6 Jul
2001
6 Jul
'01
3:29 a.m.
At 02:59 PM 7/4/01 -0400, you wrote:
On Wed, 4 Jul 2001, Russ Blakeman wrote:
No, they need to enroll him in a course in Iran, Iraq or any of the
numerious other counties that have zero personal freedom.
Imagine having a neighbor kid hear "Star
Spangled Banner" and ask "what
song
is that?" - and he went to a PRIVATE school.
Wow! It sounds as though that boy's parents need to get him enrolled
in a tour of Ft. McHenry! ...if they know what that is, of course. It seems so strange for it to be so quiet on the 4th
these days. I wonder
if other parts of the US are as quiet as it is here in this suburb of
Maryland.
Back when I was a kid, kids used to be running around
shooting off cap
guns (I guess they're illegal now, thanks to the blasted tyranical
politically correct politicians) and lighting firecrackersd and M80s,
then, have we'd a cook-out followed by some marshmallow roasting
<sarcasm on> Soon to be banned since it's bad for the Ozone.
and a
watermellon seed-spitting contest/battle,
Banned due to the risk of personal injury!
which was followed later on
in the evening with our own fireworks... fountains, exploding tanks,
bottle-rockets, whistling rockets, and other small pyrotechnic
displays such as pin-wheels, etc. :-)
Bad, Bad, Bad! <sarcasm off>
Of course, even back then it was marginally illegal
here in Maryland;
we had to either have fireworks brought back from someplace like South
Carolina or else drive out west to where Maryland, Virgiana and West
Virginia meet and look for small stores in Virginia just over the
border that were selling the fireworks.
You'd like it here in Florida. Fireworks have made a real come
back. I was outside on the 3rd and 4th and fireworks were popping off in
every direction all day and all night long. It's still technically illegal
to shoot them but it's seldom enforced now. Around this time of year and
on January 1, every major intersection has a large stand selling fireworks.
Most of them are the wimpy class C stuff but they make up for it in shear
volume. There are even a number of stores that sell nothing but fireworks
that are now open year round. I stopped at one at I-95 and SR 520 and
stocked up the week before.
In addition, there were at least 6 very large (and free) fireworks
shoots in the area and a couple more at the expensive parks like Disney and
Universal.
Did you ever think about what the real reason for the
personal
fireworks bans might be? Most likely it's not about safety---after
all sparklers, which are legal, are rather dangerous; the real reason
for the bans being as follows: anything that goes boom might give
people bad ideas as to what they can do, and thus make them think more
vividly about the revolution, tyrannical, tax-hungry and corrupt
politicians, and certain words of Thomas Jefferson about an uprising
every so often to keep this a free nation. Such thoughts ought not be
thunk by good little citizens, what?
Agreed!
Joe (member of the Florida Pyrotechnics Arts Guild)