July 4th

[Waylander]

You know, there are a few things that I miss from the states. Some more than others ofcourse. One of the things I miss most would be on the 3rd of July me and my dad would drive outside the city and spend close to $400 on fireworks and other explosive stuff.
Then on the 4th my family would all drive out to some field in the middle of no where. My dad would grill us up some burgers and steaks. My mom having made all the other stuff for a good bbq the day before aswell. Anyway as that was happening I was some 30 yards out in the field setting up the display. Then at about this time of night after we had all eaten and layed out on blankets I would go back down there and start lighting up the fuses. Been doin it since we first moved to Texas back in 1986 though I didn't take charge of the fireworks till I was 11.
I always set up big elaborate displays of fire in the sky. Just setting it up and enjoying a good BBQ and firworks with the family that's what it was all about for me.
Nothing about the american revolution or indapendance came into it, and the only thing I can compare that euphoria to is riding out in the middle of no where with no one else around for miles.

I guess it's one thing I'll always miss here. May have something similar but I doubt it will ever be the same.

[Ixion]

You know, there are a few things that I miss from the states. Some more than others ofcourse. One of the things I miss most would be on the 3rd of July me and my dad would drive outside the city and spend close to $400 on fireworks and other explosive stuff.
Then on the 4th my family would all drive out to some field in the middle of no where. My dad would grill us up some burgers and steaks. My mom having made all the other stuff for a good bbq the day before aswell. Anyway as that was happening I was some 30 yards out in the field setting up the display. Then at about this time of night after we had all eaten and layed out on blankets I would go back down there and start lighting up the fuses. Been doin it since we first moved to Texas back in 1986 though I didn't take charge of the fireworks till I was 11.
I always set up big elaborate displays of fire in the sky. Just setting it up and enjoying a good BBQ and firworks with the family that's what it was all about for me.
Nothing about the american revolution or indapendance came into it, and the only thing I can compare that euphoria to is riding out in the middle of no where with no one else around for miles.

I guess it's one thing I'll always miss here. May have something similar but I doubt it will ever be the same.

Guy fawkes Night. Until the wowsers totally abolish it

[Waylander]

Guy fawkes Night. Until the wowsers totally abolish it
Not the same mate. The fireworks y'all have down here arn't worth a dogs swollup. And on that night all feilds nearby are taken up by drunk teenage ricers, not exactly an isolated experiance then.

[Motu]

Guy fawkes Night. Until the wowsers totally abolish it

Guy Fox - get the spelling right willya? The biggest mayhem night of the year,totaly irresponsable giving 10 yr olds explovsives to play with unsupervised,running around letting off Double happies,mighty cannons and sky rockets....there was also a 2 week lead up and cool down of double happies in letterboxes and rubbish bins.We used to drill holes in clay banks and set off demolition charges - now you know why there is a stone breakwater on the foreshore of Bucklands Beach....every year we'd take another foot out of it.

[Motu]

Not the same mate. The fireworks y'all have down here arn't worth a dogs swollup. And on that night all feilds nearby are taken up by drunk teenage ricers, not exactly an isolated experiance then.

We are talking about when we were kids,nothing like today at all,at all....

[Waylander]

We are talking about when we were kids,nothing like today at all,at all....
Would have been a grander time to grow up then I guess. Still I can't complain Texas was really fun so long as you weren't in the city. Here though almost anywhere that isn't city is either farm or government reservation land or some such. I don't know I'll figure something out. This is one tradition I actually don't want to give up.

[crashe]

Well you could buy a heap of fireworks in November... and then store them in a cool room.
Then on July 4th go and let them off.... somewhere safe and away from where there are animals and kids etc.

But in saying that you are now in NZ... do as a NZer would....
You are becoming a kiwi citizen aren't you...?
Let them off on Guy Fawkes night and join in the NZ celebrations.

[Waylander]

Well you could buy a heap of fireworks in November... and then store them in a cool room.
Then on July 4th go and let them off.... somewhere safe and away from where there are animals and kids etc.

But in saying that you are now in NZ... do as a NZer would....
You are becoming a kiwi citizen aren't you...?
Let them off on Guy Fawkes night and join in the NZ celebrations.

Ok you missed my comment earlier about how the fireworks here suck. Guess in the months between Guy Fawkes and July 4th I could take them appart and make my own. But then I run the risk of actually blowing myself up.

And the fireworks wern't the whole thing most of it was time spent with the family. Here though my imediate family is spread from here to Tauranga and my mom is always busy with her "surragate" family. Guess I can just wait 20 years or so for when I have my own kids...

