WITH A BANG!

As we head into the long July 4th weekend of 2008, people are doing the usual things: Trying to pack a week's work into four days, planning for picnics and luau at our beaches and parks, stocking up on refreshments and, for those who do the paperwork, buying the many types of fireworks still legal and available in Hawaii.

Fireworks have always been big here. I remember their whooshing, whistling and whomping from "small kid time." It has to do with the early arrival of the Chinese, who invented gunpowder and still use fireworks to celebrate just about anything. As I type this the pops and pows are jumping into the otherwise silent neighborhood. On occasions such as the Fourth, or New Year's Eve, the clatter turns into a steady din, and then the sustained roar of the bombs, rockets and other aerial explosions that drown the night in sound, leaving a metallic gunpowder hangover in the air for hours after, depending on the trade winds, or lack of them.

For a few days afterwards, the ground is littered with the detritus of celebration: Spent red firecracker wrappers, empty projectile shells, all the launch devices that caused the sky to light up in a panoply of pyrotechnics. And, there are always the fires and injuries caused by those playing with fire. In spite of endless public service announcements and best efforts by the great Honolulu Fire Department, people always do dumb and/or drunk things.

Things have settled down compared with decades past. Perhaps there's one too many war veteran not anxious to hear explosions of any type, never again. Maybe its because we've become more couch-bound potato chip eaters, stuck in a room, watching the flat screens that replaced "The Tube." And, of course, there are the fantastic annual celebrations televised from Boston's Charles River and Washington, D. C. to name two of the biggest.

Last night I viewed a one-hour documentary on our PBS-TV station. Everything about fireworks: Their history, first in China, then Italy. A British scientist explaining the basics; what causes which sound, which compounds create the variety of colors. The role of fireworks in societal, religious and national events. Gun powder is as rooted in civilization as bread and water now.

The TV show documented "The First Family of Fireworks," then, a corporation (with an explosive name) that produced lavish, precision spectacles and, also, a guy in Seattle, a web designer, who in his spare time becomes "Fire Boy." This dude spends weeks making hand-loaded fireworks, then attaches them to something that resembles a space suit, puts on the fireproof and heat-resistant inner wear worn by race drivers and blows it all up in a one-minute whirling, flaming, feverish dervish, during which he moves around like he's been given the all time "hot foot." The "only" real injury this fiery daredevil suffered, he said, was when a charge backfired on his neck.  "It felt like a blow torch for a few minutes," according to this missile-minded masochist.

Down at Kaneohe Marine Base the Fourth of July has become, over the years, literally, a big blast. The Marines do things right. The public is invited aboard the base, the biggest Marine installation outside North America. Entertainers of all types perform, and a really big show, in the sky lights up the night of the Fourth of July. On the "town side" of the island, Ala Moana Park is where it happens biggest. Thousands fill the beach, the park and the giant mall parking lot to watch the overhead spectacular.

Back in 1976, KGB Radio "launched" its first annual Sky Show. It was the one of the early major fireworks displays programmed to music broadcast to the 200,000-plus FM radios that blasted away in synch with the explosions. Now, according to the documentary I watched, no commercial fireworks show is done without meticulous computer programming calling the rapid-fire shots.

What blew me away the most, however, in watching the people, places and things in last night's film were daytime street scenes, which showed amongst all the activities, gas stations--and their signs. The price of gas was $2.17 a gallon. I couldn't get off that through the remainder of the program, waiting for the final credits. The show was made in 2002, six years ago. For sure a time when Americans got more bang for a buck.