Along the Way: STAY SAFE ON INDEPENDENCE DAY

Let pros handle the firecrackers

The thrill of exploding a firecracker in a cowpie was blown out of proportion, let me tell you...

As a kid growing up in the Midwest, I thought fire-poppers were cool. My enthusiasm would soon wane.

We’d set them off under tin cans, inside ant holes and old shoes, under bridges and inside drainage pipes, for the reverberation benefit.

We’d blast these miniature bombs under and inside just about anything that might create interesting wreckage or deafening echoes. Then one day ... Tommy Vanderpool talked me into dynamiting a fresh moo-cow deposit about the size of a manhole cover. The suggestion was a moral code mandate. It came in the guise of what was universally known as a double-dog-dare which, of course, could not be turned down under penalty of lifetime sissyhood. I had once been involved in another grade school double-dog dare that became something of a legend. I don’t recall whether it was Tommy Vanderpool or another buddy, but when the double-dog-dare gauntlet was thrown down, I was dumb enough to line up for two diphtheria vaccinations in one day when the health department came around to our school.

Ouch!

But back to the great July Fourth incident...

Fireworks back when I was a kid were not only cheap but cheaply made. As a result, there were many factory defects, especially in the fuses. Some were loosely twisted. You could rub the gunpowder right off the fuse. But we didn’t waste firecrackers. If nothing else, we’d break the bad ones in half, spill out the powder and — poof! — light it in one little cloud of smoke.

Unfortunately and unknowingly, I chose a bad firecracker for my assignment involving the cowpie and Tommy’s brazen challenge.

I probably don’t need to tell you what happened when I sneaked up on that pile of cow poo with intent to do bodily harm. I don’t relish the memory of the moment, either — except that Tommy failed to keep a safe distance, himself. He got splattered, too.

I stuck the firecracker in the middle of the cow plop, took a “punk,” a metal wire wrapped with something that stayed very hot and which allowed you to detonate the load.

Anyhow, I no sooner lit the firecracker than. ..“BOOOOOMMMM!!!”

Well, at least I once again avoided a lifetime of sissyhood. But my mom had several questions regarding the front of my striped overalls and the T-shirt I had been wearing. Not to mention my face and hair.

Things always seem better looking backward, don’t they? I mean, soda pop tasted better, especially with a handful of peanuts funneled into the R.C. Cola or Coke-Cola, the Nehi or Pepsi. Ice cream was yummier. Cars and trucks were bigger and faster. Radio was a whole lot better. And movie cowboys were tougher.

Firecrackers, though, that’s a different story. They were even worse then than they are today. And they are stupid, ear-splitting, destructive and dangerous today.

One of the truly blessed intrusions into our private lives by government is the Arizona ban on fireworks. They are illegal here and it’s against the law to sell, use, explode or even possess fireworks.

The law is widely ignored, but thank you, thank you, Legislature, just the same. Things would be a whole lot worse without the regulation.

A permit from the Arizona State Fire Marshal is required for fireworks displays on county, state or public school properties. That’s good. It’s the next best thing to banning fireworks altogether.

I read where fireworks were involved in something like 10,000 injuries treated in U.S. hospital emergency rooms last year. The same story, interestingly enough, said 70 percent of the injuries sustained were to males and 30 percent to females. Shows you where the common sense and brainpower are.

We were a much different country a couple-hundred-plus years ago when we first celebrated our beloved Independence Day, and started a tradition still observed. I imagine a lot of cannons, rifles and shotguns, pistols and bonfires were set off in honor our Founding Fathers and what they did in 1776.

And no doubt, some barefoot lad with more brass than brains probably set a firecracker off inside a cowpie, too...And decorated himself and — hopefully — the brat who declared it a double-dog-dare.

Former Tucson Citizen columnist Corky Simpson writes a weekly column for the Green Valley News.