(Book 2)
Man oh man, did I ever love the 4th of July back in the Sixties!
Every year our family would buy a smallish bunch of firecrackers, smoke bombs, bottle rockets, Roman candles, sparklers, fountains and snakes.
And every year, my Fire Marshall Dad would give me The Speech.
Thou shalt not:
- Throw lit firecrackers like hand grenades
- Shoot bottle rockets at Steve or any other living creature
- Hold a Roman candle in your hand. Never. Ever. Not even once.
At this point, you are expecting me to tell a story about how Steve and I had bottle rocket duels at dawn and shot out each other’s eyeballs.
No, that’s a different story. This story involves a raging fire.
In about 1966 or so, for the first time I was allowed to keep my very own bag of fireworks in my bedroom.
The fireworks were required, by law, to stay in that bag until the weekend, when we were all going out to the country to shoot them.
But these fireworks were evil. They kept calling out to me every night.
I would pour out the bag’s contents onto my bed and look longingly at them. I would hold them, smell the gunpowder and read the labels.
Over and over again.
I wanted to blow up something so bad that my whole head was about to explode.
But I knew that I’d get caught if I opened a pack of Black Cats or bottle rockets. Their packaging was just too tight, and the labels said exactly how many were inside.
Then I discovered a new kind of fireworks. They were maybe half as long and wide as a pencil, and touted to be a powerful new kind of smoke bomb.
Cool.
And best of all, the label didn’t say how many were inside.
The next morning, when Mom was shopping and Dad was at the Fire Station, I spent at least five minutes ever-so-carefully squishing one out of the package.
I took the smoke bomb and a box of kitchen matches into the back yard. Oddly, there was no fuse on the smoke bomb, so I planned to light one end and chuck it over the fence into the neighbor’s thick cedar bush.
I’d then, casually, go back into our house and peep out the kitchen window as smoke boiled out of the bush, making it look liked it was on fire.
Was I a criminal mastermind or what? The answer would be no.
The instant the match touched the end of the alleged smoke bomb, it exploded louder than a Black Cat and scared the crap out of me.
I dropped the match and high-tailed it inside, holding my breath and praying the police wouldn’t drag me to jail.
I read the label again and realized, Crappola, I was supposed to “strike” the smoke bomb on a matchbook, not light the stupid thing.
Luckily, the police didn’t kick in my front door in the next five minutes. But even so, I had a baaaaad feeling.
So I took my football into the back yard to just, you know, casually kick it around and scan the area.
The grass all along the fence was on fire and I swear I had a heart attack.
I ran to the back of the house, grabbed Blondie’s water bowl, then sprinted back and forth trying to douse the flames. But the fire was spreading and I started to panic.
I thought about calling the Fire Department. But I knew that I’d have to run away from home, and there was no time to pack a stupid suitcase.
So I grabbed the garden hose and turned the water on full blast. I stretched the hose to its breaking point but the water wouldn’t reach the flames.
I started violently moving the hose up and down, sort of throwing the water, and it finally started hitting the flames.
After maybe 30 seconds, which seemed like an hour, the fire was out.
I was shaking like a leaf and had no idea what to do next. I ran back inside and tried to calm down and think.
Maybe I should “Sgt. Shultz” the whole thing and just say, “I know nothing! Nothing!” if anyone noticed anything.
But the burned strip was too big to miss when you gazed out the kitchen window, and Dad always did that when smoking cigarettes and drinking his morning coffee.
I was doomed. So when Dad got home, I told him exactly what had happened.
Some strange kid who I’d never seen before threw a firecracker into our back yard and then ran away laughing.
I hollered at him to stop but he didn’t, so I grabbed the hose and put out the fire.
There was no way that my Dad, who served as Norman’s arson investigator, could see through his criminal mastermind son’s story, right?
Anyway…
There’s no point in rehashing the gruesome details of what followed. Let’s just say that I couldn’t sit down for a month.
