No! to Backyard Fireworks - Page 4

footfootfoot · 07-05-2008, 04:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zippyt

I was encouraged to play with fire works ( Saftley ) by my Mom , she showed me how , Lots of fun !!!

Then as I got older , bottle rocket fights , Building a Model air plane just to BLAST it !!! Of course this was when it was ok to give yer kids BB Guns to PLAY with .

Then My mom and her friend standing in our car port ( with a Scotch in hand ) shooting Roman candles at us kids as we ran screaming in the cove !! ( and yes I have heard this story Told by a stranger , Incredulously recounting a story heard from a friend , I Just stand there Nodding my head , and say ( after they are thru ) " That was My Mom , and I was one of the kids !! "

Good times I tells ya, Good times !!!!

Ya gotta love a mom who can have fun shooting at her kids with a roman candle while drinking scotch! It's like boot camp for kids.

zippyt · 07-05-2008, 09:41 PM

It's like boot camp for kids.

It All ways was , thats why Parris island was so Much fun

And when I told her I was going into Heavy weapons she said
"OH MY GOD !!!! "

spudcon · 07-06-2008, 01:39 AM

We were poor when we were kids, but matches were cheap, so we figured out how to make bombs and rockets using matchheads. We stopped when one went off in the hand of one of us. His twin brother was in the same room at the time talking on the phone, and a piece of shrapnel embedded in the wall next to his head. The explosion took one finger off totaly, above the nuckle. The rest of his hand looked like hamburger. They couldn't find the finger, so took him to the hospital as is. When the parents returned home, they found the cat playing with the finger.
We called the guy Fingers from then on.

monster · 07-06-2008, 12:36 PM

i'm not sorry about his finger.

edonovan · 07-06-2008, 03:19 PM

Amen. Backyard fireworks are dangerous and rude -and usually handled by someone who recently had a beer in hand. Unless your backyard is way out in the country where you have no neighbors, forget it. In my neighborhood we have folks at the end of our cul-de-sac who set off fireworks in July, August and December (holidays for fireworks but I guess they spread them out over DAYS). The fact we have a cul-de-sac tells you our houses are on top of each other. Not only is it dangerous but my kids go to bed at 9:30 pm and they do their fireworks show after 10. Getting kids to bed is hard enough without the yahoos making it harder.

footfootfoot · 07-06-2008, 04:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zippyt

It's like boot camp for kids.

It All ways was , thats why Parris island was so Much fun

And when I told her I was going into Heavy weapons she said
"OH MY GOD !!!! "

That's funny. My dad said he never met a D.I. who was scarier than his mom.
(This is the guy who falsified his birth certificate and pulled out one of his own teeth to join the corps rather than face his mother with a bad report card. The tooth was bad and the army wouldn't take him with a bad tooth, after he pulled it he went back the the recruiters office and the army was at lunch, so he joined the Marines intstead...) Maybe we're cousins or something?

Flint · 07-06-2008, 10:00 PM

especially don't do this

lumberjim · 07-06-2008, 10:07 PM

the best part is that the guy is smoking cigarettes the whole time...and he DIDN'T die!

zippyt · 07-06-2008, 11:16 PM

That Right there is what you Call RNT !!!!
Red
Neck
Technology

This man Is Now my HERO !!!!!!

dar512 · 07-07-2008, 01:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sweetwater

I dodged a Darwin Award, but only because it wasn't invented then.

For a Darwin, you have to kill yourself or otherwise remove your genes from the gene pool. Unless you blew your nuts off, you wouldn't have been under consideration.

dar512 · 07-07-2008, 02:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DanaC

the only fireworks I was truly comfortable with were sparklers

That's funny because sparklers are the kind that make me the most uneasy. Those wires get really hot. And people hand them to little kids who generally aren't very careful where they're waving them about.

glatt · 07-07-2008, 02:08 PM

My daughter burned me with a sparkler on Friday. Not bad enough to leave a mark, but a glowing sparkle dropped on my bare foot and burned me between my toes.

I'll live.

