Fireworks haven't been a big deal for me since I was, well, I'll say around 12 or so. And back then blowing shit up was as exciting as, well, saying "shit" out loud so that it might be heard by God and everyone. The charms of both of these things have faded over time, as one might reasonably hope they might. Hell, I actually drop my voice when I swear now.
So I was a little reluctant when a friend asked me to go to the Fourth of July fireworks in his boyhood hometown. He was excited because it was the tiny town's centennial, and this was supposed to be an especially spectacular display.
"Really? Fireworks?" I asked incredulously. "Really?"
"Dude, just c'mon," Ryan insisted. "What else are you going to be doing this weekend? Come up with me; we'll hike, we'll get drunk, and we'll watch the fireworks. It'll be fine."
I actually had been looking forward to doing something this weekend, but video games and masturbation hardly seemed to be a slam dunk counter-argument. So I relented. I went up north with him, and the trails were breathtaking, the beer was free, and the evening air was deliciously cool. I couldn't believe I was wearing a sweatshirt in July.
We stayed at his cabin, which was a cabin only in the sense that it was out in the woods and wasn't his primary residence. Every modern luxury was at my disposal, which was really the only thing I had to rag on Ryan about the entire weekend. I was hoping for something a bit more primitive. But the walks in the woods were nice, so who am I to complain?
We left his cabin at around dusk and walked the half-mile to the high school baseball fields where they were holding the fireworks display. There was almost nowhere to go; every inch of grass was covered with a blanket or tarp on which sat a family or group of howling drunkards, sometimes both. We ended up finding a spot just off the paved path. There were cars parked on either side of the path, butting up right against it, so we had to stand. We were situated right in front of a new Lexus SUV that looked like it just rolled right off the lot. It didn't even have a metal license plate yet. It had backed in off of the path, so we were facing it's hood. About thirty or so feet behind us was a large pole building used, I would suppose, for storing all the field equipment and such. The moon was fat and yellow and low in the sky, and would be the backdrop for the fireworks display.
The show was supposed to start at 10 PM. We had arrived at around a quarter to, and Ryan and I stood there in the dark listening to people walk by us talking into their cell phones.
Now, in this small town, the air raid siren, which is also used to summon the local fire brigade, goes off at 10 o'clock - for curfew or something, I'm not exactly sure why. But the thing, which was only a couple of blocks, went off as scheduled at 10, and was ear-piercingly loud. Before the sound had faded from my skull, the first firework had burst in the night sky - a big shower of golden sparkles that sort of resembled a palm tree, I thought.
Of course, writing about fireworks is, to paraphrase David Byrne, like dancing about architecture, so I won't describe all of the amazing display, except to say that it was indeed amazing, and when my neck got tired from craning upward I looked at the dark, shiny hood of the Lexus SUV and could see the brilliant lights reflected there, and also the bangs reverberated off of the metal pole building with a cool 'pew-pew-pew' sound. There were spectacular fountains of light; the night was lit up by multicolored bursts, illuminating smoke trails that hung in the air like huge spiders. Ryan was right, the display was incredible, and I was glad I had come. The whole crowd cheered and yelled appreciatively after every large volley of explosions, and there were several.
Then, about 15 minutes in, the air raid siren goes off, this time repeatedly. A fire call. The alarm bellowed out into the darkness, and kept going. I would guess that most of the fire department was here at the ball field for the display: they were the ones who set them off, and they, of course, were also here because this was the most likely place for a dangerous fire to erupt.
I'm not going to lie - the mood was somewhat subdued after the siren started going off. It just kept going, a completely counter-intuitive soundtrack to the light show. They started setting off the fireworks more rapidly, trying to blow everything up as quickly as they could so they could finish up and get going. The resulting barrage was something I will remember the rest of my life, and I doubt this display could ever be topped and still be legal. It was so amazingly beautiful, and bright, and loud; and yet how difficult, how empty and even callous it felt to be celebrating our independence, to be enjoying ourselves, as someone's entire world went up in flames before them. The more dazzling it was, the more I hated myself.
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Listening to: Pearl Jam - Dissident
via FoxyTunes
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