Firecrackers
As children we would often wander the streets, the wharves, the forts, the parks, and the beaches of San Francisco on family outings. Dad would take us to all the best places and always find the best free parking 
spots. Finding a spot was like finding treasure and the tighter the fit the better. I remember examining the inches between bumpers with pride as we piled out of the van. One winter day we were circling the blocks of Chinatown unable to get in line for the underground parking garage, the one exception to the free parking rule. On the third time around the block we were startled by a man knocking on Dad’s window. He rolled down the window and the man handed Dad a piece of paper. Dad looked it over, ask a few questions, then put the car in park, said a few more things, handed the paper back, rolled up the window, and started around the block one more time. I don’t remember understanding what was going on during the strange window conversation in the middle of the street but it was different and anything different was exciting. When we had come back to the same spot 
the man was there again with a big box of firecrackers. There were bundles of the little black cat fireworks, and boxes of M80’s and M100’s. We eventually got a spot in the parking garage below the park and then walked up to Kam Lok’s to eat. Being located underground with only the door visible up on the main street level made it feel like the place was a secret that only a few people knew about. A little side note on Kam Lok’s. I’m not sure if it was just our unsophisticated palates or that the food has gone down hill, but last time I took Sarah and the kids there it was pretty bad. In all fairness I did order giant undercooked frog legs which may have biased us to the rest of the meal. So in recent years Kam Lok’s has been replaced by a nice bread bowl of clam chowder on the wharf or a San Francisco Fire at Osaka Sushi in the Castro District.
spots. Finding a spot was like finding treasure and the tighter the fit the better. I remember examining the inches between bumpers with pride as we piled out of the van. One winter day we were circling the blocks of Chinatown unable to get in line for the underground parking garage, the one exception to the free parking rule. On the third time around the block we were startled by a man knocking on Dad’s window. He rolled down the window and the man handed Dad a piece of paper. Dad looked it over, ask a few questions, then put the car in park, said a few more things, handed the paper back, rolled up the window, and started around the block one more time. I don’t remember understanding what was going on during the strange window conversation in the middle of the street but it was different and anything different was exciting. When we had come back to the same spot 
the man was there again with a big box of firecrackers. There were bundles of the little black cat fireworks, and boxes of M80’s and M100’s. We eventually got a spot in the parking garage below the park and then walked up to Kam Lok’s to eat. Being located underground with only the door visible up on the main street level made it feel like the place was a secret that only a few people knew about. A little side note on Kam Lok’s. I’m not sure if it was just our unsophisticated palates or that the food has gone down hill, but last time I took Sarah and the kids there it was pretty bad. In all fairness I did order giant undercooked frog legs which may have biased us to the rest of the meal. So in recent years Kam Lok’s has been replaced by a nice bread bowl of clam chowder on the wharf or a San Francisco Fire at Osaka Sushi in the Castro District.
I peered down and what Dad was doing. He had a empty soup can and bored a hole in the side toward the bottom just big enough to jam a black cat firecracker into. Then a potato was then jammed into the mouth of the soup can. Dad lit the fuse and we watched the sparks make their way into the firecracker. There was a muted crack and the potato went flying into the air. The smell of gunpowder filled the air and we ran to fetch the potato for another launching. With each potato explosion the lure of the M100s would leach a little more excitement out of the black cats. The once fearsome firecrackers became mear small potato smashers. Dad must have felt the tug of the M100s as well because just as I was about to burst he went and got one. He waved his hands and shooed us back onto the front porch. The fused didn’t seem long enough. Dad had warned us about “quick fuses” that would go up all at once instead of crawling their way to the payload. He struck a match and lit the end of the fuse. The moment it took he flung it arching onto the front lawn. I held my breath and covered my ears. There was a flash and the loudest boom I’d ever heard outside of the Fourth of July. The billow of smoke drifted to reveal a crater in the front lawn. By the look on my Dad’s face I could tell it was louder than he’d expected. The boom shook garage doors and echoed up and down the block, and probably would have set off car alarms, but thankfully we didn’t have such things in the olden days. Doors opened, and curtains parted up and down the street but for ours. We quickly escaped into our entry.
The black cats were the first to run out being set off in the backyard or on New Year’s Eve and the 4th of July. The M80s and M100s lasted for years sitting in the lower section of the gun cabinet with all the ammo.
The black cats were the first to run out being set off in the backyard or on New Year’s Eve and the 4th of July. The M80s and M100s lasted for years sitting in the lower section of the gun cabinet with all the ammo.
