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The Years of Living Dangerously, When Fireworks Were a Blast
"The snake? That thing that goes round and round, leaves the black mark on the driveway for two months?"
"Yes, you remember! That's the one."
  Kids, do not try this at home. Besides, getting arrested isn't as much fun. (By David Mcnew -- Getty Images) 
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"I dunno, Ms. Thompson. I always thought fireworks, they had to go up in the air, bottle rockets and such, you buy the gross of them, the whole string of firecrackers, you light the end and fling it and bapabapabap . Something has to go boom ."
She's nodding. Her daughter, manning the tent with her, is sound asleep in a lawn chair, slumped back in the seat, a plastic bottle in the cup holder, a thin line of perspiration on her forehead.
"It used to be like that, back in the day when we were kids. I grew up here in D.C., in Southeast, and it was like that. Everybody would come over to our house. We'd do the grill, the cookout, you know, and then it would get dark and we'd do the fireworks. Over here, you're up on the hill. So you could just come out in the street, something like Pennsylvania, and then you could see the fireworks downtown. It was real nice, your family around and everything."
A few miles away, a young mother named Monica Townes is buying fireworks at the big TNT Fireworks stand at the intersection of New York Avenue and Bladensburg Road NE. She's looking to entertain her three kids.
"I want things that go up in the air, like at the monument," she's explaining.
"This one go up?" She's holding a flashy package called "The Chimes of Freedom" for the salesman to see.
He shakes his head no.
"What these do?" This, the aforementioned Red Devil.
A bunch of things, says the salesman, a schoolteacher from Georgia named James Lynn, manning the booth for his dad, who owns it. They make flashes, go snap , crackle , pop .
Townes spends about $50, but with nothing headed skyward. She leaves, frustrated. Customers come and go. The traffic on New York Avenue is deafening. Only a few hours till the Fourth now.