David Colburn

Christmas and the Fourth of July have long competed for the title of America’s most colorful holiday. Christmas has twinkling lights, glittering ornaments, and enough wrapping paper to keep recycling centers busy until Valentine’s Day.
But the Fourth wins on flamboyance. After all, can you imagine Christmas with exploding trees? Sure you can – way too much, isn’t it?
For all the color that comes with Independence Day, though, my first enduring memory of it is black.
I was 5 years old, standing on the patio of our hillside home in Torrance, Calif., watching my dad strike a wooden match. He touched the flame to one of those little black cylinders that looked about as exciting as a pencil eraser, then stepped back.
Nothing much happened.
For a second.
Then a curl of black began pushing its way through the smoke. It twisted upward, slowly at first, then faster, growing and curling into something impossibly larger than the little pellet it had come from. I couldn’t imagine how so much could come from something so small.
There were probably a dozen pellets in the box, and when each cooled, I’d carefully pick up the black snake, surprised every time by how impossibly light it was before it crumbled between my fingers.
We had other fireworks, too. Smoke balls that somehow managed to look drab even while producing clouds of colored smoke. Sparklers. A few Roman candles. The older neighborhood kids had firecrackers, which seemed about as daring as hanging ten on the rolling Pacific.
But it was the snakes that fascinated me the most.
A few years later we were living in Kansas, where fireworks weren’t just legal, they were practically a seasonal business. Larry, a family friend, supplied fireworks wholesale to roadside stands throughout the county. Every summer he’d pull into our driveway with a trunk full of enough pyrotechnics to make the neighborhood kids think they’d stumbled onto Fort Knox.
One Fourth of July, my cousin Harris flew in from Santa Barbara, where personal fireworks were banned. Before he left California, he’d collected spending money from friends on his swim team, all counting on him to return with an illicit cargo of Kansas fireworks.
Then Larry pulled into our driveway.
If there was ever a kid who looked like he’d discovered buried treasure, it was Harris. The trunk opened to reveal what must have seemed like an endless supply of fountains, Roman candles, bottle rockets, firecrackers, and every other explosive delight a junior high boy could imagine. “I’ll take five of those. Give me 10 of those.” He shopped with the concentration of a Wall Street investor and the enthusiasm of someone who couldn’t quite believe all of this was actually legal.
A few days later, he somehow boarded an airplane bound for California with two suitcases full of fireworks. There are TSA agents reading that sentence right now who just broke into a cold sweat.
The family celebrations were wonderful, but one memory still stands out from the annual fireworks at the Marion Country Club, laid out much like Vermilion Fairways in Cook. Families spread blankets and lawn chairs near the ninth green while older kids lit fountains, aerials and buzz bombs.
One buzz bomb, however, had ideas of its own.
Instead of heading skyward, it took off horizontally, spinning like a crazed hornet straight toward the crowd. More specifically, straight toward my dad.
He instinctively tipped sideways in his lawn chair just as it arrived. The buzz bomb struck him squarely in the back, setting his shirt on fire.
A family friend reacted faster than anyone else, dumping her glass of iced tea on him before the flames had much chance to spread. Once everyone realized he was fine, we caught our breath, laughed a little nervously, admired the new ventilation hole in his shirt, and resumed the fireworks.
As kids, of course, danger was part of the attraction. I still remember the first time I lit a firecracker while holding it in my hand, waiting just a little longer than common sense suggested before throwing it. Bottle rockets received similar treatment.
As a supposedly responsible adult these days, I wouldn’t recommend either technique.
There was always a large professional fireworks display about a dozen miles away in Peabody that drew crowds from all over the county.
We never went.
The fireworks in our own home town were enough.
Somewhere along the way, though, enough stopped being enough. As an adult, a Fourth of July somehow felt incomplete without finding a professional display to cap off the evening. The bigger the shells, the louder the booms, the grander the finale, the better.
This year, as America celebrated its 250th birthday, there were plenty of folks eager to make it the biggest Fourth ever. That seems fitting in a country that has always had a fondness for thinking big.
Still, I find myself thinking less about the largest fireworks displays than the smallest ones.
When my daughter, Kiersten, was old enough to enjoy her first real Fourth of July, I had Roman candles available. Sparklers, too. Plenty of noisier and flashier fireworks.
Do you know what I lit first?
Black snakes.
After all those years, they still seemed like the perfect introduction to the holiday.
Watching her eyes widen as that little black pellet grew into something ten times its size was every bit as much fun as watching it happen when I was 5.
Today, fireworks can fill the sky with dazzling choreographed bursts of color. Drones can create eagles, flags, and stars overhead with astonishing precision. The technology is marvelous, and I’m as captivated with the displays as anyone else.
But if you ask me what really captures the spirit of the Fourth, it isn’t a stunning grand finale in the sky.
It’s the little kid standing in the driveway, carefully waving a sparkler through the summer darkness.
Or maybe it’s another little kid, kneeling over a tiny black cylinder, watching in amazement as something wonderful grows from almost nothing.
Maybe that’s why I’ve never quite outgrown black snakes. Long before I had words for it, I was captivated by the idea that something ordinary could become something extraordinary. I’ve spent much of my life looking for that same kind of transformation, whether in a photograph, a story, a journey, or the people I’ve been fortunate enough to know.
And it’s why I’m still looking. Because every now and then, if you look closely enough, something wonderful still grows from almost nothing.