January 3, 2009:
"Eggie farts!"
We discovered them in the playground one Fifth of July: small round balls of phosphorous, incompletely burned, fallen from the sky.
Yesterday, of course, had been the annual Independence Day fest at the Recreation Center. Families on blankets on the grass, barbecuing hot dogs, drinking beer, waiting for sunset and fireworks, straining their necks staring straight up, at the rockets' red glare bursting overhead.
The neighborhood kids had a better vantage, away from the crowds, all to ourselves. We sat on garage rooftops, or sometimes in tall trees, a block or two from the Park. From there we could see perfectly, so that one year someone, probably me, realized that in fact the fireworks were not bursting directly above the crowd. The event planners were firing them at a slight angle, so that they exploded next door over the empty grammar school playground.
Why would they do that?
Well - to make sure that nobody got burned by falling pieces of fireworks, quite likely.
Which meant that there would probably be fallen pieces of unspent fireworks in the playground the next morning.
Over the tall fence, the lot of us, neighborhood kids, first thing after dawn, before anyone, carrying brown sandwich bags, sifting through the sand. Filling bag after bag with smelly little tarballs of highly flammable chemicals.
Burn them on the sidewalks for weeks after. Matches. Careful! When they light, they light suddenly, shooting silver or gold or green or red sparks high as car tops, glittering, sputtering, occasionally exploding, leaving a smell just like methane wafting down the block. "Eggie farts!", little Nancy called it.
Our annual game, the eggie fart game, year after year. Just us, the only kids in town with our own private firework stash, completely free, as the good things always are.