Don’t Leave Before The Fireworks
Slingin' Black Cats in strip mall parking lots and the warm glow of gunpowder from the bed of a pickup truck
Each week, a menu of sorts, around a revolving theme. This week: working with fireworks.
If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Suppertime! I promise to feed you only once a week, and never after midnight.
Ingredient List
🎵 : A playlist of some of my favorite fireworks songs, and also some songs I’ve really been loving this month. “Bootleg Firecracker” by Middle Kids, “Northstar” by Richy Mitch & the Coal Miners, “Bones Shake” by Hazlett, and “Dary Vacay” by Cigarettes After Sex, plus a handful more.
📖 : Really enjoyed the following piece on motherhood, which is also how I feel about fatherhood. This line is just an absolute chef’s kiss: “When we are young, we believe ourselves to be outstanding. But very few of us actually are; the rest of us are mostly delusional.”
“How Motherhood Liberated Me,” by Raina Raskin for The Free Press
I also recommend this fantastic profile on the two men who will be representing the United States in the marathon distance at this summer’s Olympic Games. Conner Mantz and Clayton are best friends and training partners, and their cooperation before and during the Olympic Trials got them to the start line in Paris.
“Close Friends, Competing for Coveted Olympic Spots. Who Would Make It?” by Talya Minsberg for The New York Times
🎧 : My new favorite podcast is “Search Engine,” hosted by PJ Vogt, who has risen from the ashes of Gimlet Media’s purge during the late-stage cancel culture pandemic of 2021, when the beautifully wrought “Reply All” (still one of the greatest podcasts ever) was brought down by a band of self-serving mutineers. Last week’s episode was a deep dive into trigger warnings, and the research that’s showing how they might be doing the opposite of what they intended (shocker).
This Past Week
Finally feeling like my running legs are getting back under me after the Boston Marathon. Felt good to get going again. We had a group run on Thursday night with Believe Run Club and Mizuno, where we got to test out the all-new Mizuno Neo Vista which will likely be one of my favorite running shoes this year. Rye came along for the 5K run, so that was nice to run with him through the city. As a family, baseball games took up most of Saturday morning and early afternoon, but we did manage to get out later for a 12-mile bike ride on the NCR Trail north of Baltimore. As usual, I underestimated the total distance (thought it was 10), so the last couple miles were a bit slow for Jonas, but I was super proud of him for finishing strong.
A few other things I wrote and/or edited this week:
“The Best Running Shoes of 2024 (So Far)” for Believe in the Run
“Pavement to Path: 10 Runners’ Favorite City Trails” for Huckberry (my pick for best trail outside of D.C.)
You should also watch this incredibly well-done recap of our weekend at The Boston Marathon
I also contribute to The Drop, a weekly email from Believe in the Run, where I round-up running news and stories in a generally sarcastic manner. You can subscribe here.
And now, onto the dinner service.
Course 1
A Word of Gratitude: Whisker Biscuits
There are two things in pop culture that may have defined my life more than anything else: reading “On The Road,” by Jack Kerouac in high school (thanks, Dan Poppy) and watching David Spade. My restlessness and desire to find whatever else is out there, just over that mountain or past that river bend, found a place to call home in the former. My overall sense of dry humor and sarcasm was certainly seeded by late-’90s SNL, but for sure felt most aligned with Joe Dirt.
Since I was born and raised on fireworks, both of my favorite parts of those two things have to do with sparkly things that go boom in the sky.
So I’ll leave you with two of my favorite lines of poetry disguised as prose, from two of my favorite pop culture icons: Sal Paradise and Joe Dirt.
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'" - “On The Road,” Jack Kerouac
And then, Joe Dirt, from “Joe Dirt”:
Joe Dirt : So you're gonna tell me that you don't have no black cats, no Roman Candles, or screaming mimis?
Kicking Wing : No.
Joe Dirt : Oh come on, man. You got no lady fingers, fuzz buttles, snicker bombs, church burners, finger blasters, gut busters, zippity do das, or crap flappers?
Kicking Wing : No, I don't.
Joe Dirt : “You're gonna stand there, ownin' a fireworks stand, and tell me you don't have no whistlin' bungholes, no spleen splitters, whisker biscuits, honkey lighters, hoosker doos, hoosker don'ts, cherry bombs, nipsy daisers, with or without the scooter stick, or one single whistlin' kitty chaser?”
