I'm sure this place has MANY of them.


My aunt, who lives in the Scottsdale neighborhood, has thrown a 4th of July party for almost 30 years. Heat, rain, shine, the party always goes on. It has gotten a little smaller over the years, but it used to be big ol' block party with her house at the center. There was always a 16" softball game of 'our' family vs 'the neighbors' friends and family. The latter of whom always took it way too seriously and were well below .500 against us. The neighbors are both Chicago cops, so naturally their side is filled with off duty cops, Sheriff's police, and State Troopers. After softball, there is always a huge fireworks show. Up until about 4 or 5 years ago, most of the fireworks that were blown off were the ones that these cops had confiscated over the days and weeks leading up to the 4th.

One particular year, when I was about 11 or 12, they had bunch of huge like professional type fireworks (as kids we called them Comiskey fireworks). One cop had dug a hole into the ground with about a 4' piece of PVC pipe to shoot these things into the air. Us kids lined up along the dugout of the softball field, and the fireworks were shot off in center field, so we were about 150' away. The first 6 or 8 get shot into the air and explode as normal. Then one is lit and it spirals up about 30' into the air before it starts its decent. I can vividly remember hearing my uncle say, "Oh that's not good," and immediately after he spoke, a huge pink explosion happened pretty much at ground level, sending us kids and other people scattering for cover. Pink fireballs were shooting at us from every direction it seemed. Amazingly, nobody got hurt, but that was the end of the show that year, and pretty much the end of the 'Comiskey type' fireworks for that party.

Incidentally, the party still happens and softball is still played, although now its ages 30+ vs ages under 30 with the batting order going from youngest to oldest. Us old timers are 3-1 since that tradition started.

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10 or 11 years old lighting off stuff with my old man in front of the house. We get out the big box of Saturn missles and get it ready to go. It starts off fine and suddenly 3 or 4 shoot straight back at us. One of them hits my leg and goes up my shorts. My old man saw it and immediately he hits my leg and tries to knock it out of my clothes. I had a pretty big burn on my thigh but I think if he hadn’t gotten to me so quickly it might have rocketed up and burned up my dick. He was probably about 8 old styles deep too. No one has a reaction time like a dad when his kid is in danger.

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