I was most of the way through 8th grade at Park Junior High School (K7-9). I had a few school friends and a best friend Jimmy Harrington, we’d gone to school together at Sutter Elementary School, but I had no classes with him at Park Junior High. I rode my bike to school cutting off of Lone Tree Way at the top of 
the hill and one street over onto a dirt trail that lead to the upper track and then down to the school. This was the stoner hangout, I knew most of them but not well. Either I kept to myself or they did, or both. I had friends but never felt like I belonged in any of the groups so I kind of floated around in between them hanging out with anyone. I imagine this left me feeling a bit of an outsider sometimes. One of these days I found myself on the edge of a conversation about firecrackers. Kids bragging about the sticks of dynamite their uncles used to hunt wolverines and stuff like that. I had to come up with something to get into an awesome conversation like this so I blurted out that I had a bunch of M100s and M80s at home. No one believed me. I insisted. Then to prove it I said I’d sell one to one of the kids for a dollar. I was going to be pretty cool when everyone found out that I really did have boxes of M100s and M80s at home. The next morning I met the kid up on the trail on the hill above the track and made the transaction. I had my dollar and the kid had the M80. I think I felt a little cooler than I had been the day before but it was hard to tell. The hours passed by and the day proceeded as normal. I went to my classes and the teachers did something or other while the kids whispered and passed notes. I doodled and counted the pencils stuck in the ceiling, which I’m sure make me think of what a bad pencil fighter I was. My pencil fights ended with either me breaking my pencil by pulling back to hard, or getting my pencil snapped on the first round by holding it overly tight in my hands. Then it was lunch. I found out that the M80 had changed hands about a dozen times and half the school it seemed had seen it. “Hey look what I have”, type thing. I was enjoying this. Then the blast went off in the lunchroom. Kids were running out holding ringing ears. Some kids were scared, but mostly startled. A lot of the kids, I guess, were expecting this but I hadn’t been part of the plans. It was an exciting lunch and most of the kids enjoyed it I think after the initial scare and the smoke had cleared. Then it was class as normal except for the announcement asking for someone to come forward and rat out the kid that lit the firecracker. I didn’t even know who it was so I was in the clear. Then in the middle of my favorite class, science, my name was called over the intercom. I was to report to the office immediately. As I walked in I remember seeing Sasha sitting there looking guilty. I didn’t think it was him that’d lit the M80 but there he was. It turns out he was the rat. I saw the kids that lit the M80, I didn’t know him. I confessed to the principal that I’d sold the M80 to someone before school and figured I’d be sent back to class. But the interrogation continued with questions about where I’d gotten the M80. I could tell that they were making a big deal about this and so I said I’d bought the M80 as well from some stoners up above the track but didn’t know their names. Mom and Dad had to come and pick me up from school. I’m not sure what was said but eventually I was expelled from school with the kid that set the thing off. I finished off the year in Antioch Junior High School. I didn’t know anyone save a kid from church. I mostly kept to myself, it was a miserable way to end the year. But it didn’t last all that long, our home in Brentwood would be finished over the summer and I’d be attending the 9th grade at Liberty High School.
