Many years ago while at UGA, I had a pretty tight group of dorm mate friends. After our freshman year, we all moved around town but remained close enough friends that we would still hang out on the weekends and special occations. Every 4th of July we would pool our pittances together and a few of us would make the journey up to South Carolina for as many fireworks we could muster to pack into my truck cab to put on our own show in my or another person's backyard. I'm talking about when it comes to a home display, we did a HUGE show. The last year before we all dispersed across the country, the count was three mortar boards with 8 tubes each, around 30k firecrackers which we hung up in the pecan tree branches, hundreds of the saturn rockets, and everyone had at least 10 boxes of roman candles to shoot from my back porch at Gumbo as he and I set off each bank.
So, after a afternoon/night of..... many PBRs, smoking out the neighborhood, and terrorizing every single squirrel within range of the roman candles the party started to wind down. Neal, Amelia, and I took the ones that had partied a little too hard back to their homes and came back to the house to clean. It was around 2 in the morning when everything had been cleaned. Myself, was still drunk, and in my infinite wisdom thought that it would be a great idea to not keep the leftover fireworks and instead light the last string of 500 blackcats out in the street. Amelia and I went out into the road next to the house to see if anyone was still around. I lit the fuse... Just as the sparks started to fly, then around the corner comes one of ACPDs finest.
The first firecracker goes off just as his car pulled up in front of our driveway. I remember seeing the first explosion throw up the whole string and loop it on the front of his bumper brush guard. As we stood there in the gravel of my driveway, I could see the cop's face each and every time one went off. The shredded paper was spraying all over the ground, the lawn, and on the hood of the cruiser. The blue lights from the bar on top made it strangely pretty as the smoke wafted in the night air. As the last pop went off, the cop rolled down his window and gives the two of us this look. Like a, you can't be that stupid, look.
Cop: What are you doing?
Me: We had some leftover fireworks from a party and wanted to get rid of them.
Cop: Do you realize what time it is? People are sleeping.
Me: Yeah, I knew I was in trouble as soon as you came around the corner.
Amelia: We could of run.
Me: We live right there!
The cop at that moment started laughing and asks if that was all we were going to shoot and tells us to get to sleep.
That was the last time I ever set off fireworks in a city limits.
So, after a afternoon/night of..... many PBRs, smoking out the neighborhood, and terrorizing every single squirrel within range of the roman candles the party started to wind down. Neal, Amelia, and I took the ones that had partied a little too hard back to their homes and came back to the house to clean. It was around 2 in the morning when everything had been cleaned. Myself, was still drunk, and in my infinite wisdom thought that it would be a great idea to not keep the leftover fireworks and instead light the last string of 500 blackcats out in the street. Amelia and I went out into the road next to the house to see if anyone was still around. I lit the fuse... Just as the sparks started to fly, then around the corner comes one of ACPDs finest.
The first firecracker goes off just as his car pulled up in front of our driveway. I remember seeing the first explosion throw up the whole string and loop it on the front of his bumper brush guard. As we stood there in the gravel of my driveway, I could see the cop's face each and every time one went off. The shredded paper was spraying all over the ground, the lawn, and on the hood of the cruiser. The blue lights from the bar on top made it strangely pretty as the smoke wafted in the night air. As the last pop went off, the cop rolled down his window and gives the two of us this look. Like a, you can't be that stupid, look.
Cop: What are you doing?
Me: We had some leftover fireworks from a party and wanted to get rid of them.
Cop: Do you realize what time it is? People are sleeping.
Me: Yeah, I knew I was in trouble as soon as you came around the corner.
Amelia: We could of run.
Me: We live right there!
The cop at that moment started laughing and asks if that was all we were going to shoot and tells us to get to sleep.
That was the last time I ever set off fireworks in a city limits.
No comments:
Post a Comment