Originally Posted by ROYC75:
I was 10 yrs old, We would take the black cat's, open them up for the powder. We placed the powder inside one of those plastic eggs, not a small one, but a "BIG" one. We cut a needle hole on the end and stuck a fuse in it. Carefully we over filled the 2 ends and pushed them together, twisting and turning them until it was tightly packed. We took duct tape and taped it very tightly .
We took the "mini bomb " ( as we called it ) to the garden and I was elected to light it since I was the oldest and could run the fastest. OK, We expected a mini bomb but not really knowing what we had just made were excited but scared at the same time.
I lite the fuse and ran, we had a ditch that had a 3 foot drop in it, I headed right towards it and was going to slide right into it. It went off before I could get there ....... " BOOM "
That bitch peppered me with dirt, rocks, rattled the windows in my grandmothers old house and sent a small rock across the street to the church, that broke out a window.
Our families came out to see what had happened .......:-) Man dad, my uncles, all the moms, grandparents were pissed off . After explaining what we did , My uncle who worked at an artillery plant stated that we had made a 1/4 stick of dynamite after reviewing the hole in the garden.
I wish people didn't shoot them off all hours of the night for about a week straight around 4th of July though.
Yeah. Not gonna lie, I grew to fucking hate the 4th while living in NYC. Didn’t matter what neighborhood I ever lived in. There would always be a group of fun loving assholes blowing shit up until 4am and I ALWAYS had to work the next day. Miserable. [Reply]
Went to a doubleheader in KC. Tigers for two games. Few weeks before the season ending strike in ‘94.
Tom Gordon gets shellacked in the first game during the afternoon, and I’m pretty sure Hamelin charged the pitcher at some point and got booted.
Game two comes around, and my buddy and I are in the old RF GA section a couple rows up from the fence.
It’s getting later in the game, and I guess I needed to stretch, use the bathroom or grab a soda or something. So I’m up in the RF area watching the game from up there when Hamelin comes to the plate and uncorks a DEEP 3 run homer to right. Several rows up from where me and buddy were sitting.
Fireworks are going off as everyone celebrates, and I see something sorta float down into the RF stands, then B O O M. It was a noisemaker and it blew up late in the stands amongst the crowd. Security, medics and Royals personnel run towards the scene flying down the stairs and I just stand there in silence with everyone as several fans are escorted up the stairs to more medics and stretchers standing by.
Several people with bloody legs, minor burns. One dude very, very wobbly and totally disoriented with blood coming out of both ears. Fucked up.
Kinda put a melancholy feel over the rest of the game, but the Royals did end up winning. Might’ve been part of that crazy 14 game win streak they had. [Reply]
Originally Posted by GabyKeepsMeWarm:
Yeah. Not gonna lie, I grew to fucking hate the 4th while living in NYC. Didn’t matter what neighborhood I ever lived in. There would always be a group of fun loving assholes blowing shit up until 4am and I ALWAYS had to work the next day. Miserable.
I'm not much of a fan either, but for a different reason.
This is the ten year anniversary of my Fourth of July Death Extravaganza. On July 2, my cousin (dad's sister's kid) died of cancer. In the space of two weeks she had gone from being prodded to see a doctor because she was constantly fatigued to dead. The following day, my wife's grandmother suffered what would end up being a fatal heart attack. The ambulance crew revived her, but she never regained consciousness and her body finally went a week later. But while I was at the hospital with my wife and her family on the 3rd, I got a call from another cousin informing me that my aunt (mom's sister) had just died. And then, on the 4th itself, I got a call from the sister of the cousin who had died on the 2nd informing me that my paternal grandmother had just died.
Four completely unrelated family deaths in the space of three days. I am not making this up. Hell, you couldn't make this shit up.
Of the deaths involved, only my cousin's was truly tragic. She was only 40. My wife's grandmother was 97, mine was 94, and my aunt was 83. All were in nursing homes in poor health, and old people in nursing homes dying is to be expected. What is not to be expected, though, is for them all to tumble into the grave at the same time. Seemed like every time my phone rang somebody else was dead; the angel of death had me on fucking speed dial. It was surreal. Over the next two weeks I went to four funerals from Missouri to New York. Definitely not the summer vacation I wanted.
Since then, when I think of the 4th of July, this is what I remember. Kind of puts a damper on fireworks and cookouts. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Frazod:
I'm not much of a fan either, but for a different reason.
This is the ten year anniversary of my Fourth of July Death Extravaganza. On July 2, my cousin (dad's sister's kid) died of cancer. In the space of two weeks she had gone from being prodded to see a doctor because she was constantly fatigued to dead. The following day, my wife's grandmother suffered what would end up being a fatal heart attack. The ambulance crew revived her, but she never regained consciousness and her body finally went a week later. But while I was at the hospital with my wife and her family on the 3rd, I got a call from another cousin informing me that my aunt (mom's sister) had just died. And then, on the 4th itself, I got a call from the sister of the cousin who had died on the 2nd informing me that my paternal grandmother had just died.
Four completely unrelated family deaths in the space of three days. I am not making this up. Hell, you couldn't make this shit up.
