No Rockets, No Red Glare

A bit of a discourse from my usual subject matter, but I felt I had to address this.

    This past 4th of July, I had dinner with my dad - a thankfully much less awkward encounter than I thought it would be, with lots of laughter and good feelings all around. After we had dinner, he had to rush home to pack and rest up (being that he had to get up and get on the road around 4 am the next day), leaving Warden and I to our own devices for the evening. There weren’t actually any fireworks shows within a convenient driving distance (go figure) but we decided that some sparklers would be good enough for two people, since all we were going to do was cook hot dogs and marshmallows over a fire.
    We hit Meijer’s first - “no,” we were told, they “don’t sell sparklers. Sorry.”
     I insisted we go to Krogers instead: I distinctly remembered my friends’ parents purchasing fireworks (whoo black cat!) there when I was in high school. Again, no - and this time, we were told, it was illegal for them to sell sparklers. A quick run to a Rite Aid down the street (since we both figured maybe the drugstore would have some) was fruitless.

    In the next neighborhood over, we heard the occasional pop and whistle of festive explosions going off: but in our own yard, we sat quietly beside the fire, considering the holiday and where it is today.

Thinking of what we’d been told at Krogers, I did some googling.