[A Holiday repeat from July 2, 2017]
On this Independence Day eve, here’s a distillation of a few prior posts on this holiday week.  

Fireworks? Firecrackers? Cherry bombs? Should they be legal? In Wisconsin, fireworks stores seem to outnumber cows.  Weekend festivities are often punctuated by the staccato of firecrackers or the magnificent boom of larger devices.

In 1956, the Hungarian Revolution began.  My 9 year old pals and I learned about “Molotov cocktails.”  So we thought – why not?   We filled pop bottles with gasoline, stuffed a rag in the top and lit it — tossing the bottle into Weller creek.  WOW!!   Spectacular eruptions of flames (not to mention the bumblebee whiz of shards of glass and rocks).   

We’d break open firecrackers, shake out the fulminate of mercury powder into cigar tubes with homemade fins, balance them on an incline and then light a fuse sending the “rocket” skyward or sometimes just bouncing along the ground.  Sometimes we put “Lady Finger” firecrackers in the nose.  Wow!  These would end with an airborne explosion.  We would grab handfuls of match books at the local pharmacy and snip the heads off.  And stuff match heads into thin pipes, shaking in the fulminate powder for more incendiary displays.  And bombs.  We made a cannon stuffed with BB’s held in place by dripping candle wax.  And once a hand grenade – using Slaymaker lock dial.  Every boy had a supply of firecrackers, cherry bombs, M-80’s and such.  And my neighborhood was frequently ripped with massive explosions. All thanks to 9 to 12 year old boys. . . . .  

Yes – there are arguments and laws in Illinois against fireworks (one of only 3 states that ban all consumer fireworks). But Wisconsin, Indiana and most other states allow them. I mean – why not?