Pioneer Day 2013

It's Pioneer Day, don't cha know? It's the holiday that we celebrate here in Utah that commemorates the day in 1847 that Brigham Young looked out over the Salt Lake Valley and said, "One-hundred sixty-six years from today, our pyromaniac descendants will be blowing up this valley piece by piece with bottle rockets, Roman candles, cannons, M-80s, Molotov cocktails, etc."

No, of course, he said, "This is the right place; drive on." As a family, we gathered at Mom's and Dad's house in North Salt Lake to barbecue (the hot dogs and steak were delicious) for the occasion, afterward we gathered in the street for a small fireworks show.

Here, Jenna, Kira, and Dave throw snaps out into the street:

If you think I was joking about the cannon comment, by the way, the parents' next-door neighbor actually brought out a small cannon to fire some ear-bursting shots into the atmosphere.

Baby, You're a Firework!

Over the weekend, the family, including Dave, Jessica, and their kids, now safely back from their trip to San Diego, gathered to celebrate Pioneer Day. At the same time, we met to mourn the unofficial end of the fireworks season with one final fireworks show (though I'm sure the pyromaniac neighbors will continue to launch them off through - and beyond - the July 26 deadline imposed by the state).

At any rate, we first enjoyed a good meal of barbecued hamburgers and hot dogs. Afterward, Mike and Jeff took charge of putting on the fireworks show at dusk as the rest of us gathered on the front lawn to watch.

Any fireworks show we're involved in also has to have the obligatory Lord of the Flies tribute, which involves kids of all ages dancing around the pretty, flashing firework, the name of which I don't know. The only thing that is missing is the "Kill the pig! Bash it in!" chant. And, of course, I'd be lying if I said I didn't join in on the fun.

With the loosening of Utah's fireworks laws this year, we were able to conclude the show by shooting off several Roman candles and other very loud things high into the air, and they were pretty neat to look at.

And so, as Jeff noted, we bid a fond farewell to fireworks for the next 345 days.

Pyromaniacs on the Loose

It's time for Pyromaniacs,
And we're zany to the max.
So just sit back, don't relax;
Your eardrums will collapse.
We're pyromaniacs!

That little takeoff on the "Animaniacs" theme song, or some words akin to them, have been running through my head over the course of the weekend as I've been hearing a myriad of very lound sounds and explosions coming through my window, all caused by neighborhood kids trying very hard to blow up a large chunk of the city in honor of Pioneer Day.

These very loud fireworks - many of which definitely came from Evanston or some other place with more-liberal fireworks guidelines than Utah has (that's, of course not hard to do - being more liberal than Utah, I mean) - have been getting on my nerves. They may have come from Beirut, for all I know.

It's not just me, though. I know for a fact that many of my neighbors have been getting annoyed by these flagrant displays of pyromania. Last night, I overheard my neighbor Jerry confront some of these kids and essentially threaten them with juvenile hall. Since I only heard this conversation, I would like to believe that he picked at least one of them up by the shirt collar and relayed the information with an extremely red face.

Then again, my getting annoyed at these 'splosions leads me to wonder aloud: Is this some kind of a troubling sign that I'm getting old?

As a kid, I used to love to blow things up - using legal fireworks - on July 4 and again on the 24th. The magic and appeal of this, however, began to fade by about age 14 or 15. Now, watching fireworks go off is appealing in that I love to watch my nieces and nephews' reactions to it. And that's about it.

Will the ghost of an old friend, Jacob Marley style, visit me tonight to try to get me back on the bandwagon of fireworks? That thought has crossed my mind, as well.