The day after the 4^th of July. I had an 8 AM doctor appointment in North Manchester. As I walked into the office there was a bottle rocket laying on the sidewalk. The back end was burned from the rocket part, but the tip was not exploded. So, a dud. The thing that bothered me was that it was there, right in town. Whoever had fired it off had little concern for others who might be out walking or enjoying the evening. I started to feel a little angry, and then I thought about my own youthful fascination with firecrackers.

          I wasn’t always the serious and mature person I am now.

          When I grew up in Ohio, fireworks were illegal. I had a cousin who would occasionally get his hands on some, but mostly we had nothing. But, when I went to college in Chattanooga, Tennessee I discovered that fireworks were legal throughout that state. At almost every exit on every interstate there was a fireworks store. The first time I walked into one of these emporiums loud joy, I was blown away (no pun intended). Not only were there firecrackers, which to me were exotic, but there were bottle rockets and sky rockets and snakes and Roman candles and all kinds of other explosive things. One of my favorites was a little military tank that, when lit, would shoot out a series of small, exploding balls until the tank itself exploded. Oh my! What fun! And there were virtually no restrictions. You had to be at least 18 to buy the Space Master, which was a huge rocket that looked as though it might reach space, but that was it. Little kids could buy stuff. In most places, the only thing they watched out for were people smoking. That could have created a problem.

          I went home from college the summer of 1975 and got married. Within a week of our marriage Marsha and I were headed back to Tennessee. It was on that trip that Marsha began to realize she had married an idiot. We crossed the line into Tennessee at Jellico, Kentucky and I immediately wanted to find an exit. I knew Marsha would be as excited about the abundance of fireworks as I was, so you can imagine how shocked I was when I found out different. She was shocked at the prices. She was shocked at how easy it was for kids to buy stuff. She was shocked about my attitude toward the fireworks. In the end, I bought a little bundle of bottle rockets. My days of space exploration came to an abrupt end.

          I had my moments. Once in a while I would run up the highway and stop and get a sky rocket, then take it to an old little league field and shoot it off from the pitcher’s mound. But then one day one got away from me and wound up hitting a cow in the neighboring pasture. That was my last pitcher’s mound excursion. Another time the bride and I stopped at a popular ice cream stand. This particular evening it was crazy crowded, so the cars were parked in rows. Right in front of us was an older man and woman. They were enjoying the soft breeze and their ice cream treat when a Sky Blaster flew across the parking lot. A Sky Blaster was a bottle rocket, but it was about 10 times bigger than a regular bottle rocket. You can’t really aim a bottle rocket, so I am pretty sure the shooter didn’t mean for the rocket to go into the older couple’s car, but it did. It made it into the backseat and then was unable to escape. So, it rocketed all around the backseat until it exploded, filling the car with noise and fire and smoke. Marsha was outraged, and I felt bad for the folks in the car, but there was still a part of my brain saying, “That was so COOL!”

          By the time I was in my second year of seminary, however, I had settled down. I was involved in the serious business of preparing for the ministry. I was also involved in the serious business of working a full-time job. I was also involved in the serious business of pastoring a small church in the country. I had no time for the foolishness of fireworks. Until the Russian Air Force shot down a Japanese civilian air liner.

          My preaching course in seminary (called Homiletics, or the planning, preparation and presentation of a sermon) was a two-year course. I was working really hard at it, mostly because I wasn’t very good. Our professor told us at the beginning that no one had ever gotten a final grade better than 95%, and that was just one person in the 30 years the professor had been teaching. Most of us, he assured us, would fail and we would have to take the two-year course again. As I said, I wasn’t very good, so I took a speech class as well. This in addition to the full scholastic load. Working full time, more than the normal school load and pastoring. I was numb and was making stupid decisions. When the Russians shot the Japanese plane down I just happened to have a demonstration speech coming up with no idea what to do. My befuddled brain reverted to fireworks and I hatched a plan

          Killing innocent people is serious stuff. But, part time idiot that I can be, I decided to do a speech on people making their own jet fighters to combat the Russian menace. My idea was to take a toy balsa wood glider plane and tape a bottle rocket onto the back of it, creating a tiny rocket plane. Then I would light the fuse, toss the plane and it would take off. It would be funny, but we would present it with full seriousness. I say ‘we’ because I enlisted the help of my friend and next door neighbor, Dave, to assist me in this project. We were both in the same class and in return, I would help him in his speech. All the while we were putting the plane together I would be explaining the ‘technical’ aspects. We saw it as being funny.