Also, here’s my favorite Halloween costume of all time, which Kimi and I wore back in the day for Halloween in Fells Point, where I freely handed out bottle rockets to random passerby. It was also the last night I ever smoked a cigarette, so I guess it was just snakes and sparklers for me from then on.
And for that I am grateful.
Course 2
Appetizer: Raspberries & Vanilla Ice Cream
When I say I was born and raised on fireworks, I mean it. They seemed ever-present at holidays, and just in general, especially at my grandparents’ house: quarter sticks of dynamite on top of a cabinet in my grandpa’s garage, Black Cats hid in change jars inside the house, Roman candles in the same closet as the shotguns.
If there was something to celebrate, there was an explosion to go with it. Sometimes in your hand if you caught a short fuse on a firecracker. Put your fingers in a Tupperware cup of cold water and you’ll be good.
Because my grandpa worked at a truck stop, he was able to easily deal in contraband passing through central Pennsylvania off I-81. Meaning, even though real fireworks were illegal in our state, he was still able to procure everything that made the independence of our country worth celebrating. Long after authentic M-80s were banned, he still procured them. It was only a few years ago that I blew up his last quarter stick and the thump in your chest made you feel like a teenager on prom night.
Between him and my uncle who would travel to Myrtle Beach for vacation and stop at South of the Border, we had a legit supply of things that explode.
As was tradition for most holidays, every Fourth of July we’d all go to my grandparents’ house for a summer picnic. My grandpa would grill, the kids would play and drink as much Surge as possible, the parents would sit on the breezeway or in chairs at the top of the driveway. Early July is peak raspberry season, which meant fresh-picked berries from the field, topping off a bowl of vanilla ice cream churned by my uncle’s ice cream machine. It seemed like something rich people should have but they probably didn’t.
The fireflies would always beat us to the punch when it came to lighting things up, but soon after they started popping off, the first of the fireworks would come out. Replicating the order of events of Christmas Day, the kids would open their presents first. In this case, snakes and sparklers, spinners and tanks, fountains and willow trees.
I never really knew when the real fireworks started. My grandpa would kind of sneak into and out of the garage, grab a blowtorch and a Roman candle, and it was off to the races. Suddenly, it was all happening.
Whistling and non-whistling bottle rockets, bamboo bangers, M-80s (great), M-90s (good), M-150s (disappointing). Strings of Black Cats, mortars thumping and bumping before splashing the sky with colors that can only be painted by the middle elements of the periodic table. One year, my uncle welded some crazy cannon together which was like a fancy potato gun that could shoot a tennis ball out of it. I think mostly it was just a receptacle to pour black powder, which– when lit– was an authentic audio replica of an actual Civil War cannon. It was awesome.
Two thousand years after the Chinese figured out how to combine potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur, the combination of all those things together still creates wonder and excitement and love. It almost unequivocally brings us all together. Which is why you can ban TikTok all you want, but if you take the greatest Chinese invention away from me and my kin, you’ll see a real cultural revolution.
After our fireworks were the real real fireworks, which meant we’d ride in the back of my grandpa’s pickup truck on windy back roads into Hershey for the big show. Those kinds of fireworks displays seem ubiquitous now, every Friday after minor league ballgames and such, but they were a once-a-year event back then. The cool air when you dip into the valleys, the wind whipping your voice out the back as you hang onto the side rails going over the bumps. A bunch of kids and cousins in the open bed of a Ford Lariat, and we didn’t die.
We just lived a little, and sometimes a lot.
Course 3
The Main: Arby’s Roastburger
Out of all the jobs and side hustles I’ve had throughout my life, there’s only one that seemed to fulfill my destiny outright: running a fireworks stand. An eleven-day long stint that paid $2,000 to live 24 hours a day in a tent full of explosives in the dog days of summer. On my Facebook page, I have an album from that time, and the description of it reads: “Hellish days, heavenly nights.”
Because that’s exactly what it was.
At the time, I was on tour for half the year making a total of no money, so my actual existence depended on waiting tables and picking up random side hustles that floated my way while we were home. When I say side hustles, I mean any and all.
I’m still not sure how I heard that Keystone Fireworks was hiring hands for the peak week leading up to Independence Day, but I was sure that guaranteed money was the best money, and I submitted my application as soon as I found out. And by application, here was my email:
“Hi, I'm very interested in being a tent operator for the 2009 season. I'm a college graduate with great communication and math skills and am hard working.”
