Comments on: The Fragrance Of The Fourth

By: Randy

Randy — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 02:27:00 +0000

Just like there are Chevy guys and Ford guys, John Deere and International and Pepsi and Coke lovers, so are there Zebra fans and Black Cat fans. Based on hours and hours of painstaking experimentation, lighting them off under tin cans, I have to take exception to your contention that Black Cat was the better firecracker. Now, as far as I could tell, the Zebra was just as reliable and argueably more powerful. I do know that a Zebra exploding while being held between one’s thumb and forefinger, caused numbness and blood blisters followed by pain.

I don’t know if the cans actually went higher with a Zebra under them, but I know that as far as I was concerrned they did. Great blog, Doug. I like the label you chose to display.

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 16:05:18 +0000

Bottle rockets thrown by hand was my favorite. I seemed to have ruined a shirt each fireworks season due to the burn holes from the late release.

By: FOSH

FOSH — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 13:21:20 +0000

Doug you brought back many good memories. It was almost a Garrison Keillor-type story in the sense that i could place myself there and could almost smell the the fireworks just reading about it. Very good.

By: SF

SF — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 17:42:57 +0000

Doug—I really appreciate the way you are able to describe the sights, sounds, and even smells in your journal/blog!
Thanks

By: Taxpayer

Taxpayer — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:07:53 +0000

Doug, you bring back a lot of old memories. Some good, and some that could have been bad. In about 1947, my Dad built a trough to lean those giant sky rockets in. He touched one off and his trough fell over at the last second and the rocket took off and whizzed past Grandads head by about 6 inches and flew down the house basement and whizzed around down there a bit and then the earth shattering explosion. Lucky it didn’t burn the house down. In those days, the sky rocket probably cost fifty cents.
I still have a quart jar about full of what we called “Blockbusters, big firecrackers with a fuse in the side. I believe they cost 5 cents each.
Thanks for the memories.

By: Suzan

Suzan — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 01:58:10 +0000

I remember getting Black Cats and going to the “Dutch School” playground across from Grandma’s. I lit them then threw them in the air. I came awfully close to an exploded finger. My hand was numb, but no blood and all fingers attached. I never shared that with Grandma and was more careful after that! Still love watching a big fireworks show, but don’t care much about buying and lighting them myself. BTW, never knew what the grown-ups meant by the “Dutch School.” I saw kids coming out of there many times and they didn’t look any different to me. No wooden shoes or anything!

By: iluvsd

iluvsd — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 23:09:44 +0000

There is nothing like having a jumbo whistling bottle rocket fly into the chicken house and explode…Needless to say the egg supply was much less the next few days and the hens were a tad skittish as well…