Hoorah for the Red, White,'n Blue.....

As ever’one with access to a telly or newspaper knows, California is burning....durn near the ‘hull State, I guess..
over a thousand fires ‘n counting.....and the Fourth of July is upon us......that grand and glorious day when we celebrate the birth of our nation with the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air, ectcetera ad infinitum..
Back in my way back when time, which Cary Heather assures me she never tires of...(‘n I almost believe her)
we had ‘real’ fireworks.....not the sissy kind of stuff that you find t’day.....the cheapest firecrackers were, I think, Doughboy.....they had a picture of a World War I so’jer on ‘em and they were capable of blowing off a finger, or maybe a hand....we had, ‘n I forget the name, little round balls that looked like red marbles....y’could throw ‘em ‘n they’d explode on impact...very satisfying....
but the creme de la creme of backyard fireworks wuz Roman Candles....they were magnificent...they were a long tube ‘n they shot balls of different colored flame....
y’could shoot ‘em into the air or....y’could have fights with them ‘n shoot at each other....Back then, the Fourth of July actually lasted for several weeks, beginning with the sound of an isolated firecracker going off becuz someone just cudn’t wait any longer...over the next two weeks or so, it built to a crescendo of absolutely magnificent proportions culminating on the evening of the actual Fourth.....On that evening, the road bordering the Ohio River wud be packed with automobiles and families on blankets, all waiting for it to get dark enuff for the fireworks to erupt over Ol Man River....
And did they ever.....the nite sky wuz filled with vivid colors....fireworks formed pictures....the big one being the Stars ‘n Stripes....It went on for hours ‘n hours, well....maybe I exaggerate a little bit, but I wuz awful young way back then ‘n I’m talking about a time just after World War II when the ‘hull country wuz maybe just a little giddy and ever’thing seemed possible....
Anyway, Arnold (we call our gov by his first name) asked the people of California not to buy fireworks this year becuz of the unprecedented fire danger....I tho’t it wuz a reasonable request but everybody didn’t think so....
Ya gotta love Brent Black of Sacramento.....the 26 year old lineman sez, “giving up fireworks is like, imposing on our freedom, (Dude) California is already highly regulated. It comes down to personal responsibility.”
“Right-t!”
It’s the driest year on record, the driest that I c’n recall since I arrived here in 1960.....With over a thousand fires burning in California, the smoke is so intense that millions of Californians have been forced to curtail their outdoor activities. This, in a State where from April to November, most of life is lived outdoors.
But, hey, there’s no reason to curb individual freedoms.
Arnold has the right and the power to impose a statewide ban on fireworks. He merely asked, with the fire danger so high, that Californians should not add to the danger by setting off unregulated fireworks.
The article mentioned that Arnold is only a naturalized citizen; how could he possibly understand how much joy is inherent in allowing an individual citizen to burn down his very own neighborhood? There must be something in the constitution that sez we don’t have to listen to unwanted advice.
"Hoorah for the Red, White, 'n Blue, for a duck may be sumbody's Mother....."