The Fire Boss

On the 4th of July aka Independence Day there will be people celebrating all over America, cookouts galore, lots of burned hot dogs, burgers, steaks, and fireworks, yes there will be fireworks, but when it comes to the fireworks we have to be careful of burned fingers and worse, so without preaching I'll just ask everyone to be careful and enjoy your holiday safely.

Our celebration will include cooking out on the grill and listening to the fireworks go off around us later on, we don't buy fireworks anymore, they are illegal where we live, and even though it is so dry there will still be those who have fireworks anyway.

Some of our past experiences on the 4th have included fireworks, well a lot of them did when the kids were younger, we have had near misses and direct hits, and one year we had a Fire Boss who kept us all safe.

When we lived in New Mexico our neighborhood was a close knit group, if one of us started up their grill for a cookout, we would end up with neighbors bringing food to add and/or other grills to join in, almost every night there was a group sitting on our front porch telling tales and sometimes singing songs especially when "Weird Dave" brought his guitar over.

Not sure why we called him that, but somehow he got stuck with that name. Dave lived across the street from us, he was in the Air Force and right next door to him was another house where several young Air Force guys lived, this is how we met Casey (one of Randy's groomsmen).

On one particular 4th of July Casey was stuck with no place to go, Weird Dave was going up to New Hampshire for the holiday and had asked us to keep an eye on his house, fireworks were legal that year and we had already taken Randy, Tim, and yes we took Casey too, out to the fireworks stands, and brought home a lot more than we intended, at first we were going to shoot off a few fireworks and have a simple cookout. Well as you know nothing is ever simple.....

As the sun went down Casey had invited a couple of the young men in his squadron who also had no place to go, they also made a stop by the fireworks stand on their way over, and needless to say by the time each one called someone else, and they made a couple calls, we had a street full of our neighbors outnumbered by young Airmen.

I think there were more fireworks lying on my front porch than they had at the public display downtown. There were two Airmen out in the street shooting Roman Candles at one another, they were also lying in the street looking at the fuses burning on the rockets, they were timing the delay from when the fire entered the rocket to the time of ignition, Wow I couldn't believe this, I didn't know these guys so I asked Casey about them, he just shook his head, "that's a couple of the weapons guys, they work arming bombs".

About that time a rocket got knocked over and started bouncing all over the street, it ended up hitting the wall of Weird Daves house right below his bedroom window, the grass below the window immediately ignited, yes we had a fire on our hands, Casey began shouting orders as he ran towards Weird Daves house, it was amazing to see a group of about twenty Airmen fall into sync and extinguish the fire before it got out of hand.

After this fiasco Casey pulled all the Airmen together, I am not sure what the conversation was but when he released them the rest of the night was a lot more orderly. The weapons guys took charge of the fireworks, they made sure that everyone waited their turn to set off any fireworks and that they did it properly, they carried the spent shells from the ground level artilleries and such to five gallon buckets of water set aside to make sure they were extinguished.

The other Airmen made sure everyone was having a good time and joined in the fun, Casey took a position in the middle of the street with a flashlight in each hand, he yelled for everyone to get out of the street if a vehicle was coming, and if someone had already lit a fuse when a car was approaching Casey would wave down the car and tell them what was going on, most everyone was thankful and sat there to enjoy the one firework before Casey cleared the street and let the car pass.

One of our boys asked Casey "What are you supposed to be out there" Casey replied with a term I can't remember and  when asked to explain the term Casey said "Fire Boss" I'm just here to make sure we all have fun and nobody gets hurt.

The police did come by once, and Casey had to stop them in the street, he was asked to explain what was going on and Casey said I'm just making sure these kids have fun, the officers watched the rocket that was lit in front of them blast off, waved at everyone as they passed and went on their way, after Casey cleared the street of course.

We shut it all down at midnight, the five gallon buckets were all dumped and all the chairs and tables put away, the poly cart from Casey's house was overflowing and we had more to go, I joked with Casey "Why don't you jump in and stomp down the trash" Casey said that's a good Idea, he looked around and saw a young Airman sitting on the porch doing nothing.

Casey raised his hand and yelled "Airman, you need to jump into this can and stomp down the trash so we can get this mess cleaned up" "Yes Sir" and next thing I know the Airman was stomping down trash, he climbed out of the can and was dripping wet all the way to his knees, Cindy asked him why he did that and he pointed to Casey and said "He outranks me and he asked me to do it" from then on this kid was known as "Stinky" he didn't seem to mind and always showed up at suppertime with the others.

I was standing looking at the street in front of our house, man it looked like a confetti parade had passed, I knew the neighbors wouldn't be happy with us once the sun came up.

At about 6am the next morning I could hear talking out in the street, I went outside to listen to complaints from the neighbors, but instead I saw all the Airmen from the night before with trash cans, push brooms, and dust pans cleaning the street, Casey was standing in the road shouting orders at the men, I complimented them on what they were doing and asked Casey "What are you doing out here buddy?" he replied with "I'm the Fire Boss" and we are getting this mess cleaned up.

I hope you all have a safe and sane fourth of July, and if needed I pray that you have your own Fire Boss because these people keep us from getting into trouble, and when cleanup time comes think of poor old Stinky because without him things would surely be a mess.

Are you doing anything special for the 4th of July?