But I have seen a little kid (not mine) touch the glowing part of the wire after the sparkler goes out. Curiosity killed the cat.

lookout123 · 07-07-2008, 02:22 PM

My small group of very good and very twisted friends had a tradition in our early 20's. it was called our white trash celebration. the group was mostly punk or hardcore types so the more redneck lifestyle that was common in that part of the midwest was not something we normally looked kindly upon. except for July 5th.

On that day we bought all the PBR and Natural light, Wild Turkey and Jack Daniels we could carry. We would also get old tv sets that had been discarded. Add to that our annual trip to missour'ah to get some fireworks and our normal state of always having a plethora of firearms around and you have the makings for a great and glorious fiasco. Holly's dad, a disgruntled postal worker no less, always allowed us to use his property because it was safely in the middle of BFE.

We would cart all of our supplies out there and start drinking and grilling early in the day. Then we'd start shooting the tv sets. Why? not real sure, we just did. Then the fireworks. Then we'd all head in for some more drinking and card playing until everyone passed out.

Yeah, stupid tradition, i know.

Anyway, one year my good friend C, who is either the dumbest genius or the smartest idiot you'll ever meet, made sure we'd remember the fireworks stage for sure. I had been setting off jumping jacks inside of PBR cans with pretty cool results. spinning and sparking and all the noise. Well, C decided to one up me. He twisted a bunch of them together and put them in a can. It was awesome. A great sight. Then he decided to do the same thing but throw them in the air. OK, cool. At the last minute he decided it would make a great target for him. That is when we said, "OK, let's put the guns away, dummy think is in effect." He was disappointed but decided to throw the can anyway. As he was lighting it I asked if he remembered to extend the fuze. He said he did and got pissed that we'd question him. We stood back and watched as he lit it, then held it to throw at just the right moment. 5, 4, 3, 2, GUESS YOU SHOULD HAVE THROWN ON 2 DUMBASS! The can turned white hot before he even dropped it, let alone threw it.

Commence the running around and whimpering. That was him. We were laughing. He, of course, blistered immediately but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. It was some pretty nasty burn but nothing that required hospitalization.

He was less than pleased as we made fun of the fact that he would still have his hand bandaged when he went back to teaching summer school the next week. That's a genius in action.

BigV · 07-08-2008, 09:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dar512

That's funny because sparklers are the kind that make me the most uneasy. Those wires get really hot. And people hand them to little kids who generally aren't very careful where they're waving them about.

Quote:

Originally Posted by glatt

My daughter burned me with a sparkler on Friday. Not bad enough to leave a mark, but a glowing sparkle dropped on my bare foot and burned me between my toes.

I'll live.

But I have seen a little kid (not mine) touch the glowing part of the wire after the sparkler goes out. Curiosity killed the cat.

City slicker passing through country village stops at local blacksmith. CS watches as LB hammers out a horseshoe, heating, hammering, heating, hammering, transforming a straight iron rod into the iconic horseshoe curve. At the end of this process, LB holds the horseshoe up for one final visual inspection then tosses it into a bin full of sawdust. Curious, CS reaches down and picks up the still hot horseshoe, and immediately drops it back into the bin.

"Burn your hand?" asks LB.

"No, it just doesn't take me long to check out a horseshoe." replies CS.

footfootfoot · 07-08-2008, 09:01 PM

When I was a bike mechanic I worked in a shop that took in hundreds of repairs a month. By the end of the year there were some abandoned bikes, and after a year or so passed we'd pull off any parts we'd installed and set the bikes aside for cannibalization if there were any decent parts or they'd go into the "huffy throw" pile otherwise.

Most of the abandoned repairs were bikes that weren't worth the cost of the repair, we'd tell the customer up front that the bike wasn't worth fixing, sometimes even for a flat tire, but they'd insist and for a while we never required deposits.(go figure)

Anyway once a year we'd convene at one guys house out in the country and have a bacchanalian orgy of drinking, fireworks and ritual bike sacrifice as a way to purge ourselves of anger and frustration at having to work on crappy bikes all year long and deal with insane customers.

The huffy throw deserves another thread so I'll stick to the pyrotechnic part of the story.

