The year was 1997. In keeping with the routine that I mentioned in the previous post, I was standing across the street from Lincoln Park waiting for the fireworks show to begin a few miles away down on The Mall. The usual crew was inside the park lighting the "good" fireworks from South Carolina and I decided that this year I'd go inside the park to watch instead of settling for the obstructed view across the street.
There's a huge statue of Mary McLeod Bethune in Lincoln Park. I can show you better than I can tell you.
People usually climb up on that to watch the fireworks. I had my five year old sister with me and both of us got up there. We were sitting there watching these two guys have an escalating fireworks battle. It started small with bottle rockets, then they brought out the little spinners that light on the ground, lift into the air and explode. This went on for about 20 minutes before one of them decided to bring out the big guns.
He had this big cylinder that he placed on the ground with a long fuse. He lit it, ran away and one-by-one it shot off about fifty little rockets that each exploded once they got about twenty feet in the air. The other guy, not to be outdone, pulled out something similar except his was a giant box. He lit it, ran away and it did the same thing except when they exploded they set the sky on fire. They were huge! I doubt very seriously that he bought those. They seemed like something you steal from a real fireworks show.
So anyway, everybody clapped and the guy did this fake bow. The other dude conceded that he lost. The "winner" went back over and pulled out another box just like the first one. He put it on the ground, lit the fuse and ran away. No sooner than he got a safe distance away, one of the rockets misfired causing the the thing to tip over...in our direction. There were about ten little kids under the age of seven on that platform with us. I wanted to help them, but you don't really wanna toss Black people's kids off a platform five feet in the air onto the concrete below.
"RUN!"
Some listened to me, some didn't. The ones who stood there wide eyed and bushy tailed became cover for me and my sister as we crawled behind them so that we could hide behind the bronze cast of Mary. It felt like one of those scenes from a Vietnam War movie where someone's crawling through the jungle trying to take cover behind a tree as other people are getting shot. Little kids were screaming "Ow" as they got hit by pieces of the firework.
We made it behind the statue, but that was of no consolation because some of the little rockets that came to rest on the platform were starting to explode. So now we went from dodging projectiles to dodging mini explosions. So, in keeping with the movie theme, we jumped off the platform a la Die Hard as the little things exploded and we ran out of the park. I got burned on my back, arms and legs. My little sister was unscathed. As far as I'm concerned, that was a big brother success.
Now I know why those things are illegal.
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And knowing is half the battle![/caption]
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