the hill and one street over onto a dirt trail that lead to the upper track and then down to the school. This was the stoner hangout, I knew most of them but not well. Either I kept to myself or they did, or both. I had friends but never felt like I belonged in any of the groups so I kind of floated around in between them hanging out with anyone. I imagine this left me feeling a bit of an outsider sometimes. One of these days I found myself on the edge of a conversation about firecrackers. Kids bragging about the sticks of dynamite their uncles used to hunt wolverines and stuff like that. I had to come up with something to get into an awesome conversation like this so I blurted out that I had a bunch of M100s and M80s at home. No one believed me. I insisted. Then to prove it I said I’d sell one to one of the kids for a dollar. I was going to be pretty cool when everyone found out that I really did have boxes of M100s and M80s at home. The next morning I met the kid up on the trail on the hill above the track and made the transaction. I had my dollar and the kid had the M80. I think I felt a little cooler than I had been the day before but it was hard to tell. The hours passed by and the day proceeded as normal. I went to my classes and the teachers did something or other while the kids whispered and passed notes. I doodled and counted the pencils stuck in the ceiling, which I’m sure make me think of what a bad pencil fighter I was. My pencil fights ended with either me breaking my pencil by pulling back to hard, or getting my pencil snapped on the first round by holding it overly tight in my hands. Then it was lunch. I found out that the M80 had changed hands about a dozen times and half the school it seemed had seen it. “Hey look what I have”, type thing. I was enjoying this. Then the blast went off in the lunchroom. Kids were running out holding ringing ears. Some kids were scared, but mostly startled. A lot of the kids, I guess, were expecting this but I hadn’t been part of the plans. It was an exciting lunch and most of the kids enjoyed it I think after the initial scare and the smoke had cleared. Then it was class as normal except for the announcement asking for someone to come forward and rat out the kid that lit the firecracker. I didn’t even know who it was so I was in the clear. Then in the middle of my favorite class, science, my name was called over the intercom. I was to report to the office immediately. As I walked in I remember seeing Sasha sitting there looking guilty. I didn’t think it was him that’d lit the M80 but there he was. It turns out he was the rat. I saw the kids that lit the M80, I didn’t know him. I confessed to the principal that I’d sold the M80 to someone before school and figured I’d be sent back to class. But the interrogation continued with questions about where I’d gotten the M80. I could tell that they were making a big deal about this and so I said I’d bought the M80 as well from some stoners up above the track but didn’t know their names. Mom and Dad had to come and pick me up from school. I’m not sure what was said but eventually I was expelled from school with the kid that set the thing off. I finished off the year in Antioch Junior High School. I didn’t know anyone save a kid from church. I mostly kept to myself, it was a miserable way to end the year. But it didn’t last all that long, our home in Brentwood would be finished over the summer and I’d be attending the 9th grade at Liberty High School.
The M100s and M80s remained in their boxes in the gun cabinet next to the ammo. I don’t know how many weeks or months or more passed before I had a great idea that required an M100. I put a couple in my pocket with some matches or a lighter and jumped on my bike. I pedaled down Orchard Lane then right onto Marsh Creek Road to the corner where there was a trail down to the creek. I was hidden from the road down there by the bank and trees, up the opposite bank was an irrigation canal that has since been removed. The mud was soft but not overly wet. I dug a goodly sized hole in a flat spot and hauled over a big rock that would fit snugly over it’s mouth. I figured it’d be able to throw the heavy rock quite a ways so I did a dry run of dropping the rock on the hole and running to my place of cover where I’d watch the M100 blast the rock into the air. I positioned the rock, lit the M100 and tossed it on the hole. Then tipped the rock over onto the hole and was halfway to shelter when I noticed that the rock had not made a good seal. There was a little gap. All this took a split second including the decision to turn back and give the rock a good stomp to seal it. The instant my full weight pressed down on the rock it blew. Everything went black, I was blind and disoriented. My ears were ringing, I tried to stand but could not put any pressure on my ankle and fell back to the ground. I crawled around and and up what I hoped was the opposite bank searching for the water in the irrigation canal to wash the dirt out of my eyes. It seemed like miles with the stinging pain in my eyes and throbbing in my ankle. I tried to remember if the fence between me and the water was barbed or not but figured it didn’t matter. I felt hot sun on the back of my neck as I cleared the shade of the trees and knew I was close to either the road or the canal. I found the fence thankfully not barbed and crawled under. I wasn’t sure how deep the canal was and kept hitting air as I reached for water. I awkwardly inched down and eventually hit water. I stuck my head in and forced my eyes open shaking my head back and forth. It stung really bad. I tested my sight. I could feel the grit from the mud sanding away my eyes when I looked around. But I was glad I could see as I went back to the water for some more rinsing. Eventually I concluded that all I had left was scratches that would heal in time. I rolled onto my back and lay there with my eyes closed resting. After some time I crawled my way back down into the gully and spent a little time surveying the aftermath through the crack of one eye. The rock was sunk in mud a few feet away from the hole that was quite a bit wider than it was. I’d crawled over the area enough that I couldn’t tell where I’d landed but it was probably pretty unspectacular. I took my bearing closed my eye and crawled up toward my bike cracking my eye on occasion to verify my trajectory. I single pedaled it all the way back home then limped into the kitchen where mom ask what happened. I imagine I looked pretty bad. I muttered something about crashing on my bike and wandered up to bed where my mind wandered in day dreams. There I was wide eyed and excited on the front lawn at Marble Drive. The memory tinted late evening blue. I felt the aggregate of the front walk on my ever bare feet, it was cool and Dad was saying something about dangerous quick fuses.