Folks, If ya want some real fireworks instead of sparklers for the 4th, I found a place in PA where they got them.

It is on rt 15 toward Gettysburg, just north of the PA line.

You have to have an out of state license and you have to fill out a big form and register.

Then you get a Pyro Card and let in to pick your stuff. I saw those old Ash Cans and stuff I haven't seen for years plus giant arial displays.

All I wanted was some firecrackers like I had when I was a kid. You can't find those Dixie Boys any more though. I never did figger out what Loi Sze Pau Chuk meant.

Anyway back in the early fifty's, on the Fourth of July, the whole neighborhood, neighborhood being a dozen houses in a 2 mile radius back on the Alexandria VA border, would converge on the Barranowski's house just at dark.

Old man Barranowski was a Polish Immigrant that worked in the steam plant in SE DC where they burned coal to make steam heat for several Government buildings.

The Family lived in a ramshackle Civil War vintage farm house on a ridge where a battle was fought. They had a cow, chickens and a few very nasty dogs. The house was used as a field hospital for the battle and had several musket Ball holes in the siding.

The whole Barranowski family was a hoot and the happiest people around although they had an outhouse and had to carry water in from the spring.

They were poor but so generous, the old man would order a big ass crate of fireworks every year. That thing was at least 8 feet long 4 feet high and 3 feet wide made out of plywood.

Long about dark he would pry the top off with a Davy Crockett style hatchet and start handing out the goodies to everybody.

There was roman candles 3 feet long. There was sky rockets 4 inches in diameter. Us kids were handed hand fulls of firecrackers for our personal pleasure.

The stuff would be going off, explosions echoing and lit firecrackers were flying around bouncing off of people for hours. One extra amusing thing was something you light and throw on the ground in a crowd. It would scream and run around people's feet at random, then explode.

Damn it was glorious. Every year around the fourth, I get to hankerin' for some plain old firecrackers like I had as a kid.