A Fourth of July Story - The Volcano

Another Fourth of July has passed.  After each holiday, I can't help but reminisce about the previous Independence Days Eddie and I spent together.

One summer, about 20 years ago, Eddie and I received a bag of July 4th fireworks a couple of weeks early.  Eddie, always being an imaginative and impatient person, decided to play with fireworks (like these) before the Fourth, and came up with something himself.  He peeled apart each firecracker, poured about twenty firecrackers worth of powder on top of a piece of stuffing paper, and then wrapped it in the shape and size of a Hershey Kiss.

We called this new firecracker the "Volcano" because once you lit the top tip, it would start to spark and pop upwards.  It only lasted for about 10 seconds, but Zhen and I were impressed.  I think Eddie was hoping for something with more of a boom, but looking back at it now - thank goodness it didn't.

It was no surprise Eddie would become an engineer at some point in his life, since he always loved to take things apart and figure out how it worked.  This story reminds me about how he took apart a D battery once and learned that the black powder contained within them leaves carpets stained (even to this day), but I'll leave that for another post.