to where the cracker would blow up as it arrived next to the target, less there be a return trip from whence it went..  Those were good times..  Good and dangerous, to a certain extent..  Then the time down at the post office, there seemed to be an open dare for that one kid who did stupid shit like this, putting a smoke bomb in the outgoing mail box outside the post office.. And it never seemed like anyone would be dumb enough to do such a thing.. Then one year it happened.. The kid that likely did it was the post masters son...  but it could have been someone else.. I wasn't there when it happened...    Old fireworks are always fun.. My mom had some old ones and my older brother got to shoot them off.. They were called rat chasers and they chased anything even when they were brand new.. These went everywhere..  Well this year we have a box of old fireworks that I got last year for my nephew to shoot off on the forth of July at night.. But the neighbors were shooting off fireworks and they started around three in the afternoon and even the night ones were being shot in the afternoon.. I thought, well they must be gonna go elsewhere later so they were shooting these off when they were so they could leave.. But as day turned to night they kept on firing them off and I got the box ready for my nephew to shoot them off but we were enjoying the neighbors show that I put ours back in the closet.. We'll shoot them later.. Or maybe new years eve..  Which didn't happen.. So this box might get shot off this 4th. Or they won't...  depends... On what??   I dunno..


Badge Henry