My Fourth That Really Fizzled F'Shizzle

My Fourth really fizzled this year. F'shizzle. The day started when I called my brother, because I wanted to blog an entry about playing with fireworks as children, and I wanted his memories and input on the subject. The Sunday before the Fourth I had been visiting at his home with the forewarning he had lost power during a storm. That evening, our group sat in the dark with the few candles on hand, and while not unbearable, it was odd sitting in the dark, seeing the shape of the person, but with no discernable facial expressions. Everything seemed very…quiet. I have to admit I felt relief when I was able to return back home to the coolness of air conditioning and some lights. So you see, I had done the “no lights” thing.

Over the weekend, before the Fourth, I was thinking about fireworks. I could hear them being tested over at the Mall, (something I hear every year,) and I was trying to remember what I was allowed to play with as a child. There is a real firearchy when it comes to these things in terms of gender. I was usually left with sparklers and fountains and smoke bombs and the true orphan of the fireworks world: the black snake, sometimes called the black cobra, or just snake.




The snake is that nasty little pill that you lay flame to, and it rises in a growing tubular coil that falls in on itself while laying it greasy ash all over the pavement. Parents hate these things. Long after being brushed or rinsed away, there are small stained circles so embedded into the concrete that archeologists will be studying the phenomenon centuries from now. The most ambitious thing I was ever allowed to set off was called “ladyfinger” firecrackers or “crackle bombs.” These are the tiniest of firecrackers so that when it finally goes off, all you hear is *pop.*

“Oh man,” my brother said that morning. Then he started laughing as he remembered. My memory is of my brother and his gang running around trying to blow up everything. They had firecrackers, of course, in every size, but also the infamous illegal cherry bombs brought up from the South by some loving parent, and my father used to bring home M80’s from when he did his time at summer camp in the Army Reserves. I remember one summer my father and another Dad running through yards dropping them into various metal things like say, oh…the inside of a tube attached to a swing set. I think Daddy hadn’t quite gotten his Army time out of his system yet. Shades of Jefferson in The Dirty Dozen. There was tiny Cubie, taking it all in while twirling her sparklers with rotating arms going, “Oooo. Pretty.”

You don’t know what a M80 is? Why that’s what they use to teach soldiers what it’s like to be in a battle. A simulation of warfare. I do believe my brother said it was (then anyway) the equivalent of a fourth of a stick of dynamite. Oh, yes. My brother had M80’s too, as did his pyromaniac friend, Steve. Steve tied some of them to a weather balloon his father had and let it loose into the sky. The cops showed up on that one and little Steven was given a “talking to.” They were letting cherry bombs fly using slingshots, going to a nearby creek and blowing up…I don’t know…the delicate ecological structure of nature. Talk about global warming. I distinctly remember following them one summer where they kept tossing tin cans with cherry bombs inside of them. My brother said the worst thing they ever did was when four of them had a firecracker battle inside of Steve’s house. Yes. Inside. This also speaks a lot about what little boys love to do when you aren’t watching them, the little blastards. True cherry bombs look like cherries. I used this illustration because I liked the label. Don't fireworks have wonderful labels?Well. Back to the Fourth. I began to write, and my black cobra stained road was paved with good intentions. Around 4 o’clock, a storm was brewing so I shut down everything running, including my computer and printer, to wait it out. While I sat at my desk I looked out the window and saw a really bad ground strike of lightning. Loud, too. I did that little half jump you do when you see something like that. Then, silence. Dead. Everything off. Gone. When I first saw the lightning touch down, it looked like it was hitting a decorative iron garden bench my neighbor has in his yard. No. The whole street was out. I later learned it hit the transformer box on the telephone pole and PEPCO said they could see the scorch marks. That evening, my neighbor and I went to see The Devil Wears Prada to get out of our dark, oppressive homes more than anything, with the hope once we got back home all would be restored. Not so lucky. It was a rough night. I had opened my bedroom window to catch a breeze, and all I heard until 3 a.m. was some enthusiastic soul illegally setting off what sounded like M80’s. You would think I would have been lying there with a wave of nostalgia. Sleep didn’t come easy, and I kept thinking the power would be back before dawn. Noooo. No. No. No. No. No. Although a tow truck did come down the street at 4 a.m. Who on earth has something towed at 4 a.m.? A neighbor, apparently, or an ambitious government employee removing something parked illegally (insert chortle here.)

The next day passed and when the early evening hours approached, the bulk of my block decided to jump ship. Some went to stay with family members, or friends. I checked into a hotel. I looked like a Bedouin decamping. Did you know that Bedouin have quotes? They do. “I against my brother, I and my brother against our cousin, my brother and our cousin against the neighbors, all of us against the foreigner.” Man. I should have sent them over to visit PEPCO Customer Service on Pennsylvania Avenue with that mindset. I took pillows, I took water. I had books and music. Luckily, the room had a mini refrigerator. I was digging in for the long haul. By day two PEPCO was leaving messages after our initial “power out” calls that we wouldn’t be dealt with until Thursday, 11 p.m., no wait make that 11:30, no wait….well, they just didn’t know. My neighbor’s sister was following the PEPCO website as repairs were made. Turns out we were in the last batch of 500. I had made calls for Comcast to come out later in the day on Friday to fix my cable problems that had developed, and the modem and cables were replaced, but it still didn’t fix my computer, so then I called The Geek Squad, and they did show up on Saturday, not at the promised “noon,” by rather 6 p.m. and they worked on my Ethernet and made replacements, God love them. Everything had fried, despite being shut off, despite a very expensive surge protector. The all-in-one printer? R.I.P. I still need to replace it. Everything in the refrigerator? Gone. I was scrubbing it out to start over at 1 a.m.

It was an expensive week, it was a stressful week, and as I sit here writing this, I am wondering how any of us made it past age twelve. I don’t even have scars or burn marks to display saying, “See? When I was ten on the Fourth of July...”