Have a fun and safe celebration

A Fourth without fireworks? That’s hard to imagine.

Fortunately, though the big celebration at the Jay County Fairgrounds has been canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic, there will still be substantial displays in Dunkirk and Redkey.

My experience with fireworks is a little mixed at best.

Under the laws in place during my childhood, fireworks were hard to come by.

And they were puny.

For about a quarter, you could buy little black cylinders that, when set afire, smoked and sent out a snake-like ash. Not exactly a big deal.

Firecrackers were hard to come by. You had to know the right person, someone who had bought a cache of the stuff out of state and brought it back to Indiana.

If you had a neighborhood buddy with the right connections — as I had — you could get access to cherry bombs, ladyfingers and even an occasional M-80.

I never seemed to have money to burn, so mostly I just watched and listened as backyard explosives went off. There was a favorite spot not far from town where you could sit in the shade under a bridge over a creek and toss those miniature explosives into the water, terrorizing the crawdads. The echo was excellent, making the explosion even better.

The real stuff — fireworks that shot into the sky — were much harder to come by.

But kids still found a way to get their hands on them.

I still remember coming home from school one day to encounter an acrid smell on our enclosed back porch. It seems that one of my older brother’s friends had thought it might be fun to set off a Roman candle there.

Not a good idea.

For years I had a windbreaker with a small burned hole in it as a memento of that bit of foolishness.

Somewhere along the line, of course, things changed.

Indiana became one of those states selling “out-of-state” fireworks. Temporary merchants began to pop up in vacant lots selling a variety of products that I could not have dreamed of in my childhood.

So, of course, I was a sucker for the stuff.

When our daughters were small, it seemed only natural that dad would spend some cash on skyrockets and witch whistles and coo-coo-coo-coos, then light them with a match at dusk on a summer’s night to annoy the neighbors and terrorize the birds.

And then, as quickly as the impulse had manifested itself, the urge passed.

I haven’t bought a witch whistle in a couple of decades.

Big displays have never held much appeal to me. My wife and daughters love them. We’ve gotten plenty of mosquito bites over the years.

But after a while, I stayed home. My excuse was that I needed to comfort our dog Shadow. The truth is I could only say, “Oooh” and “Ahhh,” so many times before I started looking for the exit and worrying about traffic on the way home.

That, in and of itself, is indisputable proof that I’m old and getting older.

But that’s just me.

So enjoy the shows this weekend. Celebrate America. Be cautious around fireworks, and be safe when it comes to COVID-19.

And fire up a witch whistle for me.