Pyromania

Cookouts aren't complete without fireworks

Am I the only one who immediately thinks about blowing stuff up when someone mentions a barbecue?

Impulse wasted all that space on all-beef patties, hot dogs and stainless-steel grills and we can't even get a sparkler? We've got our chef on the damn cover and there's nothing about to explode around him. I expected better from him. I guess I'm partly to blame, too -- I wrote most of it.

Where are the fireworks?

Where is Jeffrey, my second or third cousin, duct-taping quarter sticks to Blue Claw crabs? Where is Tony, my former brother-in-law, pulling the mother lode out of his Mustang like a warped, Fourth of July Santa Claus?

Where are the rogue bottle rockets screaming toward someone's head? Where are those giant mortars that made my cousin Samantha scream like a banshee? Finally, where are the Bellmawr police, walking into my parents' backyard as their flashlights cut through a hazy cloud of burnt gunpowder?

I know, fireworks are illegal, blah, blah, blah -- that's why we have the Carolinas. Somebody must have gone south of Delaware every June to pick up the load because Tony had a stash that rivaled Penn's Landing. We never asked him any questions, we just lit it up as fast as we could and ran inside when the cops showed up.

The shorter the fuse, the more exciting. Sure, you would burn your fingers from holding the lighter sideways, but we evolved to the point where we used those extra-long lighters. If things got too out of hand, you could always jump in the pool.

The fireworks have been lame for a few years. I've been reduced to the small fire pit I dug in my backyard, where shredded credit card bills, diaper boxes and a few of my neighbor's tree branches feed my pyromania. I sit there with my dog and a beer and think about the good old days, when Nark barbecues meant someone was going to get colored paper in their eye.

If anybody is heading south, pick me up a huge box of the good stuff -- I mean the stuff in the back room. Oh yeah, get me a T-Shirt from South of the Border and one of the gigantic cheeseburgers from Hardee's too.

Thanks. I'll pay you back and take the rap if you get busted.