One From the Road - Why just the Fourth?

In 1975, I spent the summer in Sublette, Ks. doing my college internship at the hay mill. The mill ran 7 days a week, 24 hours a day as long there was hay to cut. The Fourth of July was just another working day for us.

I would buy a big bag of fireworks just in case we were rained out. Who am I kidding, it never rains in southwest Kansas. I put the bag of fireworks in my pickup and forgot about them.

Late September, I went back home to finish my schooling. One Friday evening, I decide to run up Miami Mo. to check out what was going on. There was Jackie, Chuckie and Addison sitting there wondering what they were going to  do that night.

It wasn't long until I had my big bag of fireworks out and we were giving a show to some old empty brick buildings. When we ran out of fireworks, we picked up all the big pieces and put them in a trash bag.

Just  as we got done, a Saline County Sheriff Officer drove up, who might have never know Miami existed, if it wasn't for us. He asked if we heard any gun shots. We all said, "No sir", as stood with small pieces of burnt papers around our feet. We didn't lie to him, he just didn't ask the right question.

Five years later, I am working for a cement company driving a ready mix truck. Our dispatcher, Larry, was a short, stocky man who was very jumpy. He was given a new pick up but it was to run on unleaded gas. We had regular in our pump for the trucks.

Larry went to the shop to find out if regular gas would hurt his unleaded engine. Our shop foreman told him that it wouldn't  and he proceeded to fill it up with regular gas.

 As soon as he was back at his desk, I went to my car and got my big bag of fireworks. Inside it was an auto fooler.

I hooked it up to the spark plug and after work, I went across the street and waited. Larry came out and started his pickup. It smoked. It whistled. It made a loud bang. If I knew what a video cameras was at that time, I could have won America's Funniest Video contest. He looked liked a Saturday morning cartoon. His feet was running faster than his body.

A month went by before I told him that I was the one that put the auto fooler on his pickup. The look on his face was the one you have if you ever won the lottery. I was dispatched to fill postholes at feed yards and farms with my cement truck.

He then put me on a load to the local cemetery where they were installing a new fence. Every five feet, I had to stop and pour cement into a post hole.

When I got back to the office, Larry was sitting at his desk, shaking his head back and forth. He said, "I have sent you on the worst loads I could, to punish you. I just received a call from the foreman of the construction crew at the cemetery. He wants the guy with the black cowboy hat to deliver his last load tomorrow".

I looked around the room and I was the only one wearing a black cowboy hat. Larry went on to tell me how they wished I had been the first one to delivered them. I guess I should have spoken up sooner to get punished.

I may have out grown the need to shoot off firework but I'm sure that I still have a big bag of them,  just in case.