I knew the man who ran the fireworks show on the Fourth and New Years. Homer Jones. The town paid him to do it. He did something else the rest of the year, I don’t remember what, but I do remember he did always smell like sulfur.
He’d ask you what kind you’d like to see and he’d always do his best to find something that’d fit it. If you liked loud ones, he’d get a loud one just for you. If you like’d the kind that crackled and dripped all sorts of colors, he’d find it. He’d even get smoke bombs if that’s all you wanted.
You had to tell him at least a week before the program, cuz that’s when he’d go out to get his things. He went somewhere out of the state, never saying where. I saw what he brought one year before he blowed it up, he didn’t like anybody to see before the show, but I did. Nothing had any labels, it was all just cardboard tubes. I asked him about it and he said not to worry.
The Fourth and New Years always happened in a field behind the laundromat, that’s where everyone in town met. People’d bring chairs and someone always brought a grill so there’d be hotdogs. At the end of the night they’d dump out all the coolers that’d been filled with beers and there’d be enough ice to make a hill for all the kids to slide down on.
He blewed his fingers off one year, I remember that. We were all there, standing around waiting. He was trying to show off to some high school girls, we all saw, though he must’ve been 2 or 3 times their age. He held on too long and his fingers blowed up. They took him to a hospital, or something to that affect, but there was no chance of sewing em back on cuz they were gone. Not a trace of em left, like they hadn’t ever even been there to begin with.
After that the town stopped hiring him. Got some company to do it instead, saying they didn’t trust a man who’d blowed his own fingers off with the safety of the community.
For awhile Homer tried doing his own shows without the town paying him. He’d go round trying to raise a few bucks to buy his supplies, but that didn’t go too well.
The new shows that company puts on are pretty much the same, cept they don’t ask you want kinda fireworks you wanna see. They got it all though, so I guess that doesn’t matter all that much.
I’m not too sure of what happened to Homer. I think I heard he was picking up litter on the sides of road now, but I could be wrong.
I just remember he always did smell like sulfur.