All Fired Up

I think if you ask most Americans, Christmas would be their favorite holiday, with Thanksgiving coming in second by a drumstick.

This has always stumped me.

Just when Mother Nature (in the Northern Hemisphere) is nagging us to slow down, eat less and sleep more, we contrary critters bust our guts with over laden tables, break our budgets with over-the-top gift lists and try and beat the clock to get it all done before the designated day.

What fools we Americans be, especially when the greatest national holiday is a scant two days away.

That’s right my fellow revolutionaries, the Fourth of July is almost upon us and more red, white and buzzed I could not be!

Who needs to labor over turkey with all the trimmings when a package of hot dogs, a bag of chips and a cooler of cold ones is all it takes to get the party started? Who needs twinkle lights when fireflies are working their natural magic? Who needs to gather around a roaring fireplace when you can sit under a star-filled sky and still break a sweat?

Not me, that’s who!

And I haven’t even mentioned the Fourth’s best treat of all – fireworks! Lucky for me that Long Island just happens to be the home base of the world’s pre-eminent “First Family of Fireworks,” the Gruccis, so I’ve been witness to some spectacular pyrotechnic displays over the years, including the Bicentennial blowout of ’76, and an international exhibition at the old Shea Stadium, where I spied patriarch Felix Grucci handling some explosive device with a smoldering cigarette dangling from his lips.

But the show that blew my Keds off was held on the playing field of our local public high school when I couldn’t have been more than four or five years old. Keep in mind that back in the day, before we became such collective fraidy cats and allowed “The State” to nanny us to death, fireworks were easily accessible to all and sundry. It wasn’t unusual for our parents to give us a dime so we could buy “punks” at the local candy store, making the lighting of firecrackers more efficient. In fact, if you read the following day’s paper and didn’t see a few stories about kids blowing off a finger or two or taking out an eye, you knew it was a pretty shabby Fourth.

So it was also run-of-the-mill that you’d have a local fireworks show where the audience was seated mere yards away from where the explosive action was due to take place. What I wasn’t prepared for was a large grid, set up mid-field, that had all manner of contraptions lashed to its frame. As I anxiously waited for the sun to set, one of my brothers patiently explained that, before the skyward portion of the performance, there was a ground display. Not knowing what the hell he was talking about, I figured it was just one more thing, like that damned lingering sun, holding up the sensational skyrockets.

Ah, the ignorance of youth. Not only was the ground show far superior to the aerial display (we could actually feel the heat of the burning chemicals), it was the first and, unfortunately, last time I saw that most magnificent of razzle-dazzlers, the Catherine Wheel.

Named after “the breaking wheel,” an instrument of torture that, legend has it, carried off the soul of the martyred Saint Catherine, this firework is constructed either as a cross with a fifth wheel in the middle or a star. I don’t recall which version was ignited that long ago night, but it was truly an awesome sight.

Since New York is one of four states that ban all consumer fireworks completely (bastards) and the annual Grucci show at Jones Beach has been cancelled due to the shitty economy (goddamn Great Recession), looks like fireworks in my neck of the woods will be light on the ground and the sky this year.

Two hundred and thirty-five years ago, the colonists started a revolution because they didn’t want to pay their taxes. This Fourth, I say we man the barricades and demand our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of a few lost limbs.