Celebrating July 4th with a BANG!

I purposely saved this article for after the Fourth of July holiday due to its nature in potential exciting ways to use a firecracker. Hopefully you have already shot off your firecrackers for this year and no longer have the opportunity to try what the boys of Lucy tried. We did have fun with the many explosive devices, and the short drive to firework stands on 51 made it so easily accessible to expand on our talent.

We would always spend our July 4th holidays with friends. We boys would divide up into sides and have bottle rocket wars in the cove of Oakhurst. This was not guerrilla warfare; this was more English-style Revolutionary War warfare. Each team would face each other in battle about thirty yards apart, fire off our arsenal of bottle rockets, reload, and repeat the process. It always helped if your dad was a plumber like mine. My team had access to all the PVC pipe we could cut, which gave us incredible accuracy when firing bottle rockets. Although it was singed clothing that was typically the main casualty in these fights, it was still great fun.

Later in life, my friend Joe Henderson introduced me to the bottlerocket bomb. We definitely took advantage of the "buy one, get four free bottle rockets" special. We would wrap about 100 plus bottle rockets in duct tape, combine the fuses, light them, and then run like crazy. The explosion from this contained bomb set off car alarms all around us. Lots of laughter and high fives immediately followed--typical guy humor.

Another favorite firecracker of ours was the infamous M-80. It has been said that an M-80 can destroy a mailbox. We found that was not the case when we tested it out on Stevie's parents' box. Devastated, we turned our attention on a less structural victim. We took model plastic airplanes and shoved the explosives in its center, lit the fuse, and threw the planes in the air. When the planes hit the ground, they exploded on impact, which always put smiles on our faces. Once I even built a Lego car, mounted an M-80 in its center, lit the fuse, and rolled it down the driveway. The many pieces of that car were never seen again.

Probably my favorite July 4th memory was after Shannon and I were married and we celebrated our first Fourth of July at our new church property. My dad, brother, Stevie, and his dad were responsible for shooting the fireworks for the church's firework extravaganza. During the event, somebody (everyone denies who did it) accidentally kicked over one of the big rockets, which then zipped into the church's agriculture building. Everyone hit the deck, knowing about the propane tank and chemicals inside the building. Although none of us saw the commotion from across the field, the look on their faces later told the story. We still laugh about it to this day.

The Fourth of July is the celebration of our country's independence and the birth of the greatest nation in the world. Although we acknowledged this, we saw it as a chance to improve our firecracker warfare. Looking back, most of these holiday activities, in today's standards, would probably land the boys of Lucy on some FBI watch list or something. I'm just glad we were able to experience this fun while we could.

-Steve Childress