When I was a kid, there was a legendary day that occurred every year with at least the importance of Christmas or a birthday. That was ‘cracker night’! Celebrated in early June (to coincide the with The Queen’s Birthday) this was an Australian tradition dating back to the 1800s that can trace it’s origins all the way back to Guy Fawkes’ failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605.
But of course as kids we didn’t know that! All we knew was that it was the only time of the year we could buy and fire off our own fireworks!
Roman Candles, Catherine Wheels, Throwdowns, Morning Stars, Crazy Jacks, Double Bungers – all these names (and more!) were the music of my youth. We’d save our pennies avidly and buy them individually or in sets at our local shops, amassing a vast collection before the long-awaited day when they would all be fired off. As we got older we got creative, and I can remember many hours spent carefully dismantling crazy jacks to extract the gunpowder inside so it could be used to craft out own bigger (but inevitably not better) ‘crackers’.
One never-to-be-forgotten memory was how Bernard and I spent hours – days – carefully assembling one of those cardboard medieval villages (from a book) and then rigging the entire thing with gunpowder and fuses extracted from extra fireworks so we could ‘blow it up’ in spectacular style. Of course it just fizzled and burned, but I’m sure we thought it glorious in those days!
I used to get so excited on cracker night I was probably gibbering. It was magical. And then, on June 7 1986, came the last ever cracker night.
Safety was the reason. Too many fires; too many injuries. I myself burned my hand badly one time when a crazy jack fired out the back end while I was holding it as a makeshift light saber. It’s miraculous I didn’t hurt myself more, since I vividly recall my cousin Troy and I used to fire Roman Candles at each other and try and block the exploding projectiles with garbage lids. Those were the days.
At any rate too many children were injured; too many fires were started, and too many adults had presumably become irritated by the noise. So most of Australia banned home fireworks and cracker night sunk into legend.
It had always been this way in NY State here in the US, and KLS had never had the joy of annual home fireworks. In my years here I have bought the occasional firework while in other states, but even sparklers have been mysteriously unavailable for almost the entire time I’ve lived here. I just assumed that I’d never again know the joy of lighting my own fireworks. And then, last weekend, we found this in a local grocery store:
What? What?? Fireworks for sale right in the grocery store? What bizarro world had we fallen into?
A quick internet search revealed that about six months ago our state passed a law that made it possible for select counties to sell fireworks for only one month of the year (leading up to July 4), and even then the specific types available were restricted to fountains. No launchers, no ‘bangers’, nothing that flies. But fireworks are legal here now?
Needless to say, we bought some:
And the last few nights we’ve been setting them off:
Now as I said these are just fountains, and photos hardly do them justice, but the thrill is real!
We’ve almost shot them all now, but we’ve saved the biggest (‘Pyro Fan’!!!) for last. But we’ll certainly be heading back to the store to buy more!
Amusingly the county we live in hasn’t legalized these, and it was pure coincidence that we took a drive up north to a different county where we found them. Given that they can only be sold for a couple more weeks, maybe it’s time to stock up 🙂
It may not be quite the experience of cracker night I remember from my youth, but I have to admit the excitement of backyard fireworks – especially after such a long time – is still there!
