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| Photo source: MPR/ Remembering Dululth's Infamous 1988 fireworks explosion/07-04-18 |
So, we’re 250 years old today. America, that is. Pretty old by American standards, not very old by European standards and those of some other civilizations.
And not really very old by MY standards. Here’s why:
My paternal grandfather — pay attention here — MY (there goes that upper case again) grandfather was 21 years old when America celebrated its centennial in 1876. He was born in 1855. There were people around then whose lives overlapped with George Washington’s (he died in 1799), and that grandfather lived long enough to see me as a baby. Yes, I was once a baby like so many others.
My other grandparents were a bit younger, all born in Europe around the time of America’s 100th birthday. Their countries of origin — Sweden and Germany (that older grandfather was an Irishman from Canada) — had been around for a millennium or so, but these immigrants ended up in the United States, and Duluth, when the country was just over a century old. Ancient history? Not very. Greece has ancient history.
Of course, I’m no kid. America was only 163 years old when I was born in Duluth on the cusp of World War II. You can count on your fingers to figure out my age, but you’ll need a lot of fingers.
So we’re a young-old country.
Like so many other Americans, over the years my family celebrated the Fourth of July with appropriate exuberance. Flag hanging on the porch, picnic food prepared in the kitchen and placed in a wicker basket, gathering with relatives for a feast, a parade (Moose Lake, near our family cabin, always had one), kids’ rides at their carnival in the park, fireworks after sundown. America a year older.
Not a lot of talk about the birth of a nation, which is why we all had gathered. Oh, we held all those truths of the founders to be self-evident and got on with feasting and having fun on the Fourth.
This year is different, of course. America is two and a half centuries old and deserves to be honored despite certain shortcomings in our society that also are self-evident. Most of us know what they are.
Whew, sounds like I’m getting serious. Well, try this.
One Fourth of July celebration in Duluth stands out from all the rest. Ever since Duluth started hosting fireworks displays on its Bayfront, our family has attended. The tradition was started by the late Mayor Ben Boo in the late 1960s or early ‘70s and it has lasted all these years — Boo’s enduring legacy. Before then Duluth was a nothingburger on July 4.
We always went to the fireworks as our children were growing up, year after year, throughout their early childhoods, teen and college years, extending into early adulthood before they married and started families and developed their own traditions here and elsewhere.
After so many years viewing fireworks at Bayfront shortly after sundown on Independence Day, they tend to run together in one’s memory. Spectacular displays of sprays of lights flashing high in the dark sky above our heads, the sounds of explosions on the ground as the rockets are catapulted into the firmament, huge crowds of onlookers.
We always watched from the same place, a grassy hillside not far from The Depot. Great spot, no longer there.
But one Fourth display does not blend in the memory with the rest: The year the whole kit and caboodle exploded on the ground almost immediately after the display started. It was July 4, 1988. The explosion was deafening, the conflagration on the ground as the fireworks all went off at once, spectacular, yet frightening for most viewers, especially those up close.
Hundreds of viewers close to the explosion fled. My family largely stayed put — we were far enough away. But we wondered if we should flee.
After the explosion everything went dark and ominously quiet for a few moments before the wail of emergency vehicle sirens pierced the air. No one knew the extent of the damage or if viewers were injured or even killed. What about the workers who’d set them off? How could anybody up that close survive?
Fortunately, everyone did. There were no serious injuries or burns. A few viewers complained about small burning fragments drifting in the air, but no serious damage resulted from that.
Some 10,000 spectators, give or take, left the greater Bayfront area that night 38 years ago with an eternal memory of that spectacular, if ominous, fireworks explosion. As with me, it will never be forgotten.
Now here we are again celebrating Independence Day, this time on its 250th anniversary. Let’s hope it’s a safe one.
Happy Semiquincentennial America! Whew…long word. Absolutely supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org
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