JULY 4, 2021 – Every country needs one—an “Independence Day,” “Victory over Evil Day,” or “Big Thing to Commemorate Day,” when every citizen, clinically crazy or not, can light off every conceivable kind of sound-and-light device, from a Black Cat firecracker to a whole pyrotechnical display audible and visible miles away. Who cares about speeches, history, and flag-waving parades? We want mindless flash bangs to remind us of . . . nothing except that some big event way back when gives us license today to make lots of noise.
In the Minnesota of my childhood, fireworks—even Black Cat firecrackers—in the hands of private citizens were prudently illegal. My dad told the cautionary tale of his Minnesota childhood, when firecrackers were legal. On a hot Fourth of July, he and some friends had acquired a bunch of “crackers.” On a busy street corner, my dad lit one and tossed it into the lane of traffic. Just then, a car pulled up to the stop sign. The trajectory of the sputtering mini-grenade ended in the lap of a baby held by its passenger-mother seated next to a wide-open window. The quick-witted dad picked the firecracker off the baby and flung back out the window opening. This near encounter with disaster made a lasting impression on Dad.
He made an exception, however, decades later during our family road trip through the Old South. Somewhere in Georgia, as I remember, we stopped at some souvenir shop that sold—among a proudly purveyed collection of Georgia pecans, Confederate flags and other memorabilia of the Lost Cause—large quantities of firecrackers. What was verboten in rules-ridden Minnesota was in-your-face-legal in a States Rights state. Dad bought a whole set of “Red-White-and-Blues,” which lasted for years.
Every Fourth of July, Dad would set off four or five noisemakers from his contraband collection. He’d warm up with a couple before he brought out the “amplifier”—an empty, metal, overturned coffee can. He’d place a firecracker on a stump in the backyard or up at the cabin, rest the rim of the coffee can on the middle of the firecracker, then light the fuse. He’d dash, and from an already safe distance, I’d cover my ears. BAM! To my amusement Dad laughed as the coffee can went into suborbital flight and clattered back onto the ground.
Mother was never present for such commotion. It rattled her nerves. I’m not sure what my sisters thought about Dad’s out-of-character perpetration of . . . loud noise. For all I know, because I was always on-hand for Dad’s Fourth of July celebration, my sisters probably blamed me for this brief, unseemly, perennial influence on the man they otherwise admired throughout the rest of the year.
In my own mind, Dad’s merriment over a “Red-White-and-Blue” blasting an empty Folger’s can into the air revealed his true American colors, despite his Scandinavian reserve. He was, after all, a long-time subscriber to the American Heritage magazine, every issue of which he read cover-to-cover in the quietude of his den.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
