I already knew what to do with the bamboo trunks... BAMBOO CANNONS...

The next morning, I made 3 bamboo cannons out of those trunks. One was 5 feet long while the other 2 were 3-1/2 ft long. My dad had already bought some "carburo" rocks. I gathered up my 2 sons and the kids next door (3 boys) to the back yard with the cannons. I placed a carburo rock into one of the smaller cannons, poured a palmful of water into the lighting hole, let the carburo sizzle for 7 seconds then promptly lit the hole with a stick with a flame on the end. It went "BOOOOMMMM !!!"

The successful test firing lit up all their faces including my sons. I then proceeded to let each one of them test out the cannons for themselves. They had loads of fun over the next 2 weeks.

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As Christmas drew nearer and nearer, more and more fireworks can be heard in the evenings. A spattering here... a spattering there. On a scale of 1 to 10, a normal night would rank a 2-4 for holiday fireworks noise. Christmas Eve would rate a 7. Christmas Night would rate back down to about a 5. On succeeding nights after Christmas, the intensity would increase to 5 then 6, then 6-1/2, 7, 7-1/2, etc. towards New Year's Eve. Of course, the 2 days leading up to New Years Eve becomes very noisy with the waning hrs just before New Year's Eve building into a crescendo of firecrackers, bamboo cannons, sparklers, dazzlers, cherry bombs, sky rockets, etc ... even gunfire... non-stop. Just as you would think that the noise and booms and bams and skreeches and whinings can't get any worse, the stroke of midnight makes everything triple up in intensity. This intensity will then last for at least another 2 hours or so... literally. By 4 am, the noise decreases to about a 5.

Our particular New Year's Eve experience that year involved my 2 sons, myself (with video camera in hand) and my dad. We have been lighting up firecrackers for 2 hours leading up to midnight. We have already fired off several strings of fire crackers, wheels of dazzlers and sparklers, lines of whistlers and whiners, sky rockets, etc. At midnight and with another long string of firecrackers strung up on the fence in front of the house that my dad set up, I had the camera in hand and pointed to him. My sons were about 10 ft away from dad. He lit up the string and then all hell seemed to break loose (nobody was hurt). The string rattled of bang bang bang like a machine gun. However, it broke into 3 separate segments in 3 separate directions. One stayed on the fence, another one between my dad and my kids, and the 3rd one directly in front of me. As I tried to step back, the string would fire off again and again and get closer to me as I moved away and firecrackers bursting all over the place. Remember the bridge scene in APOCALYPSE NOW? After 10 or so seconds, everything was quiet. The road was engulfed with smoke, spent firecrackers were all around my dad who did not know which way to go. My sons were 100 ft away by then, and I found myself 50 ft from where I started with the camera, yet, I was still surrounded with spent firecrackers. Then all of a sudden, my dad let out a primal-jungle grunt yell.

HAH !!!

Everyone started laughing. Everything was on video.

A memory for the ages.


Cowboy

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