Caution: True Bobert story to follow...

                Bobert's Fireworks Story

Well, where I buy the "good stuff" at Phanton Fireworks in Pennsylvania they give me a big ol' assortment that usually has about a dozen or so 19 shoters but the box also has lots of lady-fingers and bottle rockets which ain't as sexy so they just get thrown into "The Box"...

"The Box" wasn't 'sposed to be a firework box at all... It was a Castrol oil box which is purdy sturdy and about 20X14X12 inches in demensions...

So it was like about 10 years ago and it was New Year's Eve... My son Will-to-me-Ben-to-you (don't ask) and I had allready shot up all the good stuff and all that was left was "The Box" filled almost to tyhe top with thousands of ladyfingers and hundreds of bottle rockets and we were still in mood for a little more noise so we were firing bottle rockets from our hands at various targets in back yard that we could make out it the dark... The two of us were standing on the deck behind the house and "The Box" was on on a metal porch chair so we didn't have to bend down to grab yet another bundle of bottle rockets...

Yeah, lookin' back I will be the first to admit that this did not fall in the "Safe Use" category but, what the heck... NO guts, no glory...

So here we were just havin' a good ol' New Year's when a sprk from one of the bottle rockets found "The Box" and we're both lookin' down at what is surely about to happen and the same thought came to each of us about the same split second and that was getting the heck thru the slidin' as fast as possible, get the sumabich closed and be prepared to do battle with any fires after the smoke cleared...

Problem is that we didn't have time to figure who would go thru the door first... Now a good dad would certainly see to it that the son would go first but I never made any claims to be a good dad... GHeck, that thought never made it into my thinkin'...

So here we both hit the slider at the very same time... I reckon we were lucky to not break the sumabich down in our fight to get thru it...

Meanwhile, "The Box" was blowin' the heck up and bottle rockets were going every which way and thousands of lady fingers were poppin' all over thew deck while we fought our way (and each other) thru the sliding door and safely got it shut...

Well, "The Box" musta partied fir a good 3 or 4 minutes and it seems that the entire deck was inflamed with bricks of firecrakers...

When the smoke cleared we could see that we hadn't caught the woods or the house on fire but had made one heck of a mess on the deck but that was about it...

So I looked at Will-to-me-Ben-to-you (don't ask) and he looked back at me and for the second time in 5 minutes the exact same thoughts crossed both our feeble minds as we let out a similtanious...

... "That was cool"....

Yeah, I know that most dads think back on stuff like good report cars or the touchdown the kid scored to win the championship game but I reckon I ain't in the most dad's column as this is one of my finest memories of being with my son...

Sniff...

Think I'll go out and shoot off some fireworks...

Bobert