Quick note: This I originally posted two years ago around this same time. It's one of my favorite stories to tell and it's time to tell it again.
I want to start by apologizing to my two readers, my wife and my mom, for the delay in posting something new up here. Life has been busy something fierce and the stories that are clambering to be told in my brain are about to come out. One story continually coagulated to the surface and is ready to be skimmed.
Adventures in buying fireworks.
Imagine a town of around 3,000 where crime is unusually high, taxes are unusually low, city ordinances are fairly non-existent, and a giant casino funnels in so much money the town has little incentive to upset the status-quo. Normally, one would think this is a sleepy little river town in Southeast Missouri, but not so fast, it's Riverside, Missouri a wonderful place tucked away in Kansas City, Missouri. This quaint little river city does an impeccable job in hiding the public housing, the rows and rows of apartments and mobile homes, and segregating the underbelly from the shiny facade. Once a year though, the freak flags are flying, and fly they do. The day we get to celebrate our freedom from tyranny, oppression, and bad teeth.
Happy Fourth of July!!!
There are three main roads you can take to enter into Riverside, one from the North, one from the East, and one from the West. All three points converge on what some would consider the Mecca of fireworks stands in Missouri. Calling them firework stands is an attack on the sensibilities of all fireworks connoisseurs mind you. It's like calling the Ringling Brothers traveling carnival. These are freestanding, self sustaining, small cities, that happen to put up a giant tent and sell explosives for two weeks, and then poof, gone like a thief in the night.
Once a year I make my Hajj to Riverside to load up on bottlerocks, M-80's, Roman Candles, Snaps, Sparklers, Rockets, Snakes, and Punks. It is quite possibly the most wonderful time of the year. I have been blowing shit up since I was seven and we moved from Iowa to Missouri. The first time Snake-Eyes (a GI-Joe) went hurtling in six different directions following a well placed firecracker in his mid-section, I was hooked. My patriotic cup runneth over when the smell of sulfer and gunpowder come floating by.
So there are around fifteen fireworks tents in a town of around 3,000 people. That around one stand for every 200 people. Normally, one would think that's a little high, but not much is normal in Riverside. The shops have great names like Mad Mikes, Crazy Eddie's, Real Cheap Fireworks (a side note here, while real cheap may sound like a selling point, personally I don't like that marketing tactic when evaluating explosives), Crazy Harry's, River Roll Explosions, 1/2 Price Fireworks, and on and on. As I made my journey this year I had to make a decision between two. They are located directly across the road from each other and have decent parking and are fairly easy to get in and out of. My choices were these...
Dishonest Don's versus Honest John's.
A couple of things jump out at me immediately, Honest John's is certainly nice but is lacking in patriotism, I mean come on, I don't even see an American flag flying from their sign, let alone the two flying from Dishonest John's sign. We all know, the number of flags either behind you in a press conference, attached to your lapel pin, or flapping in the wind on your fireworks tent is how patriotism is measured in our country. Secondly, Dishonest Don's matches all coupons! Seriously people, we want deals and coupons will get you there even when I have never seen a fireworks coupon in my entire life. Thirdly, everyone needs a tag line or catchy phrase and once again Don's brings it, "where you get a steal of a deal." Finally, they send a proverbial shot across the bow of Crazy Harry's by saying, "we may be dishonest...but were not crazy." Ouch.
With such an aggressive marketing I succumbed to the wonder's of Dishonest Don's. The first thing you notice as you approach the holy land are the "NO SMOKING" signs everywhere. One would think this would be common sense and just a good practice, but as I quickly learned judging by the lack of digits on some employees hands, the signs also warning you not to hold the fireworks once lit are not always read. As my wife and two little girls, strolled through aisles and aisles of munitions, we loaded up our bread rack, yes bread rack with all sorts of items that would make for one hour of dog maddening explosions. It was certainly a sight to behold, semi's of inventory lined one side, campers for the carny's, I mean vendors, on the next, men in shirts without sleeves all around, girls in cutoff jeans and black eyes scribbling prices with Sharpies on all the wares. We finally made it to the checkout line and I waited, and while the wife and kids were over petting a dog that road shot gun in a motorcycle side car, I heard an interesting discussion from a two ladies working a different cash register.
"Don told me not to put tax on that order," said the young lady in the Insane Clown Posse t-shirt.
"Any deal over $300 Roger will put a code in because the tax is already figured in so don't worry about what gets taxed and what doesn't," coming from the burly looking woman who I think was having a chew.
So taxes are optional and deals are the norm, this my friends is what America is all about. So as the four of us drove back home to ready ourselves for the evening festivities I thought about how lucky I am to live in this country. We may have our issues but we also have our freedoms and for that, while I light the first wick of the year, I remember those who have gone before us so that I can blow things up.
