Sis(sy), (no)Boom, Bah (humbug)

There are certain things that don’t seem to go together no matter how hard we try to make them: peanut butter and liverwurst, kids and quiet, politicians and selflessness, and my wife’s idea of good fireworks and my idea of good fireworks. I believe fireworks should be loud, colorful and stimulating. My wife likes the colorful and stimulating but could do without the loud. Sissy!
So after years of watching the fireworks show in Oak Forest (part of the week-long OakFest featuring some good but loud bands), we decided to try something new, the fireworks in Frankfort. Frankfort is a wonderful place to raise your kids - the town is constantly trying to make life wonderful for them by offering various programs and celebrations. The fireworks show however is not one of them. The show was short (thankfully), punctuated by patriotic music (the kind only John Melloncamp, Willie Nelson, Steve Miller, and various country artists can do). I am proud to be an American but I like my fireworks sans people singing about being proud to be an American. Why? Because with the music blaring, there is no ahhing and wowing at the visual show. How loud was the music ? I could not hear what my wife sitting next to me was saying.
Was that a bad thing ? I’d better say yes. (Sissy!)
The music was distracting but the worst part of the fireworks show was the lack of booms. Not one of many explosions in the sky had the big echoing boom I have come to expect from a fireworks display. It was as if someone had put an anti-boom chip on this year’s event.
I have seen louder fireworks on TV. Walking back to our car, we heard fireworks from the next town over - yes, Mokena had booms. For me and the rest of the Frankfort faithful, no booms.
And now comes the bah humbug part of my review. I go to fireworks shows to be ooded and awed, to be wowed and blown away, to be dazzled by what is happening all around me. Frankfort’s fireworks did none of that. They had nothing I had not seen before but worse than that they had no imagination. For instance, they shot a big firework with red ,white, and blue parts - pretty cool - again and again and again. Over ten times in a row. Then it was time to shoot the red and yellow firework, you guess it, over ten times in a row. And then the golden rain firework ten times in a row. And on and on. The only break in this structure was the grand finale. When it was over there was no mass applause, just a mass exit (which was far more entertaining than the show itself).
I guess I have been spoiled by the fireworks in Oak Forest. The fireworks there are exciting, as in dangerously exciting. And loud as in you can’t hear for five minutes after the show. And unpredictable as in you never know when or where the next rocket to the sky will explode. For me, Oak Forest is fireworks heaven,
Because of my attraction to loud fireworks, we steadily sat closer and closer to the guys shooting up the fireworks. Last year we were about as close as one could get (50 meters or so away, 47 meters of which were behind a chain link fence - the other three meters were patrolled by teenagers in uniform swinging nightsticks and saying things ‘like you have to get back for your own safety’. They were, of course, members of the traffic control squad and as such they had the authority to yell at you. “I told you to get back.’ More frightening than them were the little kids 7 and under running blindly back and forth with sparklers - they will burn you and burn you a lot as they run back in forth in the aforementioned three meters, so you do not really want to be in their way unless of course you like getting burned by cute little 3 year old future arsonists.
So last year we were sitting close to the fireworks, watching them explode and ooing and awwing, when a gentle little wind began to blow toward us. It was at that point that the fireworkers decided to shoot their ‘golden rain’ fireworks. Normally, these fireworks explode and gracefully maintain their golden glow as they fall to the earth, burning out at say 100 or so feet. This causes people to wonder what would happen if these sparks alit upon the earth. It is a question with out an answer because they never do - until last year that is. Ten or so tiny sparks found their way onto the heads and hands of various people, one of whom happened to be my wife. For whole next year, I have had to listen to her story as it grew larger and larger in scope due to daily embellishment. Currently, it stands as a red hot piece of napalm burning half her head of hair away. (Sissy!)
Now I have my comeback story in which Frankfort’s fine display of color in the sky will degrade into a show of such un-delight that some patrons are still asleep, a coma induced of boredom and homogenized patriotism. Super-(bah humbug).
Frank