Cranberry County Magazine's photographers engage in a little camera fight before the fire gets lit.
Because there was a 9 PM high tide, they had to either light the fire at 7:30 PM or light it at 1:30 AM. This also led to smaller fires. Remember, kids... always give the bonfire enough time to burn itself down to ash before the tide hits it.... otherwise, you get a beach full of charred wood for the rest of July until the tide pushes the debris down to the uninhabited parts of Duxbury Beach.
One thing that stood out... only Duxbury had fires. This was one of the more southernmost fires, and there were no fires north of Killian's (a locally notorious Duxbury Beach party family) on the Duxbury/Marshfield line. Marsh Vegas has put their foot down on bonfires, it seems. They were a Loyalist town during the Revolution, so July 3rd parties must seem like doing tequila shots off of the casket of a loved one. Still, someone should have put a fire up.... shame on you, Green Harbor!
Poorly-timed high tides can't stop the fireworks, babe. Duxbury Beach spends a lot of money on personal-use fireworks. Several people I know there had enough gunpowder to defend Little Round Top if they had to. The whole place on July 3rd sounds like films I used to watch of Beirut during urban battles. It was bad enough that I thought I had PTSD for a little while, but I figured out it was just regular psychopathology.
A different vantage point....
Here's me butchering a shot where God had already spotted me the dusk's early light, the flag, the cute kids, several neighboring bonfires and even the rocket's red glare. I later dropped my camera on the beach somewhere, which- judgng by the quality of my shots- was probably a good thing. Shed no tears for Cranberry County Magazine, though... it was a $27 camera that I had owned for a year.
July is America's most explosive month. It's when we (USA) celebrate our Independence Day. On this day in 1776, we said Thanks But No Thanks to our old overlords in Great Britain.
That's the original BREXIT, player. Considering that the United States is one Star Wars sort of weapon away from being to beat up every other nation on Earth at once, I'd say it's the important one, too.
We celebrate this move every July 4th. John Adams laid the groundwork in a 1776 letter to his wife, Abigail:
"I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more."
We still follow the same basic blueprint today, and perhaps only the solemnity of his future office kept Adams from adding things like "stumble around drunk," "punch strangers" and "blow stuff up."
The technology was there in 1776. Gunpowder, one of the Four Great Inventions of ancient China (the others being paper, printing, and the compass), was first used for fireworks in China during the 7th Century Tang Dynasty. The ingredients are still basically the same today.... charcoal, saltpeter and sulfur.
They were originally worked into celebrations to frighten away evil spirits. Fireworks-making developed into a respected profession, and soon made it to the Arab world (1200s) and Europe (1700s). The Arabs gained them via Silk Road trade, while the Europeans learned of fireworks from missionaries. Peter the Great's ambassador was known to have raved to Peter about them.
Fireworks were in America before the Revolution. George Washington had a fireworks show at his inauguration. We were shooting them off to celebrate July 4th in 1777, six years before we knew if we'd beat the British in the Revolution or not.
They were wildly popular in America. For many years, fireworks were sold without regulation. Errors in both the manufacturing and the end-use processes led to numerous injuries. Injuries associated with July 4th fireworks (and gun-shooting, another popular way to celebrate July 4th back in the day) were frequent enough that a diagnosis of "patriotic tetanus" was developed and put into common use.
Fireworks use five ingredients to do what they do. They use fuel, an oxidizer, a binding agent, a chlorine donor (chlorine strengthens the color of the flame) and color-providing chemicals. Metals like lithium (red), sodium (yellow), calcium (orange), barium (green), copper (blue), iron (gold) and aluminum (white) are burned to create the colors you see.
If your memory stretches back to high school and you can remember Bunsen Burners, know that fireworks color moves along those lines. If you have access to pure copper and out it over a Bunsen flame, you'll get the same blue/green light that you see at a fireworks show. If you have some cesium kicking around, you can get a sort of indigo color akin to what you see when a skyrocket blows up. Remember to use small volumes of cesium, as skyrockets blow up in the sky (far away from the guy lighting them) for reasons of safety as well as reasons of aesthetics.
The key ingredient, of course, is gunpowder. Gunpowder is explosive, and therefore very dangerous. Since the danger exists, the government stepped in to protect Americans from themselves. Fireworks fall under the auspices of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, aka the ATF. The Bureau had Firearms first for a while, but the resulting acronym drew an unfortunate comparison to expanding government.
Aluminium powder and potassium perchlorate are the main chemicals used in the flash powder for most commercial illuminating fireworks.
