The Years of Living Dangerously, When Fireworks Were a Blast

Kids, do not try this at home. Besides, getting arrested isn't as much fun. (By David Mcnew -- Getty Images)

Lynn is manning the booth with fellow Georgia schoolteacher Jason Skoczylas. They're both in their thirties. They agree fireworks are not to be played with, that they are potentially dangerous things. Safety first.

"But do I remember bottle rocket fights, Roman candle wars?" says Lynn. "Of course! I remember this one time, we were raking leaves and some of these fireworks were still in there and they started going off, and one of the Jumping Jacks came outta there, caught this girl's hair on fire. Wow. Kids do stupid stuff."

Sure, says Skoczylas. Like firing bottle rockets straight down in a pond of clear water, listening for the burp of the explosion.

"You'd see some of the fish get knocked around," he said, "but putting firecrackers in mailboxes, with the mail still in them? No, that would be wrong . That would be a federal offense. "

There are giggles around the booth.

"So you never did that?"

"Of course not."

Giggles again.

Anybody over 30 knows one of these stories. The cherry bomb in the school toilet, the kid with the finger blown off, the bottle rocket that went in the chimney. Some of them are actually true, and today, they're trotted out only as stern, cautionary tales.

But how pervasive and fond the memory, the playing outside in the late dusk, the fireflies and bottle rockets and the blue-black of the sky descending, the flash of fireworks overhead, in your own yard. Perhaps it was no more an American summer than now. Still, in the half-light of memory, the danger of it all seems so safe.