That was it, that got me in. I don’t think they cared if I was the “fired” or “work” part of fireworks, they just needed a body in a tent on pavement that could open and close a cash register for a week and a half.
Here were the basics of the job: Run a fireworks tent for 11 days leading up to and the day after the July 4th holiday. You set up and take down the entire contents of the tent at the beginning and the end. Someone must stay at the tent for the entire time, which is just a large, rectangle circus-style tent with flaps on the side. This means sleeping inside the tent to guard it from would be thieves. For this reason, some operators carried.
Every morning, you will pull up the sides of the tent and every night you will close it up. Operating hours are from 8 a.m. until 9 p.m. At the end of the day, you will count the bank and sleep with the money and someone will collect it the next morning. Repeat for the duration of the job.
The first (and lowest) hurdle was finding a friend to split the duties with me, since staying 24 hours a day with no shower/bathroom breaks/air conditioning seemed slightly unreasonable. That was easy, because 75% of my band was living below the poverty line. Luke, our lead singer, was always as desperate as me, so he was a shoo-in. The addition of another team member, however, split my original $2,000 in half. Still good money at the time, but it stung a little bit. Turns out, there are many more ways to make money at a fireworks stand than selling what’s in the fireworks stand.
Before I get to that, if you’re interested in running a fireworks stand, there are a few things you should know.
First, you won’t get to sell the good stuff. All of the fireworks in these roadside tents are just sucker bets for poseur pyromaniacs. All ground-based stuff, nothing aerial. Basically a hundred takes on the same fountain– some bigger, some smaller, some with crackles and some with pops. Some champagne supernovas, some green hornets. Of course, snakes, sparklers, and spinners.
It is hot. Like, so hot. It’s a life lived on pavement, in the beginning of July. Sitting in lawn chairs by a cash register, under a tent, on the fringe of a strip mall parking lot beside a four-lane highway.
It is boring. Especially for the first few days, when you average two customers per hour.
There is virtually no oversight. It is your tent and you can do whatever you want as long as the count stays right and the stock is on point.
Which means, yeah– it was fun. A lot of fun, if you want it to be.
We had to entertain ourselves, of course. Reading took up the early parts of our days; I read Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” in record time. We had iPhones at the time, but I think it was before there was anything worth wasting time on. We mostly just recruited our friends to come and hang out. Which meant that every night, after the tent closed up, we’d basically throw parties, drink beers, and hang out in the small strip of grass next to the tent. The first year (oh yeah, I did this job more than once) we had friends bring a TV over that we would hook up to our touring van where we’d play competitive, outdoor games of Nintendo Wii. Apparently the grass was infested with chiggers (a name that sounds 100% illegal, but is somehow not), a biting mite that gave Luke a skin rash that lasted for years. In a way, it was the most backwoods tattoo you could get to remember our time under the tent. The second year was more fun, with nightly games of competitive wiffleball that are still some of my favorite memories from that summer.
Of course, after the party was the sleep inside the tent part, which… we just didn’t do. Instead, we rolled our tour van next to the tent, opened up the side doors and slept on the homemade bunk beds inside, hoping it’d be enough to deter any would-be thieves. Apparently, it was, though it was probably the gallon jugs full of piss that did it.
We basically gave each other one vacation night a week, where Luke could go home to Hanover or I could go to Kimi’s house (see the Dessert section for more info on that). We mostly lived off food my mom would bring to us, or an Arby’s scam we had going on at the time, where we could basically get unlimited free sandwiches of a new Roastburger they were promoting at the time.
Money was scarce until that Independence wealth hit our bank accounts, which is why we needed to figure out how to make more of it. The first, and most obvious one, was a tip jar. This was before Square for baristas or suggested tips for the clerk at a board game store, who is actually the owner of the store (for real, this happened to me). In a way, I blame myself for starting this never-ending charity drive for useless employees. Because I was one of them. Look, I get it– free money is as good as any. If a customer is dumb enough to put a tip into a jar for a guy sitting in a lawn chair at a fireworks tent, well– they deserve to be fleeced. It wasn’t much, but $12 a day was a case of Keystone Light, and we were paid employees for Keystone Fireworks, so it only seemed right to raise a toast to Keith Stone at the end of every workday.