Of the deaths involved, only my cousin's was truly tragic. She was only 40. My wife's grandmother was 97, mine was 94, and my aunt was 83. All were in nursing homes in poor health, and old people in nursing homes dying is to be expected. What is not to be expected, though, is for them all to tumble into the grave at the same time. Seemed like every time my phone rang somebody else was dead; the angel of death had me on fucking speed dial. It was surreal. Over the next two weeks I went to four funerals from Missouri to New York. Definitely not the summer vacation I wanted.
Since then, when I think of the 4th of July, this is what I remember. Kind of puts a damper on fireworks and cookouts.
Goddamn that's brutal. Sorry you went through that. The fourth has a different meaning for me but for kind of the opposite reason. Today's my first born's birthday. I almost forget it's for celebrating anything else. [Reply]
Originally Posted by kysirsoze:
Goddamn that's brutal. Sorry you went through that. The fourth has a different meaning for me but for kind of the opposite reason. Today's my first born's birthday. I almost forget it's for celebrating anything else.
It was especially brutal for my poor aunt, who lost a daughter and her mother over the course of two days. That was just fucked. [Reply]
When we were kids living overseas, we had to go on base to see a fireworks display and never really got to shoot our own fireworks. In Germany we could on New Years, but their fireworks were lame.
Moved home in '84 and dad took us to a firework stand. We were just gonna get some ladyfingers and maybe fountains...and my dad found this box of Artillary shells. We had no idea what that was gonna be. So he only bought one box.
We went home, and the first one we shot, my dad, me and my brother looked at each other with a maniacal grin. Dad was thinking about trying to find a stand that was still open to get more. Needless to say, the next year we pretty much bought a ton of those and little else.
To this day, I don't really care about fireworks much (I've shot a lifetimes worth now) but I still get a thrill out of shooting the artillary shells. In fact, I'll be heading out to the local tent here shorty to pick some up for tonight.
Happy 4th fellas! Be safe. God Bless America! [Reply]
I wish people didn't shoot them off all hours of the night for about a week straight around 4th of July though.
Moving to Arizona was like moving to a different country in that regard... we're always well into fire bans by now, so it's rare to hear them at all, much less the two weeks leading up and then all day/night. [Reply]
I guess after that depressing post I made earlier I should counter it with a good memory.
Back in the late 90s I was a groomsman in a buddy's wedding in New York City. The groom went all out - rented a 135 foot yacht for the ceremony and reception. We anchored off Liberty Island and were there late into the night.
That day just happened to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the formation of the five boroughs into the modern city of New York. From our vantage point on the harbor, we witnessed the largest fireworks show I've ever seen. It was spectacular, and seemed to go on forever. Definitely the coolest wedding I've ever attended. [Reply]
I moved from KC to London when I was 13. They obviously don't celebrate Independence Day, but they have fireworks on November 5 for Guy Fawkes day. English firecrackers were different too. They called them bangers. They weren't nearly as powerful as American firecrackers and they operated differently. More on that in a moment.
My English friend showed me how to make a paper airplane that is easily the best paper airplane I've ever seen. A good one is well balanced and will float for a long time.
English bangers were about 4 inches long and when you lit them they would shoot sparks/fire out the end for a few seconds and then pause. After another second or so they would blow up.
So, 2 enterprising young firebugs from 2 different continents came up with the brilliant idea that if we taped a banger into the center of one of our paper airplanes, we would have a jet powered paper airplane, and as a special bonus, the paper airplane would catch on fire.
It only took a couple of tries to find the perfect spot for balance and it worked perfectly. You light the banger, throw the paper airplane straight up, and about the moment it lost it's momentum going up, the banger lit. Sure enough, it was a jet engine and the paper airplane would zoom up. The entire back end of the airplane would be on fire, but when the banger went off, it would put out the fire. The paper airplane was then no longer flight-worthy and it would go into a spin while trailing smoke all the way to the ground.
Fortunately, we never burned anything down or caught anything else on fire. We must have launched hundreds of these doomed jets and I still enjoy the memory. [Reply]
The block I grew up on had lots of boys for some reason. And we would have bottle rocket wars with each other, about 10 kids on each team. Complete with custom made pipes to launch them from.
The pipes you would hold with your hand for better aiming purposes.
How in the world no one had serious injuries from that I'll never know.
Fun times. [Reply]
In HS we would have bottle rocket fights. We would make "guns" out of PCV pipe and they were quite accurate. A friends T-shirt caught on fire once, easily distinguished, and another got hit in the cheek and got a burn and a "cut"... That was really stupid. [Reply]
Favorite bottle rocket story - one night my best friend and I were driving around town, and I was shooting bottle rockets out of the car window (no pipe - I just held the end of the stick between my thumb and index finger). We got behind a guy we knew that we didn't like, so I fired one off at his car. Obviously you can't effectively aim them, but this shot was one in a million. It went right in his tailpipe and exploded. Just as it hit, we turned off on a side street. Went around the block, and the guy had pulled over immediately and was looking at the back of his car trying to figure out what the hell happened. It was hilarious. :-) [Reply]
Only time I've ever been arrested was in 1979 for shooting bottle rockets into a strip pit north of Columbia. Turned out the land was annexed by the State as a "State Park" but they had no signs up. Officer Richard Head arrested me and a couple of my friends for "littering in a state park." Got taken to the Boone County Jail and had to pay a $100 fine, which took all my money. Had to borrow $20 from a friend's dad to get back home to KC. [Reply]
