Schneider's hardware always had the biggest selection of fireworks in town. Mr. Schneider was a small, quiet man, who wore a stiff straw hat indoors and out. One time, Muley Whitlock took his baby sister, Tessie, into the store to get some sparklers. Only he got interested in something else and forgot about Tessie. She arrived home with 2 boxes of five inch salutes. If she'd known how to light them, they might very well have blown her back downtown again.

I suppose that spending eleven and a half months of the year measuring out half a pound of putty and selling fifteen cents worth of flypaper, the pressure would slowly mount and when he found himself in the middle of all that gunpowder it brought out the savage in him.

We used to have a hound named Shep, who hated the Fourth. Every year, he would disappear on the third of July and come back the fifth. My father said he'd give a dollar and a half to know where he went; he'd like to go with him. But we never did find out.

The only grown-up I ever knew who actually liked fireworks was Bus Neuhoffer's grandmother and she was almost totally deaf. She would sit in a glider in the back yard knitting and watching us shoot our firecrackers. She even encouraged us to come closer so she could see them better. It's interesting to imagine how it must have seemed to her: a three- or four-inch red cylinder lying on the ground then a little sound like the tap of a lead pencil and a few smoking scraps of paper. Each time, she would shake her head in wonder and go back to her knitting. I've thought since then of the people you sometimes find who seem to possess a serene, spiritual quality. Maybe they're just hard of hearing.

There were a lot of things you could do with a firecracker besides just shooting it. You could pile gravel on top, and it would go off like a grenade. Tin cans were good, too. A two-inch salute would send a soup can about twenty feet in the air. A five-incher would split the can at the seams and flatten it out. One time, Muley and I went out to see his cousin who lived in the country, and the three of us must have shot off a dozen packages of firecrackers in the cow pasture. However, I'm not going to pursue the subject. Some readers might find it coarse or indelicate.

We always used to wonder what would happen if you shot off a big cannon cracker in a watermelon. naturally, we never had a melon to spare and didn’t expect we ever would, but we did like to talk about it. Then one day, out on the edge of town, I saw a man selling watermelons from a truck. I sort of eased up to the side opposite to where the man was standing and took a five inch salute out of my pocket. I don’t really think I intended doing anything with it. I was studying the melons through the stakes of the truck when a hand took ahold of my shoulder.

"What you got in mind?" The man had a black handlebar mustache and was holding a long butcher knife. I told him I was wondering what it would be like to shoot off a firecracker in a watermelon. I was completely calm. I knew he was going to kill me regardless, and I didn't want to go to my reward with an untruth on my lips.

"Hm," he said. He frowned at me thoughtfully. He looked over at the knife and then back at me again. It occurred to me that some people cut a melon the long way and some cut it crosswise. There was something about the way he was looking at me -I didn't like to think about it.

"Well, hell," he said finally, "only one way to find out.". I stared at him with my mouth open. "If you got the firecracker," he said, "I got the melon." He took a big one out of the truck, cut a hole in one end, put in the five-incher and lit it. Then he squatted on the ground watching with an air of scientific detachment. To tell the truth, not much happened. There was a muffled explosion, and a fine spray of juice blew out, and that was all. He fished out the exploded salute and peered into the hole in the melon.

"Not much to it," he observed. "Acts sort of like a howitzer." He stood up. "Well now you and me know something most people don't." He tapped the melon with his foot. "Can't very well sell a melon that's been shot off. Might as well take it with you."

It was all like a dream. The melon must have weighed fifty pounds, and I had to lug it all the way across town. And when I got it home, nobody would believe me. I didn't care. Occasionally, not very often, but once in a while you find an adult who makes it seem that growing up might be worthwhile.

I have to remind myself that fireworks weren’t specifically invented for the Fourth -- they suit the day so well. But of course they were invented centuries ago by the Chinese. I remember one brand of firecracker called Doughboy Salutes that had a picture of a ferocious, almond-eyed Doughboy in a tin hat. They were made of lovely stripped paper and dusted with silvery powder. After firing off a pack you would leave silver fingerprints on anything you touched. I always thought this gave hot dog buns a particularly patriotic flavor.

