Best fireworks ever?

[CarolAnn]

Do you remember the best fireworks you've ever experienced on the fourth of July?

Were they your own in the yard, or a big professional display?

Mine would probably be driving over the St. Louis Bridge during the city's display - and I got to drive right THROUGH it! Breathtaking . ..and a little dangerous because I wasn't watching the road much!

OOOOOOOHHHHHhhhhhhh! Good one!

The neighbor kids are blasting off bottle rockets and firecrackers right now & I wonder who's going to loose an eye or finger this year! ;D

[Naughty_Pines]

I live in a big pine forrest with lots of dead brush due to the drought and a lot of dead trees. I hope we never see any fireworks around here. If there are any fireworks here there are many homes to be lost.

The best fireworks I have ever seen were the fireflys in Minnesota during the summer months. Natural and safe and sane.

[12vman]

Parkersburg, WVa.. The display was in step with music over a local radio station. The most fantastic thing I ever witnessed! It was perfect!

[bookwormom]

We were invited to a family cookout and after it got dark all the little ones got sparklers (there were a lot of them) and marched around the yard.

[DaNgEr_KiTtY]

i have seen a lot of fireworks. been too the mall at dc a few times. the town i live in now has a great show every year too. some of my family members throw a huge independence day party every year & i think their back yard display is some of the best i have seen. what i remember most though is living in hawaii back in the early '70s & the giant strings of firecrackers people would hang outside of their house & light off. this is back when you could still get m-80's. at the end of the string of firecrackers hanging from a flagpole there was often a box filled with m-80's. it was awesome to be near it.

i lit my last m-80 off last year.....well i have saved 2 as historical souvenirs. ah the good ole days of pre-save you from yourself.

[Deberosa]

I have pictures of the most memorable fireworks I've experienced on my living room wall.

It was 1983- I was living in my F250 pickup truck driving across country from Oregon to PA. I stopped at my parents in PA and we went to the local volunteer companies fireworks display put on by a friend of my dad. My dad was fire chief years before he had his stroke.

The fireworks were in front of a full moon so I got the moon and the fireworks in the pictures which is why I had them framed for my wall.

[torenghout]

I must be getting old they didn't do much for me this year, all I could think of was the waste of money.

[Deberosa]

I must be getting old they didn't do much for me this year, all I could think of was the waste of money.

We watched the one's over Lake Union on TV. They have all kinds of new fireworks. Some are exploding box shapes, circles within circles, hearts, and all kinds of patterns. Or maybe I just haven't been keeping track lately. ;-)

[wax]

CarolAnn- Do you remember the best fireworks you've ever experienced on the fourth of July?

Wax- Great question, in fact I was just thinking about that earlier today.

My wife and I enjoyed this years display put on by Mystic Lakes. They actually had two displays; one that we watched outside and one that we viewed from our ninth floor window in our hotel room.
They were so close it seemed as if we could reach out and touch them, but with the glass (even though it visibly vibrated) gave us an impression of comfort and safety.
After the local display stopped we left the lights off and watched displays along the entire horizen from all of the towns to the south of the Twin Cities.

It was magical... but for a very specific reason.
Had she not been there with me, alone, it would not have meant as much.

torenghout- all I could think of was the waste of money.

Wax- That is rather sad :-[

Is there something specific you would rather see money "wasted" on?
There must be an interesting story behind such a remark.

In my youth my father made the fireworks we used.
He has access to commercial fireworks but he often altered them.
The absolute "best" time I ever had was manning a barge on Lake Emily as I assisted him in lighting the mortor fuses.
He was a bit drunk at the time and set the fuses to go off dangerously close to the water.
I had no fear and thus didn't even consider how close I was to dying!

You could feel the concussion and my face and arms had pinhole burns for over a week from the hot flack hitting me.
It was... thrilling in a way that only the stupidity of youth can bring!

[CarolAnn]

:)
I think there's something in the guy gene that makes them like things that go BOOM.

I heard a guy reminiscing about what a good time he and a buddy had with a bottle rocket duel when they were 14. (That explained the scar on the side of his neck!)

[annabella1]

Well one year we were putting on a show in Eureka Springs AK. The set was the inside of a cabin with two big picture windows that had a scrim of mountain views painted on them.
My husband was trying his luck at a new business venture and had asked one of the uppity ups to come and give a lecture to all his new employees it was on the First of July so we decided to give him a special treat. We used fiber optics and a color wheel to make the effect of fireworks going off in the windows of the log cabin. When my husband introduced the speaker we started the fireworks effect along with the sound effects of the booms and whistles. The speaker was astounded when he saw the fireworks he took the microphone and sat on the edge of the stage and he had tears in his eyes and said he had had all kinds of introductions before but no one had ever given him fireworks. Then he talked about what America meant to him and we all talked about what America meant to us.
Another time my son had just gotten a flash pot for the puppet show. He didn't know how much flash powder to use, it was the Fourth of July and the sun had just set, he decided to try it out and see how much to use. First he filled the flash pot 1/2 full of flash powder (it should have been about 1 teaspoon full instead of about 1/4 cup) hooked it up to the battery and set it off. It was so bright it looked like daylight outside, all the streetlights on the street went out (they were light sensitive) three of our neighbors came running over to ask "what was that?" My son just said, I'm glad I didn't fill it all the way.