[Virago]

Ok you missed my comment earlier about how the fireworks here suck. Guess in the months between Guy Fawkes and July 4th I could take them appart and make my own. But then I run the risk of actually blowing myself up.

And the fireworks wern't the whole thing most of it was time spent with the family. Here though my imediate family is spread from here to Tauranga and my mom is always busy with her "surragate" family. Guess I can just wait 20 years or so for when I have my own kids...
Hey mate,

You need to take the bull by the horns and organise your own 4th July party.

People up the road from us were from Cincinatti. They've gone back now, but while they were here they missed the American traditions like 4th July, Thanksgiving etc, really bad. So, they organised their own celebrations and invited NZ friends and neighbours to participate. We went to a couple of their 4th July parties, with Fireworks, pinyadas(sp), etc. They were great fun, and a positive way to experience their culture. Real family affairs, with kids running everywhere.

For me, it was a really positive multi-cultural event.

Send me an invite for next year!

[Hitcher]

You could always take your ass out and kiss it...

[Indiana_Jones]

Speaking of the 4th of July. Where were the stars and stripes on the harbour bridge today? They seem to have them for any other countries holidays etc? :weird:

-Indy

[Jeremy]

By the way, there are places where you can still get the decent fireworks. Stay away from the warehouse. If you know where to look there are places that will sell you skyrockets.

[Motu]

Guess I can just wait 20 years or so for when I have my own kids...

Worked for me......

[Jackrat]

Ok you missed my comment earlier about how the fireworks here suck. Guess in the months between Guy Fawkes and July 4th I could take them appart and make my own. But then I run the risk of actually blowing myself up.

And the fireworks wern't the whole thing most of it was time spent with the family. Here though my imediate family is spread from here to Tauranga and my mom is always busy with her "surragate" family. Guess I can just wait 20 years or so for when I have my own kids...

If they suck that bad,make your own.
It's piss easy an there's even an international pyromaniacs club with web site ect ect.I have a Mate from Malta who makes his own,a couple of years ago we launched a fridge several hundred feet in the air,complete with pretty colors :rofl:
An if you think there's no places to do it,you hav'nt looked man!!

[Ixion]

If they suck that bad,make your own.
It's piss easy an there's even an international pyromaniacs club with web site ect ect.I have a Mate from Malta who makes his own,a couple of years ago we launched a fridge several hundred feet in the air,complete with pretty colors :rofl:
An if you think there's no places to do it,you hav'nt looked man!!

Yeah, tis easy enough to make them, though getting ingredients can be a pain. You can make some BIG BANGS this way.

[zadok]

If they suck that bad,make your own.
It's piss easy an there's even an international pyromaniacs club with web site ect ect.I have a Mate from Malta who makes his own,a couple of years ago we launched a fridge several hundred feet in the air,complete with pretty colors :rofl:
An if you think there's no places to do it,you hav'nt looked man!!
Probably get the Secret Service on your tail or something. Might think you are planning a bombing! What with Sept 11th and all. :motu:

[Lias]

Hes right our fireworks here DO suck, because of all the wowsers in office who've banned them.

In an age when 18 year olds can get drunk, 13 year olds can have abortions without their parents knowledge, gays can be married, and a drag queen can be a member of parliament, grown adults are not allowed to have fire crackers, or sky rockets, nor any moderately FUN pyroteknics.

IMO we need to totally deregulate fireworks, and let people buy whatever the hell they want, short of "industrial" mortar type pyroteknics.

[N4CR]

I just pity the fire service if we fully deregulate. I think Over 25 would be a good thing to do, mabey a little younger..who knows. BUT WITH ID. (I'm 18 as well..) If we make it over 25 unrestricted then if young kids are seen with firecrackers then they should be confiscated and parents talked to by police.

I can certainly tell you there are 18,19 and 20 year olds that shouldnt have fireworks at all. I have resorted to making my own lately, which makes you respect fireworks more and not go around setting fire to schools and grasslands :mad:

I think 14 is too young as well.. there needs to be a referendum on this (Not to ban them though :/ ).

[Eurygnomes]

I can remember one of the guys at Uni halls holding a roman candle whilst it was lit and 'pointing' it at someone else. Duh...these are supposedly intelligent people. Idiots. Still...without people like this we wouldn't have the Darwin Awards...

...I'm personally a big fan of the paid-for fireworks displays...especially when the view from my house was...(as attached).

[Lias]

I dunno theres something to be said for blowing up yer mums silverbeet plants with double happies.. *ahh childhood memories*

Seriously thou I'd be much happier with fireworks being freely avilable to 18 (or even 25) or older folks, than with the blanket ban we have now.