The Chinese are supposed to have invented firecrackers to celebrate their New Year and frighten demons and so on. I don't believe it. I think they simply liked the way they looked and the way they smelled and the way they sounded. I can't think of three better reasons for inventing anything. It's been a number of years now since we've gotten any fireworks from China. They've been saving up their gunpowder, so people tell me-going to put it all in one big one. A billion-inch salute. Powee!

When I was a boy, there was no time for games or picnics or any such nonsense on the Fourth. You celebrated properly or not at all. And, doing it right kept a kid hopping from early dawn. At the first suggestion of daylight I would leap out of bed, throw on a few clothes, light a piece of punk and the celebration would be on.

Usually, I'd go over to Muley’s, and we'd stay in his yard until his mother told us to leave, and then we'd go to Bus Neuhoffer's, and so on around town. The din was unending and everywhere. A five-incher down at the corner, a cherry bomb across town, a string of lady crackers next door. And in between and all around a hundred torpedoes, a thousand firecrackers, and ten thousand caps.

One of the high spots of the day was always the parade. They may have some today that are bigger and fancier, but I doubt that you'll find the same spirit, If you've never been around to see a two-inch salute lobbed into a passing tuba, you don't know what the possibilities of a parade can be. Blam! Splat! Parades had real heroes in those days,

As the day wore on more and more bandages would be seen. By late afternoon it was hard to find a kid who didn’t have at least one finger wrapped up. Any boy who hadn’t been wounded would

stand out like a well thumb. "How come you’re OK?" we’d ask. "You been sick?"

Around supper time, with the sun still high, the first pale skyrocket would usually appear. On occasion some maverick would fire one off at noon and nobody thought it out of keeping. It was a day to be squandered -- to be lived recklessly, heedlessly and with abandon.

In the early dusk the girls and grown-ups would come out of hiding and settle on the front porch with pitchers of lemonade. Our house was on a hill so we were able to enjoy all the major fireworks purchases of the people in the houses below. We could also see the rockets from the municipal display held every year in the park several miles away.

On front lawns, the little kids would start chain-lighting their sparklers, swooping and darting about like frenzied fireflies. Bigger boys would use sparklers as punk lighting firecrackers from the glowing wires while the sparks bounced off their fingers.

The first pinwheels would be lit. An erratic skyrocket would flare wildly up the street. Colored lights, green and red, would flicker in all the front yards. Fathers would hurry out to the sidewalk to stop a Roman-candle duel being conducted across the width of the street. A rocket from the park would snake high above the treetops to explode again and again in parasols of purple and gold.

From time to time the fire siren would sound but nobody paid much attention. Fourth of July fires never seemed to amount to much. Eventually, the shooting would taper off. Parents would begin rounding up small children asleep on porch steps or under the shrubbery. A few of us might take a walk around the block, the sidewalks littered with exploded firecrackers and sparkler wires, the smell of brimstone heavy on the summer air.

Well, that's all in the past. People decided fireworks weren’t safe. Every year we build bigger, faster cars, and smoke more cigarettes. But, by heaven, we don’t have to worry about Roman Candles.

We have preserved some of the traditions-the editorials, the parades, the speeches. When the boat went down, at least we managed to save the ballast. I'm sorry the kids don’t look forward to it, though. They don't seem to realize it’s supposed to be a birthday.

Occasionally; on the Fourth when I go for an evening stroll I hear an explosion in the distance indicating that some stubborn lawbreaker is keeping the tradition alive. But the children are in the family room watching fireworks on TV. I suppose it's just as well.

I can't see myself letting my kids have enough gunpowder to blow out the side of the house, which is what my parents did. I don’t know if parents today are more enlightened or simply more nervous. Maybe we’ve been exaggerating a few burned fingers in the experience of being a boy. I don't know.

I do know that a day that used to be special isn't special any more. Something vital and cherished and American has been crushed by the welcome wagon of progress. Like the free-lunch counter. Like the streetcar. Like the buffalo.