The second way to make money is to take advantage of the people asking for “the good stuff.” Always some dad from New Jersey, thinking it was a clever line. Definitely the kind of guy who asked the delivery room doc to put an extra stitch in for him. For the first year, I was nice. I’d always direct the “good stuff” guys down the road, to a place that did indeed sell the good stuff and at good prices, as long as you had an out-of-state license.
Year two, I was done with being the nice guy. There was a whole potassium nitrate pie out there and I wanted a slice of it. Of course, I didn’t have an out-of-state license at the time, so I couldn’t get my hands on anything good on short notice. But my girlfriend, soon-to-be fiancee, now wife, lived in Maryland. Without telling her exactly what was going on (I mean, federal law has some gray areas), I gave her a laundry list of fireworks and sent her to the large shed across the street from the Holiday Inn in Grantville, Pennsylvania. She was nervous and had no idea what she was looking for, but she did good– bringing us back a $400 assortment of firecrackers, Roman candles, bottle rockets, and more.
Soon after, the first Long Island dad rolled into our outlaw office.
“So where’s the good stuff?” he’d guffaw.
“What are you looking for?” we’d say surreptitiously, catching him off-guard.
“Ya know, stuff you can shoot in the air, loud stuff,” he’d say, quietly but more seriously this time.
“Follow me.”
So he would, to the trunk of my car, where I’d proceed to sell him fireworks at 100-200% markup from what he could buy ten miles down the road. I mean, my cover letter did say I was good with math skills. Eventually, I told Kimi how I muled her out for black market fireworks, but by that time she was already pot committed to me. She knew the deal.
Eleven days really pushed the limit for living in a tent surrounded by explosives in the deadest days of a Mid-Atlantic summer. I had done six week tours with Luke, riding in a van with him every day and sleeping next to him on a floor every night for weeks on end, but I don’t think I ever wanted to be away from him more than at the end of that week. At one point, I could feel his hatred for me after I won a $5 bet that Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights was the same guy in the Battleship movie. If it was a $10 bet, he probably would’ve killed me. That’s how strong our friendship was.
But we did it. And we did it again.
Two go-getting businessmen who knew how to survive in the harshest reaches of strip mall parking lots, who hustled their way to tip jar wealth, all while managing not to blow up several hundred thousand dollars of fireworks, despite smoking cigarettes ten feet away from an entire mountain of explosives.
Course 4
Dessert: Korean Kimchi
In honor of Mother’s Day (which should be every day, especially in our house), here’s an ode to the firecracker that stole my heart: my wife, Kimi. Undeniably, she is what keeps this flotilla of driftwood sailing through the seas.
Our story is a peculiar one, probably one that deserves more than the end of this newsletter. I’ll keep it short for now.
We had dated a year when I was graduating college, but then broke up for four years while I lived out my nomadic dreams. I always thought that someday we’d get back together– maybe in my thirties, maybe in my sixties. Someday, somehow, whenever our currents would cross again.
Then one night in June, fifteen years ago, while I was sleeping in a van outside a fireworks tent, Kimi was writing me a letter. In email form, meant to be saved as a draft. Except instead of hitting save, she hit send, and here we are with two kids in a house in Baltimore, two completely different people from who we were then, still trying to figure it out.
I won’t divulge all the details of that letter, though it was far more eloquent than our Dashboard Confessional-ish correspondences from a few years before that. But in re-reading it for the first time in probably a decade, I just loved this line, because it is a thread that’s connected us for the last two decades.
“your writing has always moved me because it obviously represents you and who you are, so ultimately, you've always moved me. i remember thinking that this is the way i love to be loved, through words like this, through gifts like this.”
I honestly think I let her down in that regard for much of the time since then. I let my words fall off, the dust gathering on pens and keyboards, mostly stuff bouncing around in my head but never saying how I feel. I’m trying to love you more, and I hope you hear it through these words. You’re the most incredible person and mother and friend, and for how many people know me, I wish they knew you more.
A final thanks to the written word, for being the blowtorch to the fuse that set off a cherry bomb in the darkness of my life. The show has been spectacular, I hope it lasts through the night.
End of Menu
Thank you for dining with me this evening, I hope the service was acceptable. Tips (whether monetary or recommendations to others) are appreciated, but not expected.
To be seen and appreciated by the one you love for the thing you do that is likely one of the most important things in your life is truly a gift.
Also, blowing shit up is still fun.
Loved it, Robbe.