Flying Sparks and Flame
“So, when do you think we’ll take our kids to see fireworks? When they’re twelve?” I asked Shannon on Independence Day. We’re pretty strict about bedtimes at our house, so Ethan rarely sees 9:00 PM (and then only when he’s rebelliously fighting sleep to watch the neighborhood go by outside his window). Gerrit is usually long gone by 8:00 PM.
Add to that the fact that Gerrit was suffering from infections in both ears and both eyes, I figured it wouldn’t be this year, at least.
“I guess you could take Ethan tonight, if you want. I can stay home with Gerrit, and I wouldn’t be upset or anything,” Shannon replied.
So Ethan got to stay up later than we’ve ever let him so that we could watch fireworks.
He was already looking a little droopy when we left at about 9:30 PM, but he started to get excited when we drove by neighborhood knots of kids with sparklers and fountains. I told him that was small fry.
We drove up to BYU, and plopped a blanket down on the small arc of grass just north-east of the Alumni Center (south-west of the Marriott Center). The annual “Stadium of Fire” was just down the hill, so it seemed like a good spot.
We weren’t alone, either. There were lots of other people, some of them putting on a pre-show with rows of fountains out on the traffic islands. Ethan passed the time playing peek-a-boo with a co-ed who sat near us with her date. I had to reel Ethan in, though, when he started throwing pine needles at them, shouting “Fire show!”
Finally the show began in earnest. It has been a while since I’ve seen a fireworks show, and I think I saw some new things. There were spirals and rings in addition to the traditional spherical bursts. There was also a shimmering curtain of gold, and some fireworks that seemed more appropriate for Halloween: ghost shaped streaks that looked like souls headed for heaven. They even made a spooky moaning noise as they fish-tailed into the sky.
Ethan was interested for a while; he even stood up and shouted at one point. Ironically, it was during a quiet moment, so everyone turned around and looked at him.
But after a while, pulling up grass seemed more interesting, so he started dumping handfuls onto our neighbor’s box of Cheez-Its.
Finally the show was over, after an impressive finale. The most amazing thing to me, though, was this: That thunderous bursts of multicolored flame and sparks couldn’t hold our boy’s attention for even thirty minutes.
Living in a Campfire
When the sun rises these days, the light isn’t the cheerful golden that spreads across the walls and carpet, but instead, an eerie reddish glow. This morning, it even smells like smoke throughout the house.
There hasn’t been a cloud of the water-vapor variety in the skies for days, but there’s a constant haze as forest fires burn in seemingly all directions.
And driving by the Geneva Steel Mill the other day, with its belches of brown smoke, I imagined some executive inside saying, “Quick pump out all the really dirty stuff — no one can possibly blame the poor air quality on us now!”
All in all, it’s just not a great time to be an oxygen breather in Utah County.