072924…R PUSKAS…Warren…07-29-24…Tribune Chronicle/Vindicator Editor Ed Puskas…by R. Michael Semple

Look, I love America as much as anyone — and probably more than a lot of people these days — and I still enjoy a fireworks show. Some of the best memories we have as kids probably involve Fourth of July fireworks shows.

I’m too old for that stuff now. I’m more than happy to sit out the explosions and leave them to others. But I’ll always have the memories.

As a kid, watching fireworks only entertains you for a while. Sooner or later, we had to have our own fireworks. Remember “sparklers” being sold everywhere? Those things burned at about 3,800 degrees for approximately 15 seconds. Then there were those “snakes” that you lit and watched grow into several inches of ash on the sidewalk.

As I got older, I moved from that little-kid stuff to other things. One year, my father produced a small paper bag from his car trunk. It contained a dozen or so of what we called “M-80s.” Someone heard from someone’s friend’s cousin that each was about a “quarter-stick of dynamite.”

They were about the size of your thumb, which was kind of ironic, since they seemed to pack enough power to separate your thumb and assorted other fingers if you were careless.

“When you light one, you better throw it or run away fast,” Dad said.

Sage advice, as always. Looking back, it’s amazing that far more Generation X folks aren’t walking around with missing fingers.

Yes, parents in the 1970s not only smoked around their kids incessantly, but sometimes they handed us explosives, a lighter or matches, and sent us on our way to have fun blowing up stuff. After a few booms, the sound wasn’t cutting it anymore. We had to see what happened when we put an M-80 or a string of firecrackers — were they called lady fingers? — into a model car or airplane. Good times.

Sometimes, we’d acquire “bottle rockets,” so named because you could stick them into a 16-ounce glass pop bottle with the fuse sticking out, light them and theoretically aim the bottle just about anywhere you wanted to send a dangerous, exploding device at Mach 1 speed.

(For the record, that is 761 miles per hour, according to the interwebs.)

Where did we get this stuff as kids? Well, as noted, it paid to have a father who “knew guys,” because fireworks often were sold or bartered out of car trunks in the 1970s.

In high school in the 1980s, some kids — the names have been omitted to protect the guilty — were able to order fireworks through the mail and have them delivered DIRECTLY to our homes. “Their” homes, I mean.

A couple of friends placed just such an order and when the stockpile arrived, they put on an impromptu neighborhood show. It didn’t last long. The local authorities simply followed the haze of blue smoke right to its source and confiscated everything that hadn’t been set off yet.

None of us lost any appendages during those crazy times, but a friend of mine did wait too long to get rid of a firecracker once and had he waited another millisecond to throw it, we might have been heading to the ER. As it was, his hand stung for a good, long while.

But we all eventually outgrew such shenanigans. I don’t mind sitting in a chair or on a blanket and watching a fireworks show. There was nothing like the annual show at Edgewater Park in Cleveland. But I was 11 then. At 58 now, I’m fine with a professional show and I’d rather not be surrounded by random explosions that sound like they’re happening inside my house.

But not everyone outgrows this stuff. Cletus, of course, has not. Every year, he’s determined to get his money’s worth on the Fourth of July … not to mention the weeks leading up to it and afterward. He probably knows a guy who knows some guys and has a bunch of M-80s in the trunk of his 1972 Monte Carlo.

But as an adult — supposedly — and someone who now knows full well that the world does not, in fact, revolve around me, I understand that not everyone enjoys the loud sounds of America’s birthday. Some of us are older now and would rather light a grill than an M-80. Some of us have young children and pets who are likely to be stressed by the cacophony of fireworks.

So celebrate the holiday, but not in excess, and be considerate by shutting things down at a reasonable time.

And please don’t lose any appendages. You might need a couple of them to get your point across while driving.

But that’s a topic for another day.

Ed Puskas is editor of the Tribune Chronicle and The Vindicator. Reach him at 330-841-1786 or epuskas@tribtoday.com.