Sometimes I wonder how I made it to adulthood with all my fingers and toes -- and my eyesight -- intact.
I'm reminded of that every year just before my favorite holiday, Independence Day on July 4.
I grew up back in the 1950s when there was no Occupational Safety & Health Administration, an era when one could buy fireworks over the counter that today would be considered small bombs and banned from sale.
My favorites were the cherry bombs and silver salutes because they were the most powerful the great majority of kids could afford. They were a nickel apiece and I'd save up for months and usually buy $5 or $10 worth of silver salutes, which looked like a small barrel with a fuse coming out the side.
I'd blow up all sorts of things; soda cans and coffee cans were especially fun.
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One year the neighbor kid said he heard they'd go off under water. Not having a lake or pond in the immediate vicinity, we found ourselves in the upstairs bathroom of his house. I lit the fuse, he flushed the toilet, the silver salute exploded, a waterspout shot to the ceiling and the commode split in half.
I got a belt to the behind and was grounded for a month for that little trick.
One year I poured the powder from several packages of firecrackers into a container and threw a match in just to see what would happen. It was a particularly dry summer and the column of fire that shot into the air ignited the grass on an overhanging ledge above my head. The blaze raced along the railroad right-of-way, jumped into a field of straw and consumed virtually the whole thing before the fire department brought it under control. I never did fess up to that one.
Then there was the year my erstwhile next door neighbor -- my partner in the ill-fated commode caper -- and I took our younger brothers north of town to shoot off fireworks. Unfortunately, the pack of black cats he lit off and tossed into the air landed in the front pocket of his little brother's blue jeans, a feat he could not have pulled off had he intentionally tried.
After the racket had subsided, we'd put out the fire and the smoke had cleared, there was a gaping hole in his jeans and the poor kid was burned rather severely. We rushed him off for medical treatment. He came out of it none the worse for wear after a few days of healing.
I've smartened up since then, but it doesn't surprise me that children continue to be attracted to fireworks.
Statistics pulled off the Internet by our librarian show that children ages 10 to 14 years have the highest injury rate for fireworks-related injuries.
In 2001, four persons died and an estimated 9,500 were treated in hospital emergency rooms for fireworks-related injuries in the United States.
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About 50 percent of those injured are children ages 14 and younger and 75 percent of those are male.
Firecrackers (25 percent), rockets (21 percent) and sparklers (11 percent) accounted for most of the injuries seen in emergency rooms in 2001 and sparklers accounted for most of the injuries to children under age 5.
Fire departments in the U.S. also reported approximately 21,700 fireworks-related fires in 1998 that caused $15.6 million in direct property damage.
Supervise your children closely this week. Better yet, let the trained professionals handle the fireworks. Load up the family and head over to Minnesota State University Moorhead for the annual fireworks show Friday night.
Readers can reach Terry DeVine at (701) 241-5515 or tdevine@forumcomm.com
