Where will we be on Fourth of July 2009?

The fireworks show began a little behind schedule. That was fine with me, as my wife Chris, daughter Annie and I had just cleaned up from our annual Fourth of July Party and Bocce Ball Tournament. Chris was tired after a long day, so Annie and I walked to the corner to watch the show from the lawn of the Word of Life evangelical church. We gazed to the southwest, over the Air Guard base with its burgeoning fleet C-130s and choppers.

We saw nothing special, as far as fireworks go. But I kept wondering about Fourth of July 2009. Pres. Obama will be in the midst of his sixth month in office. Will he be removing U.S. troops from Iraq? One to two brigades a month, as he promised in speeches all over the country? Or will he have caved to political expediency? It’s easy making promises in front of 15,000 cheering Wyomingites in March in Laramie. It’s hard to make good on those promises once you’re the chief of the world’s super power, with lobbyists and legislators and citizens yapping at your heels every moment of every day.

It was the fervor of the antiwar crowd that vaulted Barack Obama to the Democratic Party nomination. Yes, it was also the economy stupid – rising gas prices, unemployment and all the rest. And the venality of the Republicans. And blatant mismanagement of the government. But it was the "Out of Iraq" crowd that made the difference for Obama. We pushed and pulled and cajoled. We could not support Hillary Clinton because of her votes on the war. That was the big difference between Barack and Hillary. Barack against the war, Hillary for it. Yes, she made statements to the contrary, but her votes and quotes are on the record.

With bombs bursting in air, I thought about John McCain. Warrior, senator, Westerner, old guy. He’d seen rockets rising to meet him during combat runs over North Vietnam. One of them tore through his plane and made him a P.O.W. He used to be a straight talker but is no longer. He hasn’t yet met a Bush policy he doesn’t like – or endorse. A Pres. McCain will never get us out of Iraq.

My reverie ended with the fireworks. When I looked around, Annie was gone and I was sitting on the grass with groups of disbanding strangers. In four months, we all troop to the polls and vote. Wyoming will go McCain’s way, but I’m voting for Obama, even though my vote gets lost among the electoral votes. Obama will win. I’ll wait at least until the fireworks go off this time next year to begin the criticism.

FMI: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/wyhome

Helpful hints for Fourth of July safety

Laramie County’s new newsletter, The County Line, comes complete with tips on fireworks safety. You can discharge fireworks in the county, but "only on private property with the permission of the property owner." Violations carry a fine up to $750 and/or six months in jail.

Laramie County boasts almost as many fireworks dealers as stores that sell cowboy hats. We are the place where Colorado and Nebraska come to shop, at least when it comes to combustibles. This is the last weekend before the Fourth, so the lines will be out the door at the county’s fireworks purveyors. Never mind that the high prairie and the mountains are drying up from the spring rains and ready to burst into flames. Party on, Garth.

I live in the city of Cheyenne. We can legally light up sparklers and watch glow worms and their fiery eruptions from the sidewalk. But everything else is verboten.

My fireworks days are behind me. But I’m thankful for the safety tips. I’ve violated many of them over the years, yet I’m still here to tell tales, most of which are true.

Here are the safety tips, along with my stories.

1. Never let children handle, play with or light any fireworks product.

When I was a kid in the West during the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, fireworks were everywhere. In Denver, we bought Black Cat firecrackers at the stand along the main drag. We could barely reach the counter, but could buy all that we could afford. My best friend Rob got tons of firecrackers from his father, who was a Boy Scout leader. We were only 9 and 10, too young for Scouts. Just right for neighborhood firecracker wars. In our favorite tactic, we attached a Black Cat to one of Mom’s clothes pins, lit it with Dad’s Zippo, and then tossed it at Rob. A half-dozen of us would be in our yard battling Rob’s squad across the fence. The firecracker would explode and clothes-pin shrapnel zipped through the air, searching for exposed eyeballs. Nobody was hurt, but after the first day’s battle, our mothers surveyed the shredded clothes pins and whipped us soundly – or promised as much "when your father gets home." From then on, we had to get our clothes pins on the black market.

