I love fireworks. The state should ban fireworks. Again.
I don’t mean smoke bombs, sparklers and snakes. Those are boring. Banning them would be like banning oatmeal, which come to think of it, isn’t a bad idea. But then why bother – bland bans itself, in a sense, right?
I mean ban fun fireworks. Anything that delights the soul. Or bedazzles the eye. Or rattles the windows. Or leaps from the earth with its butt on fire. Or causes moms to get the vapors (maybe the truest test of all). Anything, in short, that, when you light it, makes you feel like you did when you were a kid and got away with something you shouldn’t have.
For most of my life, those types of fireworks were banned in Michigan, which made them all the more fun if you got your hands on some.
Back in my grade school days, Joey Liss and I used to put platoons of green plastic Army men on the ice floes that would form in the alley next to his home. Then we’d knock them off with illicit firecrackers and bb guns, thereby saving the nation from invasion. Great kid fun in a much more innocent time.
Later, I’d go back to Escanaba, my hometown in the U.P., for the Fourth and delight the nephews and nieces with a private fireworks show after the city’s fireworks show. Ours was always better and generally safe, except for the time the Roman candle tipped over and shot a ball of fire over everyone’s head.
I’m still apologizing to the mothers in our family for that. (Yeah. I’m apparently “that” uncle.)
When the state changed the fireworks law a few years ago and suddenly everything short of nuclear weapons was legal, I was initially delighted. Instead of getting whiz-bangs from the reservation near Escanaba, I could get them anywhere.
Awesome.
But then reality set in. As an adult who gives a crap about other people, I’ve always limited my fireworks use to the Fourth, maybe the night before. Setting them off in a neighborhood any other time seems a bit rude, y’know? A lot of older people don’t like it. Dogs hate it. People are sleeping. And what about veterans with PTSD?
I am clearly alone in my restraint. Since the law changed, I hear and see fireworks nearly every night, often all night, from Memorial Day through Labor Day.
And I don’t mean little fireworks – Roman candles or bottle rockets. I mean big ones. The kind that make you think the next neighborhood over is ticked off for some reason and invading your neighborhood and they’re beginning with a rolling artillery barrage. The kind that make even me ask, “Those are legal?”
I’d like to think we could modify the existing law by getting rid of fireworks that belong in professional hands. (Here’s one guideline: If it’s called a “mortar shell” maybe that’s a sign Bob down the street shouldn’t own it.) I’d also like to think people will start to behave better.
But neither is going to happen. (Me, I can behave with fireworks and other things. The rest of you? Not so much.)
So maybe we’d be better off going back to the old law.
Boring as it was.
Have a safe, happy Fourth.
Image credit: Jonathan Lwowski
Sadly, I couldn’t agree more. I don’t get much sleep the first couple of weeks in July, and since I get up at 5 am for work, I’m not real happy about that. If people would limit it to a couple of days around the holiday, I’d be okay with that. If they’d have the courtesy to stop by 11 pm, or even midnight, I’d be okay with that. They don’t.
To those of you that are courteous with fireworks, thank you. To the rest of you? Thumbs down.
Yeah. The massive explosions in my neighborhood didn’t end until after 1:00am this morning. My dog (12.5 years) and even the cats were quite stressed. I just wanted to get some sleep. Didn’t even have the benefit of any of the light show, only the very loud, very random explosions.
Fireworks are beyond annoying around my house. My poor 13 year old dog goes crazy. Might as well be in a war zone here in Saginaw…
Well said, Andy! I hate fireworks in our little neighborhood in Flint Township. My dog gets so scared that he can’t seem to figure out where to go. He’s about 60 pounds but thinks he’s a lap dog when those things go off. It’s so sad…
The law certainly needs to change, but also people need to be more considerate to those around them.
People have no sense of courtesy anymore when they decide it’s “all about me”. I always say we should ship these sissies off to the battlefields if they want to play boom-boom. But we all know they’d cry for their mommas the first day of boot camp. Peace.
Andy ~ My friend Scott in Holly gave me a large aircraft carrier plastic model he’d started on for Christmas about 1969/70. I finished it, filled it with firecrackers, covered it with model glue, (which burns quite well but slowly), then floated it down the Shiawassee River among the ice floes while Scott’s younger brother Aaron and I tried to sink it with BB guns before it exploded! Green plastic Army men? No way when I had the equivalent in grey plastic Cape Canaveral ground crew guys and some with backpack fire extinguishers doomed to meet their fate. Scott was ticked off, probably because we didn’t invite him.
I’m far from above playing with fireworks. The only rules I’ve ever observed are safety and common courtesy, the second one I’ll break on occasion as it’s just too fun to see the look on someone’s face after you set off a really loud bang when it’s quiet. One bang, not all day, every day.
Random very loud explosions all day long today in my Bangor Twp neighborhood. My dog and I were outside tending the grill when that last one went off, poor dog nearly had a cardiac arrest (I was not too far from it myself, it was so loud). Banning fireworks *again* cannot happen soon enough.
I don’t agree with banning fireworks, many of us used them responsibly when they were legal to transport but illegal to ignite in Michigan. I’m certain I could operate a chain saw or drive an 18 wheeler but never have and have no desire to do so. Power tools and motor vehicles are matter of perspective and scale the same as fireworks. Should we ban weed eaters and leaf blowers?
Before 7:00and after 8:00pm? Yep
I agree but midnight to 10AM quiet would work for me.
Absolutely right. Folks in Middleville area seem to follow that idea. None before noon or after midnight.
I chose to wake up my neighborhood with firecrackers at 1 pm. But I would not dream of firing really loud bombs in town.
My “quiet time” of 8pm till 7am was in reference to leaf blowers – lived in one neighbohood where a fellow would fire up his gas-powered blower and any hour and randomly rev it, thinking that was the best method for use.
Okay, you guys, here are some nifty hints for using dangerous firecrackers: My pal Geoff had some source for M-80s. An M-80 is a step up from a Cherry Bomb. One M-80 = 1/8 stick of dynamite, or so we thought back then. If you dig a round hole, about eight inches across, about a foot and a half deep, in the sand at Lake Michigan, and light an M-80, and drop it down the hole, you get an awesome dense silver smoke ring rising to heaven.
Hold an M-80 behind your head, cocked to throw, and have Geoff light it; then throw it into Lake Michigan for an awesome depth charge explosion that would disable a German submarine.
Finally, get Geoff to put together models of WW2 bombers. And take the models up into the dunes. Shoot at them with your BB guns. Target the turrets and cockpits. Blast them to pieces with your BB anti-aircraft.
Then, head off to swing on the tree-rope, and drop into the Grand River, while freighters steam past. That was a real American boyhood! I hope some American boys still have the chance to do that kind of stuff.
Skip class, and take the screen out of your third-floor dorm window. When your friends start returning to the dorm, after class, shoot bottle rockets at them. Be amazed when some of them get rockets and start shooting back from below.
Be ambushed when some of them come up to the third floor, and open your dorm room door (because you did not think to lock it), and shoot you pint blank with more rockets.
Right now, 11pm July 3, I am hearing fireworks and firecrackers in my neighborhood in Grand Rapids. It’s okay. Better than hearing gunshots. Glad I do not live in Falujah or Aleppo.
Had to tell the neighbor’s to stop lighting theirs tonight – they were lighting them off the end of their dock 50 feet away from us and the shrapnel was landing next to us on our dock. They stopped and all is good but I shouldn’t have had to tell them to stop in the first place. Common sense can be a good thing sometimes.