Yeah, I can't eat 'em anymore either.

(And DAYUM, Kevin!)

Mindy wrote: "I called em "nannalaters" as a kid."

I called them nialaters. MAN I used to love those. Now I can't eat them because I have too many fillings. I can't eat them now or later. :(

I love fireworks, and the Fourth of July is my second favorite holiday, after Thanksgiving.

Hahahahahahaha!!! Geez, Kevin!

Am I the only one wondering how Kevin has survived as long as he has?

my "hey ya'll watch this" 4th memory:

decided to make a homemade mortar one time so we cut the bottoms out of a couple of tennis ball cans, taped them all together into a semi-straight tube, broke open about a brick of firecrackers (no one truly saw many of the mythical M-80's), poured all the powder into the bottom of the tube, made a make-shift fuse, inserted racquetball ball into tube, propped up at about a 45 degree angle, lit fuse, dashed like hell about 20' away (entirely underestimated the necessary safe distance) and proceeded to watch with glee and then horror as the thing totally fragged into a kablillion pieces sending tin shrapnel whizzing past us.

#1 - nearly deafened my buddies and i
#2 - created a beach ball size crater
#3 - embedded shards of steel into nearby trees
#4 - burnt up grass in an 8' ring
#5 - failed to propel ball anywhere
#6 - was totally awesome

Damn, Logan! Be careful, maybe it's like dynamite & becomes highly volatile as it ages? (Wait, that's nitroglycerin, isn't it? I have no idea what I'm talking about.)

I hated bottle rocket wars! That shit scared me to death. I never understood the appeal.

We have all kinds of fireworks going off around here, including bottle rockets. You can get them on the reservations.

My friend Mindy and her mom would run a fireworks stand every year. In fact, I think her mom still does. I used to get Jumping Jacks (I felt obliged) and Black Cats and Whistling Petes and Blooming Flowers when I was a teenager.

But after jumping back after lighting a fuse to have my glasses jump forward onto the cement patio and get chipped, and having a ladyfinger go off in my hand and give me numb fingers for a couple of hours, I lost enthusiasm for them.

We've got multiple municipal celebrations to choose from. Lacey does their fireworks on the 3rd in the Sears parking lot (don't know why), but you can see them from the Albertson's parking lot and have an easier time getting home. The ambience is sad either place, though.

Fort Lewis's is the BEST! The fort has a row of howitzers that go off during the Army band's performance of "Stars and Stripes Forever", and they also fire off and on during the fireworks, right there on the same football field where everyone sits on their picnic blankets! You can sure feel it! The only trouble is getting off the base afterwards. The traffic is HORRIBLE. It can take an hour to creep to the gate and onto the freeway.

Olympia has its fireworks at the end of Lakefair, on the 19th, I think, this year. But they ARE over the lake.

I was going through some boxes of childhood stuff the other day and opened the packaging for my old X-Wing and TIE Fighter computer games because they seemed unusually heavy. Inside was enough heavy ordinance to set off car alarms throughout the city. I forgot that I used to stash firecrackers around my room when I was a kid. These have to be 15-18 years old now, but I wonder if they'll still go BOOM?

"Celebrate your nation's independence by blowing up a small piece of it."

My God, I would pay good money to set off an M-80 outside of Terminal Coffee and see all of you spill your drinks and drop your books.

:)

We have fireworks over the lake, kind of like what Mindy describes with Mobile. We can see them from our front yard. I'm not a big fireworks fan, either. Luckily they're illegal here (except for the Jackie snakes/sparkler variety) so my kids still have all their fingers. When we were kids in Chicago, though...holy hell, I think we'd go through a brick of Black Cats (that's a kind of firecracker, not real black cats) a day this time a year. We'd blow up cans, bottles, whatever worked. And remember bottle rockets? Ooh. I kind of miss bottle rockets.

Larry wrote: "I would gladly give up ever seeing or hearing fireworks again in favor of the poor dogs who get freaked by them."


Daww!!!

♥

I called em "nannalaters" as a kid.

Heehee, now & later:

I'll thank you now & later.

Wow, Jackie, that must have been quite startling.

Those things are so dangerous, too. Just imagine people who have had a few too many drinks handling them. Yikes and missing fingers!

I was planning to post an image of something related to M-80s, but the pics of blasted hands were just too gross.

Y'all can thank me now or later.

Last night, someone in the neighborhood set off an M-80, and with the windows open it was so loud I almost jumped out of my skin!
The cats weren't happy, either. It sounded like we were living in a war zone. :(

I would gladly give up ever seeing or hearing fireworks again in favor of the poor dogs who get freaked by them.

My ex-husband's dog is TERRIFIED of thunder, so the fireworks do bother him. (He gets so scared he poops!)

I'm not a fan of fireworks. :( I wish they could make them muteable. My poor dog and my sister's dog both get really upset and inconsoleable around 4th of July and New Year's every year when it's fireworks season. It upsets me that I can't do anything to comfort them. Aside from that, I don't like the loud noise/vibration myself.

So far, there's one friend's bbq/pool party on the agenda, and probably another in the works. Mobile does a pretty nice fireworks display out on the Bay.

LMAO! You got bombs for entertainment! WOW!

If my isolated sunscorching (in one eensy spot, despite frequent sunscreen application) goes away anytime within the next day, I plan to spend my time in the pool like I did last weekend. :)

I remember being out in the Sierra desert in northern California, where because of how dry it is fireworks are severely restricted. No big fireworks shows, no stuff at home either, like roman candles.

We celebrated with sparklers and those black snakes. I still don't understand the appeal of the snakes.

It was ironic, because the army kept tons of ordinance out there, and at the end of the school year, the kids would get a tour of the bunkers, and they'd blow up some old, past the expiration date, bombs for us.

We have a ginormous fireworks display on Saturday directly behind our building, along the Missouri River. We can either go up on the roof deck (Tadpole and spouse have seen that), or just sit and look out our windows that face east.

It's a really cool display that we really enjoy every year, watching all of the people who have to try to scramble for parking places or places to sit/stand to see them.

People in Nebraska and Iowa are fanatical about fireworks. I've never seen anything like it -- even in Texas where they do everything to the extreme.

Many of us (sorry, Larry!) are off tomorrow, so the big three day weekend is nearly upon us. What are you doing? Hitting the fireworks, or are you scared of them? What's a good Fourth of July to you? What Fourth of July memories do you have?