Miasmatic Review

Bottle Rockets are EVIL!

I hope everyone had a fun time on the Fourth of July. I know I did. We had some friends over to the house for a little party. Everyone ended up spending most of the time on our front porch or in the house due to the weather. The rain didn’t irritate me as much as I thought it would. Yes, it ruined my plans, but we are in such a bad drought that we need it. Honestly we could use about another 7 inches over the rest of the month to be caught up.

Most of the people there were from Clan Chattan. Honestly after I left the group, I thought there was going to be a lot of bad blood. Fortunately, I was wrong, as everyone seems to have overcome their issues. We all sat and talked, swapped stories, reminisced about past activities and shared our hopes for the future. It was nice. I wasn’t involved in any gossip or politics. It made me start to rethink leaving. Then I realized the reason I didn’t catch any of that was that I was no longer a member. It still was good to see everyone together again… and happy.

Both Chastity and Virtue brought their boyfriends with to the party. You would think that after being members of this group for as long as they have been, they would know better. All the guys in the group are like over protective uncles. We were relentlessly ruthless to the boys, especially Maelduin and I. It was great fun making these boys squirm.

We had a lot of good food. One of the guests brought this cheese bread recipe. It was excellent. It tasted like cheesecake, only better. I braved the rain to grill burgers and hot dogs for everyone. Cooking in the rain doesn’t bother me, especially on the Fourth of July. If you don’t grill on the Fourth then there is something seriously wrong with you. I don’t care if it’s a vegetarian Kabob or the best steak money can buy, you grill on the Fourth of July!

We left the house around 7:30PM to go watch the Fireworks in Neighboring Cherry Valley. They have a nice display and it’s much easier to get in and out of with all the traffic. I have a spot that I’ve gone to for many years now. There is usually not a lot of other people there so we can play around. It’s on the backside of the display, therefore we don’t get to see any of the ground fireworks, but who wants those anyway? The other attraction of this spot is we would light off our own fireworks waiting for the show. There are usually some kinds of rockets of various sizes. This year I had a couple gross of bottle rockets and four packets of larger rockets.

We had just finished setting out the blankets and spraying the kids down when I drove the pipes into the ground. I tested them with some bottle rockets. As I did, one of the people that owns the property adjacent to where we were warned us that the cops where there. Not wanting to have our fun ruined, I quickly hid the big rockets under the blanket and left a bunch of the bottle rockets out in plain site. Why? Because if he knows we were lighting off fireworks and comes down they will only confiscate what they see, they won’t search. If you hide everything, they will do a quick probable cause search. The cop ended up driving off and after about 10 minutes, I started firing them off. Being in the Fourth of July spirit, I started tossing packets of bottle rockets to my friends so they could have some fun. We were all having a great time playing with bottle rockets, which apparently are the most dangerous of all fireworks. How are they dangerous? Just read on.

After setting them off for about a total of 15 minutes I turned around to grab another packet of bottle rockets and I see a cop walking down to us. He tells us that he is shutting us down and confiscating the fireworks. He goes on to explain that the property we are on is owned by ComEd, the power company, and they didn’t want people shooting off fireworks by their power lines. Then he states, “They want us to make an arrest, who shall it be.” Everyone was quiet, I was thinking I should take the blame since it was my party and my fireworks, but then the cop points to LittleJoe and says, “I saw you shooting them off, I need to see your ID and information.”

LittleJoe in a rage that “The Man” has shut down our fun says, “Fuck you copper! Why aren’t you out taking guns from little kids or confiscating fireworks that are a bit more dangerous then bottle rockets?” The cop responded by pulling out his asp and saying “Don’t get my face boy I’ll beat you like an unwanted step child. Besides there are no fireworks more deadly then the whistling bottle rocket! Per shot fired, more people are injured with the `Harmless’ bottle rocket. Anyway no one else is shooting them off” He says this as sub-professional grade mortars and large skyrockets are going off around us.
LittleJoe is in such a rage that his pants have turned purple; he moves to take the cop. In his blinding rage, he forgets that we are on a hillside filled with holes. He steps in one, loosing his balance and falls to the ground hitting his head. The cop jumps on his back and handcuffs him before he can come to. Putting away his asp, he pulls his side arm to make sure the rest of us don’t decide to assist our friend. Using his radio, he attempts to call for back up. The power lines and towers prevent a signal from being transponded.

The rest of us just sit back and watch. Since children were present we didn’t want them to get hurt incase Barney Fife gets scared. After about 5 minutes of trying to raise backup he finally gets through to a dispatcher. She advises the cop that there is no back up. All the other Cherry Valley Units are out setting off bottle Rockets they had confiscated from the public. Realizing that he was missing the fun, he gently wakes LittleJoe up and says, “If you promise not to fight I’ll just take your information and the bottle rockets and be on my way.” LittleJoe told the cop he wouldn’t fight. He gave him his name and information. I gave the cop all the bottle rockets that where left in plain sight. He asked me, “Is this all of them?” I responded with, “Of course officer.” He takes a quick look over the area spies some fountains that where sitting out. He walks over toward them.

Grau’s eldest spawn is freaking out that the cop is going to take his fireworks. Grau assures the cop that those are legal fireworks bought here in Illinois. They where just smoke bombs and fountains. The cop looks them over and decides he doesn’t want to light those off and leaves them as he departs the area. After the cop leaves, we are all joking about the entire incident and I pointed out to my friends that laughed at me about not hiding all the fireworks that it worked. He took about $5.00 worth of bottle rockets and left the $70.00 worth of skyrockets, and he still did a quick search.

This all happened by 8:50. They didn’t start the main display until almost 9:45. For the first time in many years, I wasn’t too impressed with the display. They seemed to do all of the same style of fireworks together instead of spreading them out. I thought it would look better if they broke them up more. Clone really enjoyed the fireworks. This is his first year that he actually cared to pay attention to them. I’m glad he enjoyed it, because he had spent most of the weekend being sick. He had been puking Saturday, Sunday and Monday. (No, it had nothing to do with this incident! He didn’t drink any alcohol! People please!) He finally snapped out of his funk around 6:00 and was really into playing and having fun by the time we left for the show.

*Some of the details regarding the cop have been exaggerated and may not be 100% accurate.