One year we built a black powder canon out of the frame tubes of some junker. It look just like the guns on a battleship, three different barrel ODs gradually getting smaller towards the muzzle. For a touch hole we brazed on a grease zerk. To finish it off we brazed it to a piece of leaf spring as a base.

A teaspoon of black powder made a nice bang which would stop conversation, as drinking continued one of the yahoos made himself in charge of filling and lighting the thing. After a while a bang wasn't enough and he started adding more and more black powder, the last time he filled it I saw him dump about a half cup or so into the tube.

He lit the match and there was a deafening blast which threw him backwards about ten feet. He sat there staring at the ground for a long time. The host grabbed the remains of the cannon and it disappeared. All that was left was the leaf spring and the breech. The zerk was gone as was the rest of the tubing.

Knucklehead was deaf for several hours and probably doesn't hear too well toady. That was the beginning of the end of the yearly festival.

07-05-2008, 09:41 PM	#47
zippyt LONG LIVE KING ZIPPY! per Feetz Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Arkansas Posts: 7,661	It's like boot camp for kids. It All ways was , thats why Parris island was so Much fun And when I told her I was going into Heavy weapons she said "OH MY GOD !!!! " __________________ "Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get. " Brother Dave Gardner

07-06-2008, 01:39 AM	#48
spudcon Beware of potatoes Join Date: May 2007 Location: Upstate NY, USA Posts: 2,078	We were poor when we were kids, but matches were cheap, so we figured out how to make bombs and rockets using matchheads. We stopped when one went off in the hand of one of us. His twin brother was in the same room at the time talking on the phone, and a piece of shrapnel embedded in the wall next to his head. The explosion took one finger off totaly, above the nuckle. The rest of his hand looked like hamburger. They couldn't find the finger, so took him to the hospital as is. When the parents returned home, they found the cat playing with the finger. We called the guy Fingers from then on. __________________ "I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

07-06-2008, 12:36 PM	#49
monster I hear them call the tide Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Perpetual Chaos Posts: 30,852	i'm not sorry about his finger. __________________ The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity Amelia Earhart

07-06-2008, 03:19 PM	#50
edonovan Neophyte-in-training Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Charlotte, NC, US Posts: 3	No to backyard firework Amen. Backyard fireworks are dangerous and rude -and usually handled by someone who recently had a beer in hand. Unless your backyard is way out in the country where you have no neighbors, forget it. In my neighborhood we have folks at the end of our cul-de-sac who set off fireworks in July, August and December (holidays for fireworks but I guess they spread them out over DAYS). The fact we have a cul-de-sac tells you our houses are on top of each other. Not only is it dangerous but my kids go to bed at 9:30 pm and they do their fireworks show after 10. Getting kids to bed is hard enough without the yahoos making it harder.

07-06-2008, 10:00 PM	#52
Flint Snowflake Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Dystopia Posts: 13,136	especially don't do this __________________ **************** There's a level of facility that everyone needs to accomplish, and from there it's a matter of deciding for yourself how important ultra-facility is to your expression. ... I found, like Joseph Campbell said, if you just follow whatever gives you a little joy or excitement or awe, then you're on the right track. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Terry Bozzio**

07-06-2008, 10:07 PM	#53
lumberjim I can hear my ears Join Date: Oct 2003 Posts: 25,571	the best part is that the guy is smoking cigarettes the whole time...and he DIDN'T die! __________________ This body holding me reminds me of my own mortality Embrace this moment, remember We are eternal, all this pain is an illusion ~MJKeenan

07-06-2008, 11:16 PM	#54
zippyt LONG LIVE KING ZIPPY! per Feetz Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Arkansas Posts: 7,661	That Right there is what you Call RNT !!!! Red Neck Technology This man Is Now my HERO !!!!!! __________________ "Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get. " Brother Dave Gardner

07-07-2008, 02:08 PM	#57
glatt ™ Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Arlington, VA Posts: 27,717	My daughter burned me with a sparkler on Friday. Not bad enough to leave a mark, but a glowing sparkle dropped on my bare foot and burned me between my toes. I'll live. But I have seen a little kid (not mine) touch the glowing part of the wire after the sparkler goes out. Curiosity killed the cat.

