I’m a mid-westerner. That means I know a lot about corn (it’s food), tornadoes (it’s God taking your trailer ’cause he caught you looking at your sister in the bathroom) and, of course, fireworks. As the merry 4th rolls around, and we all turn our eyes up to the heavens to watch the magnificent explosions on this equally magnificent summer evening, I am goaded to inform all the rest of you–those of you who don’t have the pleasure of living in the Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois tri-state area–who the people behind the scenes of these festive fireworks are.
Like the nomad people of the Sahara desert, these people travel in packs about the Eisenhower Interstate System that meanders across our country. Like the desert nomads, these “fireworks people” also sport tents, beautiful red and white plastic tents, that, I think, cover hectares (not acres…hectares). The grandiose size, of course, is immediately justified when you see the amount of product that these people are trying to move. Every 15th of June or so, these tents sprout up faster than the corn in Iron County. Each has it’s own clever patriotic name. “Molly Brown’s Fireworks Palace,” “Martha Washington’s Saltpeter Emporium,” “Lady Bird Johnson’s Flashpoint Discount.” That each of these places is named for patriotic women is not lost on me; I am still waiting for Hillary to break into the market. Regardless, these names are meant to make you feel proud that you were born free in the U.S. of A, and if they don’t do it, the bounty of tattooed American flags and air-brushed tee-shirts will.
But you didn’t come for tents and flags, you came for some damn fireworks!! And, oh boy, you’ll get some fireworks…that these people are serious about! I’ve seen bouncers throw Volvo-driving suburbanite daddies out on their asses because they asked for some sparklers for their 6 year old daughters. Anything that can’t put a two-foot hole in the ground or escape earth’s orbit is not welcome at these places. I think, in fact, that these fireworks outlets are where the physicists from Princeton’s Center for Higher Thought go to die. These places have the likes of Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi and some guy named Nalhardid tag-teaming at the blackboard in the back room just to soup up the next batch of M80’s for your 11 year-old.
It is true, though, that the intelligence quota tends to bottom out outside the special “Concockshun Room.” Of course the cheery (but sinister-in-the-sheer-efficacy-of-selling-explosives-to-children) folk who work the counters are not reading Plato in their spare time, but what’s funny to me is that everyone, from the guy in the Brooks Brother’s tie to the kid with the mullet and the rat-stache, gets a little bit dumber from these places. All family ties are severed; it’s every man for himself in search of the greatest thermodynamic reaction at the lowest price. “Oh, four monster plumb rockets for $6.95!” “Hold it there, Chet. I gots me 2.3 Megatons of destruction 2-for-1 over here. You’re done, you bastard!”
At the end of the day, another content American family goes home with a trunk full enough of explosives to pique the envy of any terrorist. But, hey, this is ‘Merica. We love our explosives, our First Ladies, Fermi and Nalhardid, and we love watching the flowery explosion of fireworks lighting up the warm summer’s night of this July the 4th.
Guest Columnist