The laws governing fireworks vary from state to state. Delaware, New York, New Jersey and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are the only states that ban the public from having any manner of fireworks. Maine, if I'm reading this right, only allows sparklers.
That's why the gods made New Hampshire, my friend.
New England, which looms large in history, is actually made up of six small states. The great state of Rhode Island is smaller than most counties in Texas. You can drive from a state where fireworks are illegal (like Massachusetts) to a state where they can be purchased freely (like, say, New Hampshire) rather easily. Throw in some free state-to-state border crossing, and it is quite easy to bring New Hampshire fireworks into Massachusetts.
There are other options. My dad, when I was little, used to go into Chinatown, pick up some Jackie Chan-looking guy on a street corner, hand him some money, get handed back a shopping bag full of fireworks, and then drop the dealer back off in Chinatown. He brought me with him once, I was very young, but remember it vividly. It was the same basic modus operandi I'd use hundreds of times later in life, getting weed.
Once you have the fireworks, be they from New Hampshire or the Chinese guy your father knows, it's time to take them home and blow them off/up. If you don't have some, worry you not... there are fireworks displays being put on by towns all over the state. "Explosives" are generally one of those areas where you want to let professionals handle things.
A list of these fireworks events, you say? Just happen to have one right here!
Some fireworks trivia for you:
- US citizens are not allowed to have fireworks with more than 50 milligrams of flash powder. Beyond that, you need a license. This law went into effect in 1975, which is why fireworks may have seemed louder when you were a kid... if you're old enough, of course.
- Fireworks-related injuries dropped by 70% after this law went into effect.
- A true M-80, which doesn't exist legally in the US (and hasn't since 1966), has between 200 and 300 mg of flash powder.
- Since they don't blow up in your hand, skyrockets, Roman Candles and so forth are allowed to have more than 50 mg of flash powder. Jason Pierre-Paul (see below) was maimed by a skyrocket.
- Skyrockets have two fuses, the one that shoots it into the air and the one that explodes the pyrotechnic.
- The first rockets had an open end on the tube, and would fly around randomly. Fins were later added to stabilize the flight. The fins on your commercial skyrockets today are not there for looks. Break the stick off of a bottle rocket, light it and drop it on the ground in front of you- the infamous (insert name of minority that you wish to offend here) Chaser- and you'll see destabilized rocket flight. People who study rocketry call these "Ground Rats."
- Several illicit fireworks manufacturers still make high-powered (over 500 mg of flash powder) fireworks. If you read about a shack exploding for non-meth reasons, it's often related to this field. Illicit M-80 manufacturing rose up after the 1975 ban on higher-powered civilian fireworks. An explosion of such a place in Benton, Tennessee damaged homes for miles around, and could be heard 20 miles away.
- Contrary to popular belief, a cherry bomb or a M-80 with illegal levels of flash powder is not a quarter stick of dynamite. Dynamite uses nitroglycerin, while fireworks use less-explosive black powder.
- Aside from the USA and July 4th, other nations use fireworks to celebrate New Year's, Halloween (Ireland), their own Independence Days and other important events. England uses them for Guy Fawkes Day, which is ironic because Fawkes was planning to blow up Parliament or some other funk band.
- Fireworks shows in the US used to last an hour, but they average 20 minutes per show now.
- A string of firecrackers lit in 1996 for Chinese New Year in Hong Kong lasted for 22 hours.
- Arabic people refer to fireworks as "Chinese Arrows."
- Many airports use fireworks to scare away birds.
- Disney's nightly fireworks shows use less-polluting compressed air in place of gunpowder. Otherwise, accumulated explosive pollutants would eventually destroy their lakes and perhaps cause an explosion.
- Keith Moon of The Who was introduced to cherry bombs in the 1960s. He soon developed a love of dropping them in hotel toilets, often causing thousands of dollars worth of damage. Moon is, even in death, banned from the Holiday Inn, the Hilton, the Waldorf Astoria and the Sheraton chains.
I work for a Choice Hotel franchise, and we have a list of persona non grata guests posted on the wall who are forever banned from the premises. Moon's name is on it, right between the name of the guy who killed his girlfriend and shot a Bourne cop (Adrian Loya) and Ron Mott, an NBC reporter who had a mental breakdown in our lobby and had to be removed by the Bourne police department. Keep in mind, Moon died in 1978.
One time, Moon was listening to his own band's records in a hotel. A hotel manager came up to him and asked him to "turn down that noise." Moon immediately got up, threw a stick of dynamite into the toilet, destroyed the hotel's plumbing system, and turned back to the hotel manager. "THAT, my friend," he said, pointing to the bathroom, "is noise. The music is the 'oo."
- Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and Peter Criss of KISS each had M-80s thrown at them by fans during shows. Criss was partially deafened.
- NY Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul, an All Pro level pass rusher, lost fingers on his hand while trying to light a skyrocket. This is a bad thing to have happen when your job is grabbing people.
- Hunter S. Thompson requested that, upon his death, he be cremated. He then wanted his ashes loaded into a artillery shell and exploded over the Rocky Mountains. Johnny Depp stepped in, and Thomson's ashes were built into a cannon shell and blown up as part of a big fireworks display during his funeral.
Here are some common fireworks classes:
Class 1.1G (Mass Explosion Possible:Pyrotechnics) UN0094 Flashpowder Class 1.1G (Mass Explosion Possible:Pyrotechnics) UN0333 Fireworks (Salutes in bulk or in manufacture) Class 1.2G (Projection but not mass explosion:Pyrotechnics) UN0334 Fireworks (Rarely used) Class 1.3G (Fire, Minor Blast:Pyrotechnics) UN0335 Fireworks (Most Display Fireworks) Current federal law states that without appropriate ATF license/permit, the possession or sale of any display/professional fireworks is a felony punishable by up to 5 years in prison.
Any ground salute device with over 50 milligrams of explosive composition
Torpedoes (except for railroad signaling use)
Multi-tube devices containing over 500 grams of pyrotechnic composition and without 1/2" space between each tube
Any multiple tube fountains with over 500 grams of pyrotechnic composition and without 1/2" space between each tube
Any reloadable aerial shells over 1.75" diameter
Display shells
Any single-shot or reloadable aerial shell/mine/comet/tube with over 60 grams of pyrotechnic composition
Any Roman candle or rocket with over 20 grams of pyrotechnic composition
Any aerial salute with over 130 milligrams of explosive composition Class 1.4G (Minor Explosion Hazard Confined To Package:Pyrotechnics) UN0336 Fireworks (Consumer or Common Fireworks) Most popular consumer fireworks sold in the US.
Reloadable aerial shells 1.75" or less sold in a box with not more than 12 shells and one launching tube
Single-shot aerial tubes
Bottle rockets
Skyrockets and missiles
Ground spinners, pinwheels and helicopters
Flares & fountains
Roman candles
Smoke and novelty items
Multi-shot aerial devices, or "cakes"
Firecracker packs (see this link for various brand/label images). Although some firecracker items may be called "M-80's", "M-1000's", "Cherry bombs" or "Silver Salutes" by the manufacturer, they must contain less than 50 milligrams of flash or other explosive powder in order to be legally sold to consumers in the United States.
June 25, 2016
Braintree - 6/25/2016 Braintree High School Soldiers Salute at 9:30pm & Fireworks at 10:00pm
Hanover 6/25/2016 at dark for Hanover Days
Milton 6/25/2016 9:45 PM 2 Barges in Neponset River – 1 Granite (Rain Date 6/26/2016)
June 26, 2016
East Harwich 6/26/2016 9:00 PM One barge in Pleasant Bay – On Pleasant Bay (No Rain Date)
June 30, 2016
Somerville 6/30/2016 9:15 PM Trum Field – Franey Road (Rain Date 7/7/2016)
July 1, 2016
Mashpee 7/1/2016 9:30 PM Mashpee H.S. – 500 Old Barnstable Rd (Rain Date 7/2/2016)
Taunton 7/1/2016 9:00 PM Hopewell Park – 15 Hamilton Street (No Rain Date)
Worcester 7/1/2016 9:30 PM East Park, Shrewsbury Street
July 2, 2016
Boston Harbor 7/2/2016 9:00 PM Long Wharf (Boston Harborfest)
Halifax 7/2/2016 9:00 PM Halifax Elementary School Field – Plymouth Street (Rain 7/9/2016)
Hingham 7/2/2016 9:00 PM Button Island – Hingham Harbor – 3 Otis Street (Rain 7/3/2016)
Orleans 7/2/2016 9:00 PM Barge off Rock Harbor Beach – Bay View Drive (Rain 7/3/2016)
July 3, 2016
Attleboro 7/3/2016 9:20 PM Parking lot at Cyril Brennan Middle School (Rain Date 7/5/2016 )
Duxbury Beach 7/3/2016 Dark, various illegal citizen bonfires and unlicensed pyrotechnics
