The Top 5 Must Have Fireworks And How I Misused Them

Firecrackers are about the most versatile firework. You get the load bang, nice sparks after dark and of course, TOTAL DESTRUCTION of small things. My favorite thing as a kid was to fill a tuna can with water, put a canned food can in it with a hole on top. You then insert the firecracker and launch that can into outer space.

You have to have the rockets red glare, you also have to have the notoriously unpredictable bottle rockets if you can. We used to light them then throw them in the air for a little more distance (not recommended).

Roman Candles are kind of lame until you misuse them. There is nothing more fun and potentially more dangerous than a roman candle fight. The tension is always ratcheted up because the balls tend to fire out at random intervals and curve and swerve willy nilly. Oh, and the whole thing could explode in your hand too.

Now when I was a kid we couldn't get explosive fireworks, so we had to improvise. We would take a standard Whistling Pete and bend it sharply about 2/3rds of the way down. This often ended Pete's whistle with a satisfying pop.

I'm not even going to go into how to make a sparkler bomb because that might get both of us jail time. Instead, I'll tell you the 2nd most dangerous thing I've ever seen done with sparklers. When I was a young ruffian, I happened to see other delinquents take fresh sparklers and bend them into a horseshoe and other shapes, that way they could be thrown and catch in trees, lines and whatever.