To the editor:

With constant articles in the news regarding towns and their struggle with how to deal with the issue of “fireworks,” I feel it’s certainly time to weigh in.

I grew up back in the 1950s and ’60s in Pennsylvania and New Jersey in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Neither state allowed fireworks other than sparklers.

When I was about 13, my brother came back from Canada with a whole box of assorted fireworks, which I managed to detonate within a couple of weeks.

The neighbors and also my parents didn’t seem to mind the noise as I and friends lit them off. On one occasion, I lit a large firecracker and threw it into a strong gust of wind, whereby it caused the short fuse to burn more quickly and I didn’t quite get it released before it exploded.

My left ear rang for days and my fingers were numb and burnt for days also. I didn’t dare tell the parents for fear that they would confiscate the remainder.

Plus, I just felt “stupid.” The next year I was staying at my grandmother’s cottage out in Hampton Bays, Long Island, New York, for a few weeks. Of course being a lover of fireworks, I had a supply with me. They were “ladyfingers,” which are tiny firecrackers, but they resulted in catching the woods on fire behind the cottage.

Luckily, as I ate dinner, I could see the smoke and flames out the window and ran! The hose just reached the topmost flames in the tree and I extinguished the fire, but was just barely able to.

I was very ashamed of the incident and had much explaining to do with all of the charred bushes and trees.

Push the clock ahead to age 19, when I had just returned from Expo 67 in Canada, with, of course, another box of fireworks. This time a “friend” (?) lit a Roman Candle and decided to chase me with it. He hit me with a few of the flaming balls and it was quite frightening at the time.

I look back at it now as a sort of “Keystone Cops” antic and can laugh at how it must have looked. These three incidents come quickly to mind but there are many others.

I doubt adolescent boys of today are much different, given the elements of danger and excitement that many of us love at that age.

Having moved up to Maine about 34 years ago and raising two sons of my own, I didn’t give them the freedoms around fireworks that I had.

Maine legislators, in my opinion, have done a real disservice by passing this “fireworks” legislation, allowing fireworks and their use in this state. With how few you’d hear going off even around the Fourth of July, I felt that Mainers and the local police departments had a good handle on fireworks.

I got through adolescence with all my fingers, eyes and most of my hearing intact, and I hope all who use them have the same good fortune. But the odds of injuries due to the use of them, I’m afraid, will definitely go up substantially in the state.

David M. Puff,
Arrowsic

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