We moved our firecracker wars to the park by Bear Creek. It had bitchin’ suicide hills where we rode our bikes at breakneck speeds, daring the gods to wreck us and break our necks. The also were our sledding hills in winter. We could go to the park any time we wanted, with only a quick check-in with Mom: "gointotheparkbacklaterbye." We could stay all day, or until we got hungry. The firecracker wars were legendary. Bobby blew off his right thumbnail when a Black Cat exploded in his hand. My friend Tom had to wear an eye patch after a firecracker exploded in the air next to his face. We told his mom he wrecked his bike into a tree. As the summer progressed and we ran out of firecrackers, we turned to pellet guns and slingshots, which carried with them new and different dangers. But what’s childhood without a hint of danger?

2. Please DO NOT consume alcohol while lighting fireworks.

I mostly obeyed this rule until I became an adult. Sometime during the 1980s, we almost burned down our uncle’s Denver suburban fence. When I lived in Denver, we traveled up I-25 to buy unlimited fireworks across the border in Wyoming. Now I can buy all the fireworks I can afford, yet it’s illegal to fire them off.

Anyway, we had Chinese star shells, Roman candles, cascading fountains and supercharged bottle rockets. One of the mini-mortars keeled over and fired its payload into my Uncle Bill’s evergreen. The tree erupted in flames and we ran around in a drunken panic until someone decided to train the garden hose on the fire. Unfortunately, it wasn’t hook up to the spigot and the water spilled into the garden. I desperately tried to hook up the hose and realized – almost too late – that I need to turn off the water to make any progress. I finally got the hose connected and working. Meanwhile, a panicked party-goer called the fire department and my uncle panicked because, as it turned out, his town had outlawed fireworks the previous winter yet he chose to ignore the new regulation. Not wishing to get Uncle Bill in trouble, we cancelled the emergency call while our fire brigade, with much coaching from the multitudes, put out the tree before the flames jumped to Bill’s long wooden fence. We toasted our success, then lit off the rest of the fireworks without incident. Later, we took our beers to the roof to watch the more spectacular public displays of patriotic fervor.

3. Read all directions, cautions, labels, and warnings on each individual firework product.

As if....

4. Always light fireworks on a hard, flat surface.

In the semi-arid West, a lawn is a hard, flat surface.

I’m going to skip a few, as they don’t incite any stories.

7. Keep those watching at a safe distance from the shooting site.

This tends to be a problem when you’re having a backyard party. During one of our family Fourth parties in the 1950s, my toddler cousin Terry wandered away from his mom and into the shower of an erupting fountain. It’s not clear whether he thought this actually was a fountain and just wanted to cool off, or he was drawn to it because of all the pretty colors. I think it’s the latter because Terry always wanted to be a fireman. His favorite toy was a two-foot-long metal fire engine with a working hose. When his dad burned trash in the incinerator, Terry brought out his truck and extinguished the fire. In adult life, Terry sold insurance.

8. Use a flashlight, if needed, and always use punk or an extended butane lighter.

Those extended butane lighters are a fine way to light fireworks. But they didn’t exist way back when, during the time I was a fireworks bug. A Zippo was the best, followed by kitchen matches.

9. Light only one fireworks product at a time.

This is difficult when you seek an impressive finale. There were times when we had six of us lighting off mortars at the same time. How else can you get that "rockets bursting in air" effect?

I’ll skip a few more.

13. NEVER point or throw any fireworks products at another person or animal.

I would never throw a "fireworks product" at an animal. (See number one above for further details.)

And finally, here’s the concluding (and most important) tip:

16. Buy fireworks from reliable, licensed fireworks dealers.

The dealers pay their taxes – and so do their customers – who then take the "fireworks products" to Colorado. If they want to burn up their own state, it’s none of our business.