Theresa · Mather

Last night at around 1:40 a.m., thunder right over the house woke me up. After the storm rolled through and I had a cup of hot milk and later a generous shot of vodka when the milk didn't work, I finally got back to sleep. I was awakened by the cannon type clap of thunder at around 6 a.m., but when the house didn't shake, I realized something else was up. It happened several more times until I realized that it was percussion from test shots for the town fireworks tonight, extra loud because of the low cloud ceiling. I gave up on sleeping and went out to paint.

This town loves fireworks. I watched the recent ones for the Utah Summer Games out my front window, since they are launched near the base of the hill, and usually they are similar to the ones for the 4th so this year's display should be good. It's shot from the airport, which is at the base of the hill on another side, and everyone parks their cars all around that rural area and sits in or on their car to watch while fire crews stand ready with tanker trucks to put out any brush fires that might result. We'll have to go early since the town is "full" this weekend. By full, I mean that for whatever reason, everyone and their grandma is in town and even the homes that are only used as vacation homes are occupied. There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to which holidays fill Cedar City up, but you can tell by the jam packed supermarkets and heavy traffic when it's happening. There were even enough people streaming up the mountain to make it profitable for the police to set up a heavily manned "safety checkpoint" complete with paddy wagon to check cars for illegal fireworks, alcohol and seat belt and child car seat violations.
Coming from southern California, where fireworks are banned in most areas, the relatively out of control fireworks situation amazes me.
There are firework stands open all month here because of the Mormon holiday "Pioneer Day" later in the month which is also a fireworks holiday, and they sell fireworks in the supermarkets the whole time too (and there are usually pioneer day specials on beer...go figure). But this is not enough for explosives-loving Utah, so people trek to the Indian reservations to buy the few types that are banned for consumer use in Utah. The Moapa tribe conveniently sells discount liquor and any firework you can imagine at a handy dandy freeway-side truck stop/Casino between here and Las Vegas- they even provide a location for shooting them off which is usually littered with empty cases of beer and spent fireworks. So people bring back shells and all kinds of things that shoot into the air between late June and Late July and the police frantically follow the explosions in a vain attempt to catch the people firing them off. Last night, there were drunken hoots and hollars echoing through the neighborhood and some almost professional display quality shells were fired into the air. Based on the frequency of wafting wood smoke, the fashionable thing to do this year is to have a campfire in the yard. Down the hill, people even built a campfire on their wooden porch in a bowl of some sort while simultaneously another neighbor shot off fireworks in their back yard. And the town is full of cavorting people. People even shoot off fireworks around their cars while they wait for the town fireworks.
Fortunately, we have been having cloudbursts and everything is damp.....