Last week the voice of the firecracker, the cherry bomb and the Roman Candle was heard in our land. It was ever thus, except in the Wood family. We’ve had a long tradition of being the wet fuse at the end of the Fourth of July firecracker. Every June when other parents were making trips to the illicit fireworks dealer down by Winona, Grandpa Wood trotted out a hoary old tale about his father, Dave Wood, and his battle with fireworks. Apparently, Dave drove the family into Whitehall for the 1890 celebration, and a young dandy, probably sporting a bowler, threw a firecracker under Dave's smart team of bays. When the bays went berserk Dave, by now a bit berserk himself jumped out of the buggy and horsewhipped the young dandy, ”Right on Main Street, Father thrashed him,” Grandpa shuddered as he told his story.

So not as much as a sparkler ever darkened Grandpa's door. My grandmother had no quarrel with noise, rowdiness, or mayhem. In fact, she tolerated such nonsense much more calmly than her spouse. But Grandma objected to firecrackers because she was not in favor of spending anything that didn't go into our stomachs, onto our backs or to purchase paint to endlessly daub the big old house where her father-in-law’s buggy whip still hung in the basement.

Nevertheless, when Grandpa's tale of violence on the frontier was over and he had retired to his garden, cousin Billy and I (we lived with Grandma and Grandpa during World War II,) would wail at Grandma for just one little box of firecrackers to celebrate, offering to mow the lawn every week until 2000 A.D. All the other kids on Scranton Street had closets full of explosives and we'd be left out if Grandma didn't persuade my dad to hop into the '36 Ford and head for that place near Winona to the mysterious place where our visions of violence lay sequestered. “It's only 30 miles away, Grandma,” we begged.

“No, no, you go out and play now. When the Fourth comes, I'll have a Big Treat for you that's even better than firecrackers. You'll see.”

So we struggled out of the old house, disconsolate, arguing about which of us would play Red Ryder and which of us would get stuck as Little Beaver.

We awoke early on the Fourth to the sounds of pal John Berg's 4-inchers sending Campell's soup cans half-way to the moon. We played with our Rice Krispies in the kitchen, as Bergie's missiles went “snap, crackle and pop,” into the ether, wondering what Grandma had in mind for our Big Treat. Breakfast over, Grandma climbed onto a footstool, reached into the corner cupboard and came down with two nickel boxes of Blue Diamond farmer matches and two pairs of Grandpa's pliers. She led us out to the concrete carriage step that led to the barn out back. “See, you take the pliers and clip off the white tip of the match. Now put the tip in the jaws of the pliers and hit it on the carriage steps.”

Cousin Bill tried first. “Pfft!” said the tip.

Now it was my turn. My “pfft” sounded pretty anemic. Grandma: “Don't hit the plier so HARD because then you can't hear the pfft!”

Soon we had the technique mastered. Pfft! Pfft! Pfft! And a pile of wooden sticks littered the sidewalk under the grape arbor.

“Don't do them so fast,” came a voice from the summer kitchen, “or they won't last all day.” Unlike Grandma's version of “chewing gum,” which she made by melting canning wax with a teaspoon of Kool-Aid powder, drying it, wrapping it in waxed paper for Bill's and my daily supply of “chewing gum.” “Once you start chewing it, keep on chewing or it'll get hard.”

We paused our explosive adventures to view the rocket's red glare of our pal Bearpuss Baer's endless supply of Roman Candles. And then came Chuck Pederson, the “Kid Who Had Everything.” He placed a four-incher in the delicate plastic bowels of his new toy police car. Inside were delicate paintings of the heads of Tess Trueheart and Dick Tracy. We oohed and aahed as the devil-may-care Pederson, age 10, suavely lit a definitely dry fuse, with his own Zippo lighter and sent the vehicle down Ed Berg's sloped concrete driveway.

Halfway down, “KABOOM!” it said and the brand new car carrying Dick and Tess was blown to smithereens and ended up across the street in Gabe and Tillie Nelson's well- manicured hedge.

Maybe my Grandpa had a point. Grandma most certainly did. Once we stopped chewing it, her paraffin turned hard as a rock

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