I Like That Boom Boom Pow

There are some things that still bring culture shock in Idaho. The Fourth of July is one of them.

You know those movies where almost every family on a quaint American street is lighting sparklers to celebrate the Fourth? Well, add fountains, flowers, and real, fly-into-the-air-and-burst-above-your-head-like-a-Dodger's-fireworks-show chrysanthemums, peonies, glitter palms, and rings, you have Idaho on our nation's Independence Day. (By the way, cool site for looking up firework names at NOVA: Name that Shell.)

Apparently there are actually county ordinances against such aerial fireworks outside of an official display, but you would never know it. I confess, it scares me a little, having been raised where just the sound of a firecracker was the signal to start packing for a forest fire evacuation, but I mostly giggle though the night up here.

I sat in the picturesque backyard of friends last night, having great food (including a s'more with a marshmallow perfectly toasted over their fire pit by Master Toaster Karin; never mind that I dropped the chocolate in the dirt while I was trying to catch the mallow on my graham; wipe the chocolate square on your jeans and you're good to go) and good conversation. Even while it's light out, there are the sounds of firecrackers pop-popping from the neighbors around us. As dusk arrives, the shows start. Yes, shows, as in if you stand in the front yard or sit on the back deck, you can look in the sky any direction you like and watch fireworks explode.

If you do choose to watch from the front of the house where you can see the streets and driveways nearby, you get the ground shows and the aerial shows together. Little kids running around with giant sparklers, fountains erupting, and the bigger kids and grown-ups lighting everything else.

I left the house just after 11:00 PM, and I giggled all the way home. Okay, maybe not all the way. Trying to get out of the subdivision was a little tricky. Literally every other driveway was filled with families in lawn chairs, people taking turns lighting stuff in the street. Thus, there were piles of ash to navigate, small children to avoid mowing down, and my favorite: a newly-lit, skittering flower placed in the road seconds before my car approached. Rather than have the little thing scoot under my car as I tried to drive past, I waited in the road until it died out and the kids scrambled to light another one.

The giggling did happen, though, for the remainder of the drive home, as I scanned the sky and watched happy explosions all over the place. The 30-minute drive was a hazy one, driving through all the post-firework smoke. It was like a fog had settled over the whole Treasure Valley for the evening.

At midnight, in went the earplugs for nighty-night, since it was still pretty boom-boom-pow outside. I gotta say, I like it here :)