Fireworks Display

Every since I was little I have enjoyed watching fireworks.  I have set them off myself; in fact my most clear recollection of fireworks shooting happened when I was seven or eight.  I was at my grandfather’s house on July 4^th and we were waiting for the sky to darken enough to shoot the fireworks.  At about 6:30 that evening my grandpa and I carried a piece of plywood over to the first fork in the driveway.  We set this up so that the fireworks would have a level platform to fire from.  When 7:00 rolled around the family gathered in the backyard in plain view of the piece of plywood.  The kids (me and my sister) would set off the kiddy fireworks first, then the grown ups would fire the bigger ones.  My dad and I set up one of those flying fireworks in the shape of a bumblebee.  Dad straightened the fuse and I lit it.  By the time the firework went off I had backed up about ten feet, my dad was back in the lawn.  The bumblebee came off the ground and started towards me.  I sat there and looked at it for a second then decided to start moving away from the path of the bumblebee.  I moved left, so did the firework.  If I moved to the right, so did the firework.  The dang thing was picking up speed now so I started to run away from it, and it was chasing me.  That doggone bumblebee chased me down the road and through the yard.  It was almost as if the bumblebee firework was mad that I lit it and it wanted revenge or something.

I have seen some mediocre firework shows and I have seen some good ones in my 30 years.  A mediocre show I attended when I was about 11 or so.  It was an annual show put on by the community I lived in.  They didn’t spend very much money on it and you could really tell.  They started the show at nine thirty at night.  At this time of day in July its dark but there is still some light in the sky.  They shot off the usual display of the big fireworks that explode once and are finished.  After roughly thirty shots fired, the display is over and you leave feeling cheated.  Even though you didn’t pay anything to see the show you still felt like you missed something.

The best show I had ever seen was when I was 23, and after I had joined the Army.  I never would have imagined that the U.S Army would put on a good show.  They most certainly do folks, and every show I go to since that day gets compared to the Fort Hood Fireworks Display.  Since this show is put on by the U.S. Army, they do a reenactment of the history of the United States and the founding of our country.  The show starts at six P.M. in the stadium on post.  The revolutionary war is first and soldiers (active duty) come out in period correct uniforms.  They reenact some of the battles all the while firing their rifles and cannons.  As the history of the States progressed, so does the show.  Civil war era soldiers come out and reenact Gettysburg and other famous battles.  The soldiers involved also fire cannons and their rifles.  Then they leave the field and all is quiet for a moment, it is now seven o’clock.  Pretty soon you hear the distinct sound of helicopters approaching.  You are thinking, “What is going on, what are they doing with helicopters?”  You soon find out as four Blackhawk helicopters fly into the stadium at a low altitude.  The side doors are open and the door gunners are shooting their .50 cal into the crowd.  Of course it is loaded with blanks but it is so cool.  The “birds” touch down and eight soldiers each jump out of the choppers with guns ablazin’.  The instant the last man is out of the birds they’re off again and gone in thirty seconds.  Once the Vietnam soldiers leave, in comes the Desert Storm soldiers, they do some more shooting and show off the capabilities of a piece of equipment we own. 

At nine o’clock the show is over, well half time more like it.  Instructions are given to get a soda or hotdog, or both and find a piece of real estate because the show will continue in an hour.  So I, my wife, and our friends all take care of business then find a spot in the half field near the stadium.  I grab a blanket and spread it out, and then my wife and I lay down on it and wait the remaining 15 minutes for the show to resume.  As I have stated before the fireworks show was phenomenal, but it didn’t start off that way.  At first they fired the standard single explosion, one round at a time fireworks.  At about the middle of the show they started popping off fireworks that exploded twice which created a cool picture in the sky.  Four about an hour they shot off fireworks.

The grand finale of this show is one that I will never forget.  When the finale began, it began with four triple exploding fireworks going off at the same time and they kept on top of that for a few minutes then fired a slew of quick exploding fireworks with three big ones going off every two seconds.  That’s not the cool part though, the quick exploding fireworks sounds just like gunfire coupled with the large explosions of the big ones added depth.  What really finished this off for me was when they continuously fired artillery (real artillery). You know the feeling you get when something moves you?  I got that at this display.  It was absolutely the best fireworks display I have ever seen, and I always compare to it.