James Lileks: Advice for the Fourth

A few reminders about fireworks, taken from the warning labels:

1. Do not hold in hand. This is apparently so nonintuitive it must be stamped on every item; you must wonder how stupid Chinese factory workers think we are: What else do we need to tell these idiots? Also, do not put in pants. Do not sleep with lit fireworks. Do not juggle.

2. Place on level surface. This one mystified us in North Dakota, a land so flat it made the gentle rolling hills of Iowa look like a brutal Himalayan range. Daddy, what does that mean? Well, it's a part of the Earth that goes down instead of stretching flat for miles. Dad, you're scaring us.

3. Light fuse. This is the second item on the list of instructions, and it's akin to a hamburger wrapper that says "put food in mouth," then feels obligated to note "chew" as step two.

4. Step four, my favorite: "Get away." Truer words were never spoken. Someone's always designated as the chief fuse-punk interface facilitator, and this person always comes to grips with the full madness of what they're doing when the fuse suddenly hisses like they've stepped on the tail of a hungover snake. One of the stupidest fireworks I remember from the golden age of legal detonation was a metal disk that rose on a pillar of sparks and flew into the sky. It sat on four fins that looked like the blades of a juicer.

Everything about it said, THIS WILL GO STRAIGHT FOR YOUR FACE. For all we knew, the Chinese text called it the Hunan Blinder. But we lit it, danced backwards like quarterbacks hoping the pass was caught, and watched it head into the sky.

Nowadays we can't buy fireworks that go up, because sometimes they don't. Boomers, with our usual ability for rewriting the past, insist that we had it great, and no one got hurt. Why, Mom used to clear out our stuffy noses with ladyfingers. Kids today with their DVDs and Harry Potter don't know what it's like to bring down a crow with a Roman candle.

I'm hesitant to romanticize my old childhood fireworks experience, because surely it wasn't as good as I recall. Surely no one really let me unwrap dozens of Black Cats, heap the gunpowder on a stone, put a Gerber baby-food lid over the pile and blow it 50 feet in the air with an ant taped to the lid as an astronaut. Surely we didn't toss toad-stunning M-80s into the water-filled culverts and stagger around for five minutes shouting because our ears sounded like our brains were running a test of the Emergency Broadcast System.

But I do know I grew up with rockets as thick as soup cans and Black Cats by the billion, because my father ran a fireworks stand. At his gas station.

So whenever anyone says that fireworks are inherently dangerous, I think of all that gunpowder packed in tight rolls a few dozen yards away from buried tanks of gasoline, and I scan my memories for a moment where Dad observed the distant fireball, smoking his pipe with a terrible faraway expression, murmuring, Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds. No, that was Oppenheimer at the Manhattan Project test. So it worked out, then.

Just because they're not dangerous until misused doesn't mean they're not, well, dangerous. But you know that, and if you don't, there's nothing a newspaper can do to help. You are on your own. Just remember: sparklers: legal and lame. Up in the air and big bright bang: verboten. But awesome! But verboten. So don't break the law. You want to be a rebel, go to a public display, and say, "Ahhh" when they shoot off, and "Ooooh" when they explode. It's supposed to be the other way around. People will give you looks: Stick to the script, pal. You're ruining it for everyone.

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