Bill Hand: Fireworks in a football field

This is going to be one of those history columns where I tell you my history instead of New Bern?s. It happens once in a while; get used to it.

It?s also going to be one of those columns where I tell you what I did, and then insist you never, ever be stupid enough to do it yourself. That?s irritating, I know. My father used to constantly regale me with the wild tales of his misspent youth, and then threaten me with murder if I followed his path. So any mean ladies with barrels of rancid, algae-splotched rainwater by their house, your carpets are safe with me!

It was while watching the fireworks last Thursday that this little reminiscence entered my mind.

I spent my elementary years in a little Pennsylvania village named Townville, population today, 306. My father, a Methodist preacher, had a double-charge (that is, two churches) at Townville and Troy Center. I have only one memory of the Troy Center congregation ? an unpleasant one involving grown men hurling baby mice I had discovered at women. I?m not going to go into this particular story, but I?ll bet it?s already left you thinking differently of Methodist men.

I remember Townville as the first place where I dialed a phone. I was probably in fourth grade, a ridiculously old age for a kid to be dialing a phone for the first time in his life, and I had been sent to the little grocery to buy something. I couldn?t remember what it was, so I asked if I could use the phone. The grocer pushed the phone my way, and I dialed, then picked up the receiver. The line was dead. Confused, I set the receiver back in its cradle, dialed, then picked up the receiver again and wondered why the line was still dead. The grocer probably wondered what planet I was from. And a lot of young people reading this right now are thinking, ?Phone cradles? Phone receivers? What is this walking antiquity talking about??

After only a couple of years, I moved out of Townville. Methodist preachers were shipped around every couple of years in those days, or maybe my father requested a move because he was freaked out by flying mice.

But I made a couple of my closest lifelong friends in those days ? Kevin and Vance. So I went back when I could to visit.

Zoom ahead ? I can?t remember to just when, but we had graduated and were young adults. We thought it would be a hoot to do a midnight walk to the local high school, just outside of town, where Kevin had played football and shoot the breeze. Once there, we found the football field?s broadcast booth wasn?t as secure as it might be, so we broke in, opened a window and looked over the field.

It was a narrow building, about six or eight feet deep and maybe 16 or 20 feet long.

It must have been around July because Vance pulled out a huge string of powerful firecrackers. We started lighting them, one at a time, and throwing them out the windows. We got a kick out of watching them bounce around the iron bleachers down below and hearing the echoey booms.

I don?t remember who did it, but we hadn?t thrown many when one missed the window, bounced back into the room and landed? right on top of this crazy-long string of firecrackers.

There was nowhere to go; we were trapped in this tiny space with a monster string of explosives about to go off.

Strings of exploding firecrackers are living things, by the way. They writhe about like snakes and this one seemed to follow us everywhere as it banged and boomed. We three guys did a breakdance, a river dance and maybe even the Funky Chicken just trying to stay alive.

When it was over, we still had our fingers and skin, but the floor and lower walls had plenty of charred spots and we were almost deaf from the sound of the explosions bouncing off those close walls.

We pushed open the door and staggered out through the cloud of blue, acrid smoke that floated into the night. Because we were pretty young, because we were stupid and because we were guys, we laughed about it all the way back to Kevin?s home.

And children take note: We were lucky we didn?t burn down Pennsylvania and that we escaped with our lives.

Contact Bill Hand at newbernhistory@yahoo.com.

Source: http://www.newbernsj.com/news/local-columns/bill-hand-fireworks-in-a-football-field-1.168961

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