Burning down the house
A
nother Independence Day has come and gone, but this one felt different… sounded different. In Iowa, fireworks are legal to buy and detonate within the state for the first time in decades. I haven’t driven into Missouri for about three months, but I assume that, in the meantime, the warehouses of explosives that have cozied up to the state border for years have all gone belly-up, or are now selling methamphetamine instead... selling it out in the open, that is. Incidentally, I’ve always wondered this: if Missourians want to buy fireworks, do they also have to drive to the border?
In our Des Moines condo, during summer, the high velocity cooling system tends to drown out all indications of an outside world, but the sound of these first-year, grade-A firecrackers are successfully able to penetrate the walls. Beyond the exterior of our building on Tuesday, it was Aleppo. I was afraid to peer out but what I imagined could be seen was a sort of Mad Max post-apocalyptic, dystopian netherworld-- only wide scale destruction and some Humvees driving downtown dwellers like my wife and me to safe passage. The city was finished shooting off their works next to the river at 10 o’clock, and that’s when the ordinance that permits private use says those explosions are supposed to end as well, but for another good hour after, it continued to be, truly, just one pop after another, as if the municipal display had never ended. Most were probably being set off near the public housing complex up the street, but the way the noise ricochets off the bricks and concrete and pavement in the city, it could have been coming from blocks away.
As I drove to work early Wednesday, the toasted remains of the Moon Travelers, Tasmanian Devils, and Red Rhinos laid upon the streets. As I failed to steer adequately around one or two of the shards with the Civic, I hoped that none would go off belatedly, like so many IEDs on the byways of Iraq. There was still so much smoke in the air that I could barely see the debris to avoid it. As I type this, it is now July 6th, and after 10 o'clock in the evening, and I still hear crackling outside the house.
Insurance investigators now speculate that a fire gutting a Des Moines home earlier in the week may have been caused by fireworks. Stay tuned. Tickets were issued in Cedar Rapids to people who threw fireworks from cars, and in Marion, IA, a person was cited for setting a trash dumpster on fire with his party sticks. In Waterloo, where they're always trying to top the rest of us, a woman was shot in the shoulder by a stray bullet that came at her in the middle of the civic fireworks barrage. Any initial confusion on her part would have seemed logical to me. A man in Sioux City lost a hand on the Fourth when one of his timed explosions mistimed, and a six-week-old child in Swisher, IA took on serious burns, fractures, and a broken femur, when, we can only presume, the baby failed to shoot out the detonator on a Comet Storm with her .22. A GoFundMe campaign has been started to aid the family, and I can’t imagine a more American story than this one. Privatize the fireworks displays after you’ve already privatized the health care needed to pay for the multiple surgeries required to save a baby from a bottle rocket that was shot sideways into her internal organs, rather than up and into the night sky.
It’s all worth it, of course. Sure, young children are terrified of the appearance and sound of fireworks. (As they should be. Children possess many irrational fears, but this isn’t one of them, as the earlier story demonstrates.) Dogs and cats are visibly anxious. Many military vets suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder say they don't appreciate the festive explosions that purposely mimic a firefight, but the Fourth of July isn't really about them, is it? I say you're the one that’s “butt hurt” if I can’t trivialize their anguish by play-acting “the rocket’s red glare” next to my septic tank.
The industry of fireworks retail is sure to bring tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars to the state of Iowa. No more staring up at Missouri on all of the economic charts. As point-of-purchase displays go-- at the big box stores, firecrackers are now making the sports cards and sticker books shelf look like a clearance rack. The sudden influx of high-denomination greenbacks flowing into state coffers is going to enable lawmakers at the Capitol to withdraw their highly-contentious tax on libertarians. Farmers will start rotating the corn and soybeans in their fields with what’s sure to be a bumper crop of Triple Whistlers (if it doesn't rain). And we can finally build that wall between us and Missouri. We’ll make those “Show-Me” pricks pay for it, too.
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