Most people probably associate fireworks with the Fourth of July. I do, too, but I also have a strong association of fireworks with Christmas.
Traditionally, my family always gathered at my grandparents’ farm on top of a hill outside Slate Springs, a hamlet so far south in Calhoun County that it’s almost in Webster County.
(Webster County’s seat is Walthall, which still makes me have to think hard down here when someone mentions the county, but that’s another story.)
The gathering is scaled down some these days, but when I was a child, most of my cousins and their families would show up lunch to mid-afternoon, eat, play pool or cards or some other game, talk, eat, play, talk, eat ... There was always lots of food, and we all liked to eat.
As a family of upstanding Baptists on my father’s side, it was always a liquorless affair. We got our fill of food, and that was enough — at least at these gatherings.
Eventually, as dusk fell and turned to night, my Uncle Wood would break out the fireworks.
We always had a good variety of pyrotechnics available: bottle rockets, Roman candles, sparklers, jumping jacks, Chinese lanterns and other assorted goodies.
The last year we had fireworks, I think I was 6 or 7. The fogs of time have risen on that point.
Whichever it was, we started on our usual little trip outside to enjoy the show.
We young’uns got our Chinese lanterns and sparklers that we managed not to jab in our eyes, and Uncle Wood set about lighting the bigger, more dangerous items, like the Roman candles.
He reached repeatedly into one of the bags full of fireworks in the cardboard box he set on the ground to shoot off a bottle rocket here, a Roman candle there, and set a jumping jack to hopping through the grass.
One year during this process, though not this particular year, a bottle rocket landed in the sawdust at my grandfather’s little sawmill, about 150 to 200 yards from the house. All the men ran to keep the sawmill from burning up and the woods from catching fire, and yet, this wasn’t the incident that ended our annual fireworks extravaganza.
No, it was the seemingly innocent and innocuous decision to set the box of fireworks on the ground ... and apparently light a jumping jack too close to the box.
I can to this day see that purple flaming jumping jack hopping this way and that, and up over the side of the box into the mass of fireworks Uncle Wood had not lit. The jumping jack did it for him.
Spencers did the freeze slack-jawed for about a half-second before scattering across that Slate Springs hillside.
My cousin Chris and I hightailed it across the small lawn in front of the house to hide behind a thick, centuries-old oak tree. Uncle Wood jumped the other direction, going around the corner of the house.
Other assorted aunts, uncles and cousins ducked in the nearest house door or hunkered down behind one of the parked cars.
Few of us were settled into our hiding place when the fireworks started going off. Bottle rockets and Roman candles starting firing in whatever direction they were pointing from the box. Other leftovers like extra sparklers and more jumping jacks just combusted where they were, setting the bags and the box on fire.
A few of the hiding peeked out from their chosen shelter a bit too early, and ducked back down quickly when another bottle rocket squealed out of the box and streaked past their head.
Finally the onslaught subsided, and the box and its remaining contents turned completely to ash. Shaken Spencers returned to the house to calm down and reflect on the evening’s excitement.
The rest of the evening was spent mercilessly teasing Uncle Wood about letting the fireworks disappear in such a blaze of ingloriousness.
And of course the moral of this story is: Dry Wood doesn’t need liquid help to get a big blaze going.
We’ve kept a close eye on him ever since.
