THESE TIMES

Memories of fireworks, and road flares

Kirk Ericson | Jun 29, 20230

Four Fingered Jacks: The best name I’ve seen for a fireworks stand.

One Fourth when all four kids were under one roof, our father announced we would have a safe Fourth of July. He got some of us into the backyard, had us sit in lawn chairs on the concrete patio, and then perched a road flare about 50 feet away atop a wall separating one level of the backyard from the next. He popped the cap on the flare. I can’t recall whether I said or thought this when the flare burned out: “Is that it?” Then he said, “I’ve got another one,” and he lit a second road flare. Thus was our Fourth of July safe.

One Fourth in the late 1990s, Mrs. Ericson, son No. 1 and I joined some friends at their house in the community of Nahcotta on the Long Beach peninsula. Before sunset, we went to a beach on the peninsula’s west side. When darkness came, the beach went wild, due mostly to the effects of alcohol and bottle rockets flying along the beach at hip level. The little boys inside the big men had emerged. Mrs. Ericson and our friend Megan Walsh retreated up the beach to take cover inside a Jeep. Soon enough, I watched a Jeep-seeking bottle rocket skim across the sand for about 40 yards and elevate at the precise moment when it needed to fly through the open top of the Jeep. Pop went the bottle rocket in Mrs. Ericson’s lap, and the two girls bailed out of the doors like professional soldiers.

In the summer of 1989, I was in Washington, D.C., when the government of Saudi Arabia put on a let’s-thank-America fireworks show, for a reason I can’t remember, in a grassy area near the Capitol. Security was more lax in those days, so a few of us got as close as we could to the launch zone, where we spent many minutes amid the streaming and steaming casings from the spent fireworks. The air was thick with whatever the substance is that makes fireworks go high and go boom.

In the early 1990s, Mrs. Ericson had a key that allowed us to get onto an outside walkway along the base of the Capitol Dome in Olympia. The fireworks exploded at what seemed to be eye level. It felt like this was too much fun to be allowed, and sure enough, the no fun-nicks closed the walkway to all nonessential personnel the next year.

I was around 10 years old when my parents took us to a public parking area on a perch overlooking downtown Spokane for a fireworks show. I recall none of the fireworks, but I do remember next to us was an old guy sitting alone in a truck. Sometimes people can be alone and not seem alone, but sitting alone in your truck for an hour at a fireworks show seems an extreme form of lonely. I imagined he was remembering Fourth gatherings when he wasn’t alone. I saw him wipe his hand across his cheeks and I remember thinking getting old must be avoided.

The best fireworks shows can be seen in summer over English Bay in West Vancouver. A nation sponsors one every year, and one year we saw China put on the show. It was like watching the French make cheese, the Germans engineer a car, the Brazilians build a soccer team or the Vietnamese forgive the people who’ve invaded their country. At the border on the way home, the U.S. customs agent asked me what we were doing in Canada. “We went to the fireworks show in Vancouver.” “How was it?” he asked. “Fantastic,” I replied. “You should go.” “Maybe I will,” he said. And that was the only human conversation I’ve ever had with a customs agent.

I took my oldest son when he was around 10 years old to watch the Capital Lakefair fireworks show from the roof of the building that housed The Olympian newspaper in the early 2000s. The building was on a bluff overlooking downtown Olympia and the distant Black Hills. We climbed the inside ladder near the business office to the roof, where we had an unimpeded view of the bursts. Midway through the show, Alex said he wanted to leave. While driving him home, he asked, “Am I the only one who doesn’t like fireworks?” I told him I don’t like fireworks. You just need something else going on to make it interesting.