The tall old man with the snoose-stained beard cleared his throat and asked the clerk if he had any cherry bombs. Everyone in the fireworks tent turned around: and here we thought Rip Van Winkle was just a story. But no! He fell asleep in 1965, woke up, decided a feller didn't need all 10 fingers, just one for pointin' and two for grabbin' a match, and wandered over to the tent. We also wanted to know if they did have cherry bombs, because that would be awesome.

The clerk explained that the state of Minnesota prohibits anything that blows up or goes off the ground, and the fellow said it wasn't like that when he was a kid. "You could buy anything," he said. "You could buy a stick of dynamite." The clerk smiled and nodded; he was young enough to think the old man was right. Why, folks would put down their lime rickeys and take the needle off the gramophone when Dynamite Dan pulled his cart up to the house. He sold White-lead Liniment and cocaine-laced licorice whips for the kids, too! Everyone loved Dan.

Well, no. I was around during the golden age of legal explosives. Teeth-rattling M80s? Sure. Cherry bombs? We used to throw those in the river and watch the trees fill up with fish. After that we'd get trash-can lids for shields and have Roman candle duels. It is truly a wonder I am not typing this with a stick between my teeth, and it's sheer luck half the kids in my grade-school class picture didn't have rakish eyepatches. But I don't remember dynamite being freely sold. People blew off lots of stuff, yes, but in the morning you didn't find the front lawns up and down the block dotted with craters. No kid would want dynamite, either. There's stuff that might put out your eye, and stuff you know will put out your I. As in "me."

Don't miss cherry bombs. Miss bottle rockets, but things that go in the air make me uncomfortable. Aside from serving as Scofflaw Location Signals for the police, I always think the rockets will set someone's roof on fire. Which would make sense if we lived in thatched huts, but still. The small metal discs that rise on a pillar of sparks and whiz angrily into the sky must, to any sensible person, look insane, because if you can't imagine that thing going for your face and excavating your eye socket you have more faith in Chinese pyrotechnical aerodynamics than I do.

In childhood we shot off these and much, much worse, including rockets for which you had to file a flight plan with the FAA; if you listened closely you could hear them ping off Sputnik. But we did this at the farm. Worst that could happen, a rocket went off course into the chicken coop. They would instantly have gained the power of flight if that happened; it's amazing what fear can do.

So it's just fountains for the Fourth. That's OK, really, if they're loud. Something with enough smoke to camouflage the D-Day invasion, a crackle and a keening screaming whistle and a BANG! at the end that makes squirrels lose bladder control. If only they had better names: Fireworks used to have names like Thousand Blossom Dragon or Lucky Pinwheel Flower or other terms taken from the one fellow in the factory who knew some English; now they have ghastly graphics and names like Shower Royale or USA Number One! or YOU DA BOMB, which seemed odd. No, you da bomb. Right? Unless this thing leaps down my pants when I light the fuse.

The tent had a table devoted to enormous canisters with a sign: SHOW ENDER, which either means they cannot possibly be topped, or they set the lawn on fire with a low-altitude napalm dispersal burst. They cost over $125. I presume they last so long there's a lull halfway through for a bathroom break, but that's still a lot of money.

Then again, dynamite's expensive, and it's over in a second.

Oh, the old man? He bought some sparklers. In his days a boy could use 'em for welding!

jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 More daily at www.startribune.com/blogs/lileks