The Fourth of July

I love the Fourth. There’s Presidents Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, heck even trees have a day to themselves!! I think it’s only right that pyromaniacs get a national holiday. :D For the record, I say that purely in jest.

Gilroy is the only city in Santa Clara County that still permits the selling of fireworks. Watsonville just banned them after the recent arson and lightning fires. Hollister still sells them. The hysteria reared its ugly head in Gilroy for the briefest of moments. Alas, the torch-wielding villagers were held at bay by common sense and a 5-1 vote of the city council. We cannot allow knee-jerk reactions to dictate laws and erode our civil liberties even more. There will ALWAYS be those Darwin-challenged idiots who intentionally or unintentionally start fires with "safe and sane" fireworks. But you can't let yourself be scared into spoiling it for the rest of us!! Most of us KNOW not to light off bottle rockets into a neighborhood of wood-shingled homes or to light a roman candle in a field of dry grass. If so, you'd have to outlaw cars because of all the accidents that kill people every year.

I love fireworks. The louder, the brighter, the better. Before I got my ass fired, I had a list of favorites. But, as space was a premium on my jump drive and my boss didn’t give me ALL DAY to download my personal stuff from my laptop, the file was one which I chose to delete rather than save. The two fireworks I do remember, mostly because we get them every year, are: Purple Rain and Lightning Flash. Purple Rain is a small fountain that reaaaaaaally cool. Lightning Flash is a white phosphorus strobe disc about the size of a quarter.

And you can't forget about the appropriate soundtrack. Kate Smith, Ray Charles, John Mellencamp, Toby Keith, Chris de Burgh (the Revolution trilogy from The Getaway). It's just not the same without the music blaring while you light the sky.

God bless America!!