Up until I was in my early teens, the 4th of July usually meant going to Grandma and Grandpa Heyne's house in Manhattan, Kansas. It's the Little Apple. It's a small town. When college is in session, it's bigger than it seems. Kansas State University resides there and adds tens of thousands to the population during the spring and fall sessions. But in the summer, it's still a rather small town. In the 70s and early 80s, it was even smaller.

The gathering always meant fun--but sometimes tense fun. While my brothers and I were allowed to buy fireworks from stands in Manhattan (usually just cones, sparklers, snakes, lady fingers and "tomatoes"), my uncles George and Robert would bring heavy duty stuff. Uncle George always bought a ton of bottle rockets because they were legal in a few of the states he and his family drove through to get to the festivities. There was always this big bag of fireworks we'd never see get shot off. My Grandpa would not allow the use of bottle rockets at his house. My cousins told us they'd stop on the side of the road on the way back to Minnesota to shoot off all the illegals.

Bottle rockets were the demons of fireworks. Sometime in the past (before any of us cousins were born, probably before any of my uncles or mom left home), a bottle rocket had set someone's roof on fire. This was enough for the permanent ban on bottle rockets by my grandparents. That and they were illegal in Kansas.

Later, when I was a teenager, my friends and I would buy tons of bottle rockets in New Mexico (where they are still legal, I think). We'd have bottle rocket wars. Run out into the fields, light and throw them at each other. Our bottle rocket wars never set anything on fire. Cones, on the other hand, have tipped over and started brush fires a few times. Older people still like cones, though. They're pretty and mostly predictable if they stay standing. But no bottle rockets when I was a kid.

One of Grandpa's neighbors had old firecrackers from way back when. We never knew how old they actually were, but they were much more powerful than anything we could buy. The test was easy. Get an empty tin can. Put a firecracker on the ground, put the tin can over it so only the wick was showing, light the sucker and run. New firecrackers shot them about fifteen feet in the air. Those old firecrackers popped the fuckers at least fifty feet up. They were like gunshots. They were Zebras, striped black and white. They are no more.

Another time, Uncle Robert brought a couple bricks of Black Cat firecrackers. A brick has a thousand crackers all strung together so you could light them all at once. Or you could take it apart and shoot them off one at a time. At the beginning of the afternoon of noise, we were popping them rather piecemeal. A few hours later, it didn't look like we'd used many of them at all. So we started shooting off more and more at the same time. At the end of the night, there was still a whole brick untouched. Uncle Robert--to the consternation of his mom--wanted to see what it was like to shoot the whole thing off. As I remember, it was pretty cool. Maybe not worth the price of a thousand firecrackers, but not bad, nonetheless.

My mom and grandma were very cautious when it came to firework activity. They both always brought up the bottle rocket/roof on fire story every time we pressed to use some. They didn't like firecrackers (too loud and unexpected since we'd just light them and walk away without telling anyone lots of times). There are these little pink fireworks that spin and throw off light. I'm not sure what they're actually called, but we always referred to them as "tomatoes." Tomatoes are somewhat unpredictable at times as well. If, while spinning, they hit an irregularity in the cement, they can jump. Well, one of those bad boys jumped into the face of one of my younger cousins one year. She was fine, just a little startled. But that was enough. We had to sneak the use of tomatoes for a while--they had become part of the banned weapons of mass destruction list.

This year the immediate family on my mom's side is getting together in Manhattan, Kansas for the first time in years. Grandpa is gone (the last time we were all together was at his funeral in 1997). Grandma is getting up there in years. There is a great-grandchild now and another one on the way. Almost all of the cousins are 21 or older. A few are married or with significant others. Most of us are going to be staying at a hotel instead of at the house, but otherwise, it's like a family reunion.

And it's all my fault. As I tell people at work, my family decided to listen to one of my drunken pronouncements. Namely that we should all get together again before Grandma dies. Tact is not always my cup of tea. But listen they did, and I suggested the 4th of July. It was always the scene of my favorite memories at G'ma and G'pa Heyne's.

It's about family, fireworks and freedom. The freedom to drive across four states, buy some fireworks and try not to burn down the backyard. It should be fun.

Matt Worley hasn't ever lost a limb to fireworks, even when they went off in his hands.