East Harwich 7/3/2016 9:15 PM 1 Barge in Pleasant Bay – On Pleasant Bay
Freetown 7/3/2016 8:00 PM Hathaway Park – Carleys Way (Rain Date 7/9/2016)
Middleborough 7/3/2016 10:00 PM Battis Field – Pierce playground – Jackson Street (Rain 7/5/2016)
Randolph 7/3/2016 9:30 PM Randolph H.S. baseball field – 70 Memorial Parkway (Rain 7/5/2016)
Sharon 7/3/2016 9:30 PM Barge on Lake Massapoag – 50 Beach Street (Rain Date 7/10/2016)
Stoughton 7/3/2016 9:30 PM West School Athletic Complex – Pearl Street (Rain 7/8/2016)
Walpole 7/3/2016 9:30 PM Joe Morgan Memorial Field – 220 School Street (Rain 7/6/2016)
Weymouth/Quincy 7/3/2016 9:15 PM Barge off Wessagusset Beach – 555 South Street (Quincy) – Wessagusset Road (Weymouth) (Rain 7/5/2016)
July 4, 2016
Arlington 7/4/2016 (Big screen viewing of Boston Pops Concert & Fireworks) 6pm; 8:30pm Concert viewing & 10:30pm fireworks viewing
Bellingham 7/4/2016 9:00 PM Bellingham H.S. – 60 Blackstone Field (Rain Date 7/5/2016)
Boston 7/4/2016 8:30pm Pops Concert - 10:30pm Fireworks Hatch Shell Esplanade
Bridgewater 7/4/2016 9:30 PM Legion Field – 200 South Street 7/5/2016
Canton 7/4/2016 9:15 PM Irish Cultural Ctr. – 200 New Boston Rd
East Harwich 7/4/2016 9:15 PM 3 Barges off Wequassett Inn – On Pleasant Bay (Rain 7/5/2016)
Edgartown 7/4/2016 9:15 PM Edgartown Harbor – Oak Bluffs Ave. (Rain 7/5/2016)
New Bedford 7/4/2016 9:00 PM Barge in New Bedford Harbor – 7 Fish Island (Rain 7/5/2016)
Provincetown 7/4/2016 9:00 PM MacMillan Pier (Rain Date 7/5/2016)
Plymouth 7/4/2016 ~9:00-9:15PM Plymouth Waterfront
Salem 7/4/2016 ~9:15pm at Derby Wharf
July 9, 2016
New Bedford 7/9/2016 9:15 PM Walsh Athletic Fields – 328 Parker St. (No Rain Date)
We're emptying our Photobucket onto this website in a blizzard of archives articles. Today, we're doing Nature. This is from the Cape Cod Canal.
Plus-size lobster, courtesy of my friend Tornado up in Maine.
A baby coyote, from Widow's Walk golf course in Scituate.
Second pic in a row from my man Ghost, this is what I believe is a New London, NH snapping turtle.
A bear paw print (next to the author's size 15 Reebok footprint), White Cliffs Country Club, Cedarville MA, courtesy of Hacksaw and his baby sidekick, Roo.
A couple of ducks or something, Barnstable MA
Buzzards Bay Bluejay
5 rescue cats I took in, Mom (#6) not included. I'm no cat lady, I was doing an Adopt A Pet column for a Cape Cod newspaper, and they had new homes quickly enough. They were all given political names when I had them... Republicat is off to the right, as she's supposed to be. On the left, from bottom to top, are Democat, Romneycat, Obamacat (facing left, of course) and Puffy Cat. Puffy Cat was very puffy, so no other name was going to work. My neighbor, who is conservative, took Obamacat (so named because he has a big O in his flank fur) and renamed it something. Puffy Cat went to my friend's girlfriend, and Democat went to some high school girl that the guy who used to sell me my weed knew. I kept Republicat and her Mom, and Republicat was then renamed Bay Bay Cat.
Bruschi the Bulldog, who hails from Wareham.
Grazing Fields Farm, Bournedale MA
My good ol' Border Collie, the late Sloppy Dogg.
Mid-flight seagull, somewhere on Cape Cod
Powder Point, Duxbury MA
Ten year old picture of a seal sunning himself on Duxbury Beach... just in case the shark stories make you think that the seals are new arrivals.
The author and a Mako Shark he caught.... OK, the author and a Mako Shark that his more manly friend caught and brought into Green Harbor. I'd have slapped the shark once and let him go, personally. I think the shark was sold to a company in Japan, they got like $500 for him.
I did almost catch these gooses, but they gave me the slip. One of the quirks of this website is that the proprietor prefers to say "gooses" rather than the less-cute "geese."
