Think I’m in sixth or seventh grade, with nothing much to do on the 4th of July, but I know someone’s got fireworks/crackers somewhere (works: legal, crackers: not). That somewhere happens to be at a relative’s house, Dennis, I’m pretty sure his name was, where the promise of lots of food and explosions was better than nothing, a notch above watching the tube till sunset, I guess.

Dennis had these three-foot high metal pipes, welded at one end to a plate, for stability, you know, lined across the driveway like anti-aircraft cannons. The food is good; I hold on to a sparkler too long and get finger-singed, then Dennis holds out a handful of these red sticks with firecrackers attached to one end. Oh, that’s a bottle-rocket, got it.

Just light it and drop it in the pipe.

At the time, I was used to those firework stands, the ‘city sanctioned’ ones that sell big family packs in shrink-wrap, supposed to be safe, even for kids, and more importantly, they’re legal, not a fire hazard (though it never fails that at least five brush-fire’s’ll break out up the street). Dennis, though, he’s grabbing those rockets from the trunk of his car.

I watch a toddler, then a kid still way younger than me flick a lighter like a pack-a-day smoker and drop it in the pipe. Fire in the hole!

Still pinching a sparkler, feeling the scream of that rocket sear my eardrums as it rises, then pops, a neon flower in full bloom, I think to myself: this is some wild shit (probably thought doo-doo, then), and I’m pretty sure Dennis–maybe the toddlers, too–is sloshed. The twin refrigerators outside have taps, you know, the ones for ice and water, connected to kegs of Burgie chilling inside (not sure I’ve ever seen Burgie outside the IE; think Blue Ribbon but easier on the wallet).

“Here,” he says, hands me a lighter and a rocket, he’s scruffy and sunburned, glossy-eyed, “I crushed it for you.”

‘Crushed it,’ I later found out, means putting the firecracker end on the curb and smashing it with a rock a few times, maybe to pack the powder more, who knows, but it does give a louder bang.

I lit that sucker, dropped it in, and felt like Rambo the rest of the night. Now Dennis, as the night went on, he started pinching those bottle-rockets by the red tip end like I’d been doing with that sparkler, lighting them, aiming them, two-handed, even, and firing them around the yard. That’s when I called it quits.

I won’t say what happened to Dennis, it’s not my place. What I will say is, forty-five Independence Days have passed before my eyes, and this one, that first bottle-rocket day, I remember best.

Go figure.

Spare Parts, my first story collection, is doing fairly well. More importantly, the support I’ve received has been overwhelming. It’s funny how you think you’re so alone in this thing…until you’re not.

Gonna take a mad run at the third, and, hopefully, final draft of this novel I can’t wait to put out into the world. Be safe, stay inside if you can help it, and if you imbibe, please, please, please, don’t drive.