The bombs bursting in air...Who doesn't love fireworks? Americans will seize on any occasion to celebrate it by setting off explosives, the bigger and more spectacular the better. With the new year almost upon us, out fellow patriots will be preparing their arsenals for the midnight hour when they will light the sky with pyrotechnic devices (thank you China) and shattering the night's silence with explosions designed to scare away the evil spirits of the old disgraced year and welcome in the fresh new promise of pleasures galore.
My old friend William O. Bassett lived for whatever occasion allowed him to blow up the night with fire and thunder. If it had a fuse, he had a match. The Bassets and the Landers were driving from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine one time (that's another story) and passing through South Dakota Bassett spotted what to him was a little slice of Heaven: a giant year-around fireworks warehouse filled with stuff you could use for dam removal. He filled his cart with some serious ordnance and in Minneapolis I had a friend who had access to a shipping dock where he worked. We sent Bassett's war chest home by UPS (Forgive us our trespasses).
So after our trip the Bassetts are holding a New Year's party, the climax of which will be a midnight presentation of South Dakota's finest. The street in front of the Bassett's home is ablaze with strings of exploding firecrackers, sky bombs with spreading arcs of light. Then a super rocket shoots straight up into the night sky, seems to circle around and then sails directly down to land on a neighbor's roof. YIKES ! We race down and knock on the owner's door. Not home. Back to Bassett's for a ladder. Back to the target house. Rocket's dead. No damage (maybe a little black smudge but who would notice?)
Happy New Year ! Where are the sparklers?