If you shot them with a potato launcher, you'd have the makings of a pretty good meal here...
"Snake in the grass, I see ya comin'..... from a mile away, I start gunnin'....."
Having a Weymouth black cat cross your path on Halloween is about as bad luck as you can get...
...unless, of course, you end up having a black cat cross your path that same day while you are at the Lizzie Borden house. You people should appreciate the risks that I take to bring you this column.
Once Thanksgiving passes, the turkeys get all cocky and strut around in your yard.
BEFORE RECONSTRUCTION.... variously known as Old Man Bradford's house or Tai Chi's house, it had been falling into disrepair for decades. You can see the channel dug by storm tides washing through the property
ALSO BEFORE.... The area behind the cottage in question, a meadow that is the lowest-lying place on Duxbury Beach. This picture and the picture above are from a 2007 nor'easter.
DURING.... Shot from Gurnet Road, the shanty has been torn down.
AFTER.... 71 Ocean Road North, reporting for duty. We'll see how this Irish Riviera gentrification job holds up against the nor'easters...
... like this one, with waves hitting the seawall right in front of the new house.
Everybody knows Punxsatawney Phil, even if they don't know how to spell it. He's the groundhog from Pennsylvania who comes out of his little hidey-hole and tells you how many weeks of winter we have left.
Not as many people know the equally important Doug the Quahog.
Doug is a Cape Cod quahog who has somehow evolved the ability to:
1) speak to a human
and
2) live eternally
and
3) live comfortably on dry land
and
4) predict beach weather.
He speaks only to Captain Johnny Quahog, who met Doug at a raw bar on Cape Cod. Doug was able to communicate with Johnny, and the effect was such that Johnny assumed a Minuteman persona and serves as Doug's mouthpiece.
Doug premiered on a summer day when the local TV weathergirl called for a rainy weekend, and Doug disagreed in public. One sunny tourist weekend later, Cape Cod had a new mascot.
Doug has ruled the Quahog Day holiday with an iron fist valve ever since, escorted by Capt. Quahog, the Quahog security team (much like a Batman villain, Doug has clam-themed sidekick names, a la "Littleneck," "Razor," "Shuck" and a guy known only as "The Santuit Steamer.") and a bevy of celebrity wommin'.
At varying times, Doug has been tied to various starlets with Cape Cod connections. They say that Taylor Swift bought the Hyannis Port house to be Doug. Lady Gaga impulsively purchased a Nantucket property after a night out with the Mighty Mollusk. Local songbird Siobhan Magnus dug Doug. Salma Hayek drove out to see Doug while filming Grown-Ups, and Jessica Biel spent a summer filming on Cape Cod concurrently serving as Doug's Summer Catch. While he never said anything about Jackie Kennedy himself, there was talk around town that he had spent some time with her intimately.
As you can see in the photo below, Doug rocked last summer in the company of teen queen Selena Gomez.
Doug's weather forecasting accuracy shames that of any Amish country rodent. It presently hovers around 103%.
The key is understanding that Doug sometimes has a different definition of "good beach day" than the one vacationers use. This adds a Monkey's Paw element to the forecast.
It isn't easy to do. For instance, one year saw Doug begin to blow forecasts. His accuracy rate plummeted. Scientists were brought in from Woods Hole. They eventually figured out that Doug enjoys tropical storms, and when tropical storms were factored in, Doug's accuracy returned to Infallible levels.
Since then, Doug has also been used to predict tropical storms that will damage Cape Cod. He again went against local forecasters in 1991, and was the only local prognosticator to call the Perfect Storm.
Doug wants the citizenry to know that Quahog Day is tomorrow. You can blow off work from any Cape Cod business without being fired if you are going to Quahog Day. You can skip school without a doctor's note to go to Quahog Day. If your wife or husband won't go to Quahog Day with you, you can take a Mistress or Bull to the event with no legal alimonial restitution owed if they are busted and subsequently divorced.
Quahog Day will be celebrated on the First Day of Summer - Monday, June 20th - at the Matakeese Wharf Restaurant overlooking Barnstable Harbor.
The highly anticipated prognostication ceremony will happen just after 2 p.m., when Doug the Quahog (our Cape Cod mascot) once again predicts how many weeks of beach weather lie ahead for the coming summer!
The ceremony will be emceed by NECN Meteorologist Pete Bouchard.
Come witness history in the making! Free and open to all! For more information, visit www.QuahogDay.com.
Quahog Day is brought to you by the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce!
