Confessions of the king of firecrackers

This is going to be a very different Fourth of July.

I think it’s going to sound like a war zone around our neighborhood if this weekend was any barometer. About every five minutes, an explosion took place.

And it got me to thinking: Kids these days know nothing about blowing off firecrackers.

I was somewhat of a specialist at such explosives as a youth. Firecrackers were the currency of my youth. A pack of them went a long way in getting a kid stature.

Some of my “older” fans have heard in the past of some of my exploits. I like to think I have more readers now than I did a year ago, since we’ve brought two new newspapers and thousands of new readers into our audience.

Growing up on the “mean streets” of suburban Milwaukee, we didn’t have much to get in trouble with, but if we got our hands on firecrackers, oh boy!

It wasn’t like it is today, either. Now, you go to one of these tents, sign a waiver and start exploding things. Back then, it took cunning and conniving to get your hands on a pack of Black Cats. First of all, you had to know someone driving through Tennessee. Second, you had to have a solid connection. People wouldn’t buy firecrackers for just anyone.

I had a reliable hookup. There wasn’t much to do in town, so we generally just created our own kind of fun by blasting off firecrackers. One of my young colleagues even devised a long fuse from a thin strip of plexiglass. You tied the fuse to the strip, lit it and it would take a solid five minutes before it exploded. It was ingenious! We tormented one kid’s sister several times, placing packs of firecrackers right outside her open window. By the time of the blast, we were laying around watching MTV in the living room. It couldn’t have been us!

We had alibis, but perhaps our laughter gave us away.

We used to have a blast at Catholic Church bingo. In our younger years, we hid in the bushes and yelled “BINGO” in the open windows. We got chased away from that, though. So, we brought in the artillery. We were sitting inside waiting for “B-52” like the rest of them when the pack of firecrackers went off.

When we immediately left afterward, it was probably pretty obvious who did it.

And then there was the big eighth-grade incident: I had schmoozed a seventh-grader who word was out was bragging at recess that his brother was going to Tennessee. Now, the first of the month, I was flush with cash. I made about $12.50 a month for my paper route, and back in the day that could get you places. I kept half of it for Mountain Dew and Hostess Ding Dongs and invested the rest in firecrackers.

Well, Chad came through with the product one morning. I learned a valuable lesson that day. You have to know when to keep your mouth shut. I had my pockets stuffed with explosives. I went to Catholic school, and we didn’t have a phy ed teacher. If it was cold out, we played dodgeball in the cafeteria. If it was warm out, we played softball. This day, we were playing softball with no adult supervision.

I showed off my loot and before I knew it, things were exploding left and right. The principal was running from the building, and the priest came out of his house.

By the time the smoke cleared, I had a three-day suspension and couldn’t go on the eighth-grade class trip.

So, yes, I consider myself somewhat of an expert in the deployment of firecrackers. Be bold! If you’re going to wake me up, get it over all at one time. You don’t blow off one firecracker every five minutes. You have to wrap together a couple packs for maximum impact. If you want some pointers, get in touch with me.