And there will always be dickheads. I've seen people have roman candle FIGHTS, intentionally shooting them at each other, and this was before Jackass/Stevo :-P

[kerryg]

Guy fawkes Night. Until the wowsers totally abolish it

Always seemed to me to be an odd thing to celebrate. Now if he had been SUCCESSFUL and it was the NZ Parliament :devil2:

QUOTE
He was finally hung, drawn and quartered which was the traditional punishment for traitors on January 31, 1606. Guy Fawkes was hung until he was half dead and then his genitals were cut off and burned in front of him. Whilst still alive, his heart and bowels wwere removed from his body, he was decapitated and his limbs removed from his body. Finally, his body parts were publicly displayed and left for the birds to eat them.UNQUOTE

[Wolf]

I seriously miss the "Mighty Cannon" crackers - they made "Double Happies" look like squibs. Square carboard base glued to one end of the tube, thick proper fuse out the side and strong warnings not to light it while holding it. Deafening report!

We had one year when the fireworks conspired against us - a "penny rocket" (one of the small things with a very light skinny stick) hit my brother in the cheek an inch below his eye and left a welt, one of my larger rockets of the explode-in-the-air variety took off, abruptly levelled off at about 20 feet as if it had hit a barrier, shot of across the paddocks in a curve (found it the next morning after it had crashed into the far side of the bonfire pile (that we didn't light) - it had been on its way back to us) and I was chased down the garden path by a whirligig of some description (not content to just spin on the spot).

We used to stick double happies under jam-jar lids and light the fuse - I put a lid up on the roof of the house that way.

Why did the wowsers ban bangers and rockets? Burns and injuries, ruptured ear-drums and missing fingers from people not obeying the safety rules, a girl (in Hastings, I think) hospitalised with a rocket lodged in her ear (fired at her through a vacuum-cleaner pipe, bazooka style, by some fuckhead), properties burned through careless use of rockets etc.

The Powers That Be deemed there were too many irresponsible people doing dangerous things and banned the bangers and rockets - my favourite pyrotechnics. Mighty Cannon - the eater of fingers - was the first to go, then they decided that even double-happies were too dangerous in the hands of idiots.

So it's hot just the wowsers that ruined it for us.

I had the ?pleasure? of celebrating Guy Fawkes with a bunch of Dorkland University students who, prior to going out to One Tree Hill with their fireworks, liquored-up on Inner Circle rum. Up on the Hill they threw double happies at each other and at random people's faces. They also threw a cracker at a guy holding a large paper bag of fireworks.

I believe a friend of mine may be able to recall their names if anyone would like to personally "thank" them for their part in getting fireworks curtailled in this country.

[Ixion]

I seriously miss the "Mighty Cannon" crackers - they made "Double Happies" look like squibs. Square carboard base glued to one end of the tube, thick proper fuse out the side and strong warnings not to light it while holding it. Deafening report!

..

Yeah, the might cannons were good but they cost a lot. Bang for buck, double happy was the best. Unravel the string and then connect the fuses up again, marvellous for demolition work Four double happys in a hole, then a length of fuse to the next hole, another 4 and so on. Light the fuses and you could bring down several metres of bank. Mr Motu was not the only one who had fun!.

Bloody wowsers banning everything. I'd hate to be a kid nowdays , there's nothing left to have fun with.

Twas easy to get the gunpowder out of double happies too, to make one BIG banger. I like things that make a BIG BANG.

[Wolf]

I like things that make a BIG BANG.
I know, I've read your posts about phosphorus :devil2:

[Lou Girardin]

A double happy up the spout of my steel barreled pop gun sure flung 1/2 oz round sinkers with a wallop. Hee Hee.

[Waylander]

Couple of bottle rockets turned upside down in a texas fireant hill left a pretty good size crater aswell. Exspecially when you timed the fueses so they all went off at the same time.

[crashe]

gays can be married, and a drag queen can be a member of parliament

You have two facts wrong here.

Gays can NOT get married.
They can only have a Civil Union, which is NOT marriage.
Only Hetrosexual's can get married and Hetrosexual's can also have a Civil Union ceromony

Georgina Beyer MP is NOT a drag queen.
She is in fact a Transsexual.
A transsexual is someone who has had a sex-change.

A drag queen is a bloke dressed up in drag.
Which are in fact two different things.

I won't comment about the other facts that you quoted.
As I am not up to play about those laws that you have stated.

[sels1]

Ahh....Guy Fawkes....the only person ever to enter Parliment with honest intent!

[pete376403]

Cracker gun made of a .303 shell case on a wooden handle. Drop a double happy in, light it then load the ball bearing (your timing had to be pretty spot on) Great things. I put a number of holes in a corrogated iron fence that way and the house owner was "NOT" amused. In fact if he'd been able to catch me the stick he was waving could have hurt. Childhood, eh?