          To prepare for this debacle we decided we needed to practice. We were in Florida, but very near to the Alabama line. In Florida at the time, you could set fireworks off if you had them, but buying them in Florida was illegal. Alabama, however, had no restrictions. So we went across the line and bought a bundle of bottle rockets (25 in a bundle as I recall) and 10 gliders and took them home to practice. We learned where to place the rocket on the plane for the best flight. Our first thought was to tape the stick to the front of the plane so that the rocket was about 9 inches in front of the plane. That worked nicely, but the rocket fire caught the balsa wood plane on fire. Kind of pretty shooting through the night sky, but impractical in a classroom setting. Then we taped the rocket to the rear of the plane, but that unbalanced the whole thing and it didn’t fly right. We settled on taping it in the middle. Gave good balance and good flight. The only problem was that the rocket would explode, destroying the plane. We decided that for the speech we would use a rocket that had the explosive tip cut out. The night before the speech found me sitting at the kitchen table with a pocket knife cutting the explosive tip out of a bottle rocket at midnight. It was painstaking work and I was exhausted after another full day of work and school. After I got the first one done I decided to do a second just to have the back-up. I cut away the paper and was ready to cut into the rocket, but I was so tired I decided to stop. I didn’t stop to think that both rockets were cut in the same way, but only one had no exploding tip. As it was, they looked pretty much the same. In the morning I put both rockets into my briefcase along with the other things I needed for my ‘jet’ and left the house.

          Five speeches were give a day. Mine would be number five. The first two were quick and easy and boring, so it was OK. The third one was a former police officer in Miami who announced he was going to demonstrate the correct way to handle a service revolver. He was a big man, and absolutely humorless. He pulled the gun from his holster and proceeded to wave it around as he talked. He broke it down, put it back together and loaded it, all in a careless fashion. He dropped the bullets and everyone jumped. He had everyone nervous. When he was done he took the holster off and placed gun and holster on the table in front of him after he sat down. The next person came up with a compound bow and proceeded to show everyone how to safely use a bow. It was actually a speech that was aimed at scaring the snot out of everyone, although that wasn’t intended as such. He finally set up a board with a balloon on it, went to the other side of the room, and loaded and shot an arrow at the balloon. The arrow stuck into the very edge of the board. He quickly took another arrow and fired it. It caught the edge of the board at an odd angle and shot off the board, hit the wall and landed next to one of our ladies. Her scream was quite impressive. Again, he pulled another and quickly shot, while the professor was shouting at him to stop. This arrow got the balloon with a loud pop. He went and got his board and arrows and sat down.

          Everyone was more than a little shaken by this time. My speech was next. The professor said, “Mr. Wade, if you kindly bring us back to earth, I would appreciate it.” Dave and I went forward and I started the speech. I explained what I was doing while Dave put the contraption together. (Somewhere Dave had gotten hold of a lab coat, so he looked like a tech. at least.) The problem was I hadn’t shown Dave which rocket had the exploding tip taken out. They looked the same, so he just picked one. Then, while I held it, Dave lit the fuse.

The idea was to give it a gentle toss and when the rocket ignited it would streak across the room, hitting the far wall and fizzing out. But I was a little nervous and I threw it too hard. It left my hand and started to climb. When the rocket lit the plane was already a little off balance, so instead of streaking off it began to cartwheel through the air, completely out of control. The rocket was making a pretty pinwheel of fire as it hissed sideways across the room. The lady who had screamed before when the arrow landed next to her screamed again as the spinning ball of fire buzzed over her head. It went right to the former Miami police office, hit him in the head, fell to the table and nosed into the revolver so that fire spewed all over his crisp white shirt and black tie. Everyone immediately thought it would set a bullet off, then the rocket exploded. Even the men screamed. The professor wound up under the table he was at. The policeman’s shirt and tie were smoking. Dave and I were the only ones not freaking out, but that was only because we could see our seminary careers going up, literally, in smoke.

As it turned out, the professor thought it was hilarious. He even bought the cop a new shirt and tie. Dave and I had created a new school legend and I got an ‘A’. And best of all, It was so COOL!