This Year's Fireworks Display from Galveston's Famous Flagship Hotel
(Courtesy Kevin M. Cox - Awesome Photographer, Galveston County Daily News)
Galveston Island is made up of 60,000 eccentric residents, apparently all with corroded brain cells from the salt air and water. I was one of them until, like an illegal alien, I exported myself to Dallas to infect it.
For years, the Galveston's major 4th of July fireworks display was always done at the end of the over-the-gulf pier that holds the famous Flagship Hotel. It's the perfect place. Everyone -- tourists and residents alike -- can line the Seawall for miles and have an unobstructed view of the Roman candles and such lighting the fabulous Gulf of Mexico. It is awesome.
About thirty years ago the city's fire marshal began pouting just after New Year's. He thought that since his department were professionals with fire, that they ought to be in charge of detonating the big 4th of July fireworks celebration. In previous years, the Parks Board, who bought the stuff, had done it.
Finally the city fathers relented and told the fire marshal that he and his guys could do the popping since, after all, they said in agreement, "You are the professionals with fire."
By 5 PM on the 4th, fire trucks were everywhere at the end of the pier. Even the thing with the zillion foot ladder that a wealthy benefactor had given them when Galveston's first skyscraper was built was there. Who knows why? The Flagship is no more than four stories tall.
Finally, nine o'clock came, and the fire marshal dressed in his most eleborate uniform and cap, and with the shiny gold badges, gave the signal to begin. The fireman lit the first match (or whatever they do to detonate the things) and the whole shebang went off at once. Did you hear me? Every last fire cracker, every last Cherry bomb, every last Roman candle...even the American Flag thing that always goes off last, blew up at once.
Fireman were running for cover.
It was a bigger explosion than I would have ever guessed would come from an A-bomb. ("Get under your desk!" I could hear my 5th grade teacher saying to our class in my mind's ear)
The fire marshal ran frantically to the hotel's front desk and told them they were going to have to evacuate the hotel.
The front desk guy told him to drop dead. "Get your junk off of our pier."
Meanwhile, I continued sipping my Canadian Club old fashioned in the hotel's bar.
That was the last year the fire marshal volunteered and the last time he pouted in public.
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