[Waylander]

Cracker gun made of a .303 shell case on a wooden handle. Drop a double happy in, light it then load the ball bearing (your timing had to be pretty spot on) Great things. I put a number of holes in a corrogated iron fence that way and the house owner was "NOT" amused. In fact if he'd been able to catch me the stick he was waving could have hurt. Childhood, eh?
Childhood hell. Most of my crazy antics I still do. :devil2:

*idly wonders at the possibility of smuggling some real fireworks in my new fuel tank* lol

[phantom]

I remember a drunken bbq ( make that at a bbq with lots of drunk people ) throwing uncooked sausages with a lit double happy in them. Talk about a mess. At high school a mate and I made up a batch of explosive made of 50/50 sugar and weedkiller, put in used scewtop film cannisters and blew small saplings out of the ground. Its a wonder I've still got my arms and legs. Oh and who remembers bolt bombs. Todays kids are just wooses thank God :whistle:

[Wolf]

Cracker gun made of a .303 shell case on a wooden handle. Drop a double happy in, light it then load the ball bearing (your timing had to be pretty spot on) Great things. I put a number of holes in a corrogated iron fence that way and the house owner was "NOT" amused. In fact if he'd been able to catch me the stick he was waving could have hurt. Childhood, eh?
Reminds me of a cracker gun I saw made from a length of metal pipe with one end squeezed flat. Dunno if the bugger ever tried putting stones in it or whether it was just used to make a loud bang and a spurt of flame.

If its all the same to you loonies, I prefer to stick to legally accessible firearms made by reputable and reliable weaponsmiths ("Colt" need not apply) - as much as I enjoy loud bangs and holes appearing in things, I prefer to prolong my enjoyment by surviving the experience in one piece.

[Wolf]

Oh and who remembers bolt bombs.
Yep. Guilty. Also remember a couple of lectures from my father about them. One was about a classmate who detonated a bolt bomb and was half strangled by one of the teachers who had fought in WWI in the trenches and was suffering from shell-shock. The other was about a classmate who threw one in the classroom, the thread stripped and a flying bolt passed through his still-outstretched hand and lodged in the wall.

[Lou Girardin]

It's bloody sad how kids live now in our cotton wool world.
All the signs about holding lit fireworks were never a patch on having a double happy go off in your fingers.

[Ixion]

Guncotton is easy to make, and the materials not TOO hard to get hold of. Quite safe so long as you wash it well. Really well. Bit unstable otherwise. You need to make a high explosive to detonate it. Nitrogen tri-iodide will work and is trivial to make.

[Motu]

Cracker gun made of a .303 shell case on a wooden handle. Drop a double happy in, light it then load the ball bearing (your timing had to be pretty spot on) Great things. I put a number of holes in a corrogated iron fence that way and the house owner was "NOT" amused. In fact if he'd been able to catch me the stick he was waving could have hurt. Childhood, eh?

I put mine through the sheets hanging on the line - big black powder burns on them....oh yeah,you gotta aim too huh?

Pipe bombs...my little brother in law would come home and we'd hear it go off down at the golf course....it doesn't bear thinking about if someone lost their ball in the wrong place.I also know someone who took the door off one of the gun enplacements on Tamaki Drive with a pipe bomb.

On Guy Fawkes night I would fill balloons with oxy/acet and put them all in the back of my Morris Oxford,then drive off to the party - too much oxy and they would go off with an ear ringing flash and blow the bon fire apart.

[Wolf]

Carbide bombs! Put some water in the bottom of a plastic bottle, pour in a quantity of calcium carbide, screw the lid on quick and if you've done it "right" apparently the heat and pressure will ignite the acetylene/air mix - never had it happen like that.

Put a home made fuse into the cap of a Sunlight dish-washing liquid bottle, poured water and carbide into the bottle, screwed the lid on and lit the fuse. It died without passing flame into the mix so I poked the fuse down into the bottle, lit a match and held it over the hole.

There was a 2-foot jet of flame out of the neck of the boittle, the lid went into orbit and flicked the match out of my hand - causing a welt on my fingertip that took days to go away.

I ran - sprinted inside, collapsed on the kitchen floor and bloody-near wet myself laughing.

Mum came rushing into the kitchen yelling "what's happened?" and it was five minutes before I was capable of telling her - I just lay in a ball on the floor clutching my aching ribs with tears pouring down my face, howling with laughter.

And that, ladies and germs, is why I ran inside - I knew I was going to crack up big-time and I knew if mum had heard that bang then looked out the window to see me rolling on the lawn clutching my stomach, I'd've had an ambulance crew turning up.