Fireworks on the Fourth of July

America celebrated its independence again this past Monday, marking 246 years of national freedom. Every important U.S. holiday bears its unique celebratory hallmark, regardless of the original reason (religious or not) for its commemoration.

With Thanksgiving it’s a belt-loosening dinner. With Halloween it’s trick-or-treating. With Memorial Day it’s decorating family graves. With Christmas it’s gift-giving. With Valentine’s Day it’s the exchange of expressions of affection. With Easter it’s the hunt for Easter eggs.

And with the Fourth of July it’s fireworks.

Americans have probably retained more of their original traditions for celebrating Independence Day than they’ve managed for any other holiday. John Adams on July 2, 1776, accurately predicted that America’s independence “will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival” with “Pomp and Parade, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

“Illuminations” meant fireworks. Philadelphia held the first such event in the first year after Adams’ prediction, on July 4, 1777, while the war was very much in progress, and it included plenty of fireworks.

The Pennsylvania Evening Post reported that “at night there was a grand exhibition of fireworks (which began and concluded with thirteen rockets) on the Commons, and the city was beautifully illuminated.”

The same night the Sons of Liberty touched off fireworks over Boston Common.

As the years rolled on, fireworks gained in popularity. Originally displayed together with potentially dangerous gunfire and cannon every July 4th, concerns for public safety gradually earned fireworks the top spot for the annual celebrations.

With the War of 1812 came Francis Scott Key’s crafting of the lyrics to “The Star Spangled Banner” as he watched the British shell Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor. “And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air” invited annual reenactment with colorful fireworks every July 4th thereafter.

In 1870 Congress finally established Independence Day as an official holiday, and in 1941 it was expanded to grant a paid holiday to all federal employees.

So fireworks and American independence have celebrated together through the entire existence of the United States.

In recent decades, though, the marriage has been uneasy. Every Fourth of July hundreds of fireworks-related accidents bring injury and death to celebrants and bystanders across the nation. Many cities and states have passed bans on various types of fireworks. Today, for example, Adams’ native state of Massachusetts forbids all consumer fireworks. 

For more than 80 years Iowa did the same, permitting only sparklers and “blacksnakes.” That was because of two terribly destructive fireworks-caused fires that destroyed scores of businesses and many homes in the 1930s in Spencer and Remsen in the northwest part of the state.

On June 27, 1931, a youngster dropped a lighted sparkler into a drugstore fireworks display in downtown Spencer. The resulting conflagration, driven by winds of 25 to 35 mph, sent 80 businesses up in flames and caused damage totaling $2 million.

Then in 1936 on July 4th, children playing with fireworks in a tent in Remsen accidentally set off a fire that destroyed 15 homes and nearly 40 businesses, resulting in half a million dollars worth of damage.

In 1938 the Iowa Legislature responded with the nation’s first statewide ban on consumer fireworks. 

Iowa’s lawmakers repealed that law in 2017 but gave cities and counties the option to continue fireworks bans. Both Spencer and Remsen kept a ban in place.

I was born in 1941, three years after Iowa’s fireworks ban was enacted. Mom was from Lamoni, three miles north of the Iowa-Missouri state line. We would regularly drive to Lamoni for family get-togethers on holidays, and sometimes Dad would drive us down to the large fireworks outlets just across the line in Missouri. He would buy a few smaller firecrackers, and we’d bring them home and light them off around the Fourth of July.

Strictly illegal, and we all knew it. Thousands of Iowans did exactly the same thing – most of the cars and trucks in the parking lots at the fireworks outlets just across the Missouri border sported Iowa license plates as June transitioned into July.

Today, Iowa towns and counties are literally all over the map when it comes to the legality of fireworks. Iowa law now permits fireworks sales during two specific calendar stretches, one around the Fourth of July and the other around Christmas and New Year’s. But that doesn’t mean they can legally be used everywhere.

In Jefferson, the city council can grant permits to residents for fireworks displays, stipulating what days the permit covers. But permitted fireworks are not the only ones shot off in town. Beginning in late June and carrying through Independence Day, evenings in town are punctuated by loud firecracker retorts, sometimes well after midnight. Tough on pet dogs, amnesiacs, parents of small children, and residents with PTSD.

Hard to know how successful law officers can be in controlling them. Strict enforcement would be difficult, since officers can’t be everywhere at all times. It’s probably similar to controlling speeding on Iowa’s highways – unless an officer actually sees a speeder going well over the limit, enforcement is unlikely.

Consequently fireworks, legal and illegal, will probably continue to maintain their traditional alliance with Independence Day as they have for nearly 250 years.