Civil Disobedience
Minnesota has strict laws against any kinds of aerial fireworks. If it lifts off the ground and explodes, it’s not allowed (model rockets are A-OK, though… just watch out for those spectacular engine failures).
For the 4th of July, Peggy and I went to a acquaintance’s house. Said acquaintance lives on a lake. Of course, the thing about living on a lake in Minnesota is that everyone who lives on the lake competes to see who has the best illegal fireworks display. After Peggy and I watched (in horror!) (coff) at all of the rampant law breaking going on, we drove home. You may have heard that Minnesota has a lot of lakes; this is true, especially in the part of Minnesota where we were last night.
During the hour long ride home, we saw “illegal” fireworks going off maybe every 30 seconds or so.
July 5th, 2005 at 5:23 am
There were numerous illegal fireworks displays on both the east and west shores of Lake Minnewashta tonight.
July 5th, 2005 at 9:24 am
Bad Minnesotans! Bad! *cough* Then again, we were offering our neighbor (who has kids) last night some of our illegal fireworks that the movers actually packed and so kindly moved for us (even though nothing of the sort was supposed to be put in any of the boxes). Okay, so we’re bad Arizonans.
July 5th, 2005 at 9:54 am
No fireworks in Arizona … there’s no risk of fire there! The houses are made of mud, there’s almost no plantlife, the roof tiles are clay. What can you burn down? :)
July 5th, 2005 at 1:25 pm
Legal here, baybee!
Jeff took a chair outside to watch the neighbors’ pis^H^H^H^Hfireworks contest. It sounded like WWIII outside. It rocked.
July 5th, 2005 at 1:57 pm
We heard what sounded like the shelling of Lebanon from our house last night. We were a couple of miles from the city’s fireworks display and it still shook the house every now and then.
July 5th, 2005 at 9:18 pm
We live within walking distance of the Minnesota State Fair. This is good, considering the fact that we can walk to the Fair and don’t have to deal with traffic, pay tons of money to park, etc. But it’s bad, considering the fact that they have a fireworks display every night of the week for two weeks.
My favorite “shelling of Lebanon” story has to be when I worked at a summer camp in the U.P. I woke up one morning to what sounded like continuous helicopter noises… no wait, are those machine guns? No, can’t be… it has to be a helic… BOOOOOOM! BOOM BOOM! WTF! I didn’t think the Michigan Militia had a strong presence in this part of the state…
I was very confused until a coworker explained everything during breakfast. The camp was a few miles away from a quarry. And once a year, the Michigan State Police supervise a firing range at the quarry for all state residents who
owncollecthave permits for automatic machine guns, mortars, vintage tanks (tanks!), howitzers (howitzers!!), and any other military hardware they’ve been able to get their hands on, I guess.