07-07-2008, 02:22 PM	#58
lookout123 changed his status to single Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Right behind you. No, the other side. Posts: 10,308	My small group of very good and very twisted friends had a tradition in our early 20's. it was called our white trash celebration. the group was mostly punk or hardcore types so the more redneck lifestyle that was common in that part of the midwest was not something we normally looked kindly upon. except for July 5th. On that day we bought all the PBR and Natural light, Wild Turkey and Jack Daniels we could carry. We would also get old tv sets that had been discarded. Add to that our annual trip to missour'ah to get some fireworks and our normal state of always having a plethora of firearms around and you have the makings for a great and glorious fiasco. Holly's dad, a disgruntled postal worker no less, always allowed us to use his property because it was safely in the middle of BFE. We would cart all of our supplies out there and start drinking and grilling early in the day. Then we'd start shooting the tv sets. Why? not real sure, we just did. Then the fireworks. Then we'd all head in for some more drinking and card playing until everyone passed out. Yeah, stupid tradition, i know. Anyway, one year my good friend C, who is either the dumbest genius or the smartest idiot you'll ever meet, made sure we'd remember the fireworks stage for sure. I had been setting off jumping jacks inside of PBR cans with pretty cool results. spinning and sparking and all the noise. Well, C decided to one up me. He twisted a bunch of them together and put them in a can. It was awesome. A great sight. Then he decided to do the same thing but throw them in the air. OK, cool. At the last minute he decided it would make a great target for him. That is when we said, "OK, let's put the guns away, dummy think is in effect." He was disappointed but decided to throw the can anyway. As he was lighting it I asked if he remembered to extend the fuze. He said he did and got pissed that we'd question him. We stood back and watched as he lit it, then held it to throw at just the right moment. 5, 4, 3, 2, GUESS YOU SHOULD HAVE THROWN ON 2 DUMBASS! The can turned white hot before he even dropped it, let alone threw it. Commence the running around and whimpering. That was him. We were laughing. He, of course, blistered immediately but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. It was some pretty nasty burn but nothing that required hospitalization. He was less than pleased as we made fun of the fact that he would still have his hand bandaged when he went back to teaching summer school the next week. That's a genius in action. __________________ Getting knocked down is no sin, it's not getting back up that's the sin

07-08-2008, 09:01 PM	#60
footfootfoot To shreds, you say? Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: in the house and on the street-how many, many feet we meet! Posts: 18,449	When I was a bike mechanic I worked in a shop that took in hundreds of repairs a month. By the end of the year there were some abandoned bikes, and after a year or so passed we'd pull off any parts we'd installed and set the bikes aside for cannibalization if there were any decent parts or they'd go into the "huffy throw" pile otherwise. Most of the abandoned repairs were bikes that weren't worth the cost of the repair, we'd tell the customer up front that the bike wasn't worth fixing, sometimes even for a flat tire, but they'd insist and for a while we never required deposits.(go figure) Anyway once a year we'd convene at one guys house out in the country and have a bacchanalian orgy of drinking, fireworks and ritual bike sacrifice as a way to purge ourselves of anger and frustration at having to work on crappy bikes all year long and deal with insane customers. The huffy throw deserves another thread so I'll stick to the pyrotechnic part of the story. One year we built a black powder canon out of the frame tubes of some junker. It look just like the guns on a battleship, three different barrel ODs gradually getting smaller towards the muzzle. For a touch hole we brazed on a grease zerk. To finish it off we brazed it to a piece of leaf spring as a base. A teaspoon of black powder made a nice bang which would stop conversation, as drinking continued one of the yahoos made himself in charge of filling and lighting the thing. After a while a bang wasn't enough and he started adding more and more black powder, the last time he filled it I saw him dump about a half cup or so into the tube. He lit the match and there was a deafening blast which threw him backwards about ten feet. He sat there staring at the ground for a long time. The host grabbed the remains of the cannon and it disappeared. All that was left was the leaf spring and the breech. The zerk was gone as was the rest of the tubing. Knucklehead was deaf for several hours and probably doesn't hear too well toady. That was the beginning of the end of the yearly festival. __________________ The internet is a hateful stew of vomit you can never take completely seriously. - Her Fobs

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