New Hampshire's lucrative fireworks exports menace neighbors

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

As it turns out, many perhaps most, of those fireworks that have ruined life recently for many people in Providence, Boston and other New England cities came from New Hampshire, that old “Live Free or Die” parasite/paradise (where I lived for four years). There,  out-of-state noisemakers stock up and take the  explosives back to Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, where they ignite them all over the place, with the worst impact in cities. While the fireworks are illegal in densely populated southern New England, they’re legal in the Granite State.

New Hampshire has long made money off out-of-staters coming to buy cheap (because of the state’s very tax-averse policies) booze and cigarettes.  The state also has loose gun laws. Fireworks are in this tradition. 

That’s its right. But it could be a tad more humane toward people in adjacent states by making it clear to buyers  at New Hampshire fireworks stores that the explosives they’re buying there are illegal in southern New England.

Because of our federal system, states that may want to control the use of dangerous products can be hard-pressed to do so because residents may find it easy to drive to a nearby state and get the stuff.  Still,  in compact and generally collaborative New England, it would be nice if New Hampshire, much of which  is exurban and rural, would consider the challenges of heavily urbanized Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut  as they seek  to limit the use of fireworks, especially in cities. Granite Staters might remember  that much of the state’s affluence stems from its proximity to that great wealth creator Greater Boston and show a little gratitude. (This reminds me of how Red States are heavily subsidized by Blue States, whose taxes fund  much of the federal programs in the former.)

Ah, the federal system, one of whose flaws is painfully visible in the COVID-19 pandemic. Look at how the Red States, at the urging of the Oval Office Mobster, too quickly opened up, leading to an explosion of cases, which in turn hurts the states that had been much tougher and more responsible about  imposing early controls. But yes, the federal system’s benign side includes that states can experiment with new programs and ways of governance, some of which may become national models, acting as Justice Louis Brandeis called “laboratories of democracy’’.

To read more about New Hampshire’s quirks, please hit this link.

Explosive evenings

M-80

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

Residents of Providence are being increasingly disturbed by fireworks  and firecrackers being set off for hours every night, especially in poorer neighborhoods. Lots of these are being illegally used, since in Rhode Island only ground fireworks and sparklers can be legally ignited – in other words, quiet displays --  with firecrackers, rockets and mortars or other devices that launch projectiles banned, except, I assume, for professionally run public fireworks displays  that we used to enjoy on special occasions, especially The Fourth and New Year’s Eve.

The racket,  injuries  and fire threat from illegally used fireworks is one of those quality-of-life issues, like graffiti, that can drive people away from a city. The police must crack down hard. And the  explosives are hurting the sleep we need, especially in these tenser-than-usual times. If some folks see the fireworks as an expression of personal or political liberation many more see them as reminders of entrapment in an urban dystopia.

Knock it off.

Ah, if only people were as interested in reading the Declaration of Independence as in making a lot of noise.

The fireworks frenzy is happening in other cities, too. Please hit this link.

The year-round fireworks dilutes the excitement that we used to feel as we approached the  public celebrations of the Glorious Fourth of July, which I suppose won’t happen this year in most places. When I was a kid we lived on the coast and so most of the fireworks spectacles we enjoyed were on beaches. But we also, probably illegally, had our private shows, mostly involving devices such as  M-80s, cherry bombs and Roman candles,  in backyards – with the  nearby thick woods muffling the noise a bit. But that was only on the Fourth, when the local cops, who seemed to know everyone in town, would look the other way.

My father would stock up several years worth of fireworks in Southern states, where laws were lax. (Now the laws are very lax in New Hampshire — Live Free and Blow Off Your Hand.

Then there was the little cannon he set off every year on the Fourth. We had a loud old time for several hours.

A few boys would light and throw M-80s and cherry bombs at each other (but only on The Fourth!), displaying the same sort of idiocy as in the BB-gun wars they had through the year, in which it was possible to lose an eye or two. Cheap thrills indeed!

Billboard Boulevard: Sex, fireworks, guns and God

The former railroad depot in Rural Retreat, Va., on our route. A lot of "former'' this and that on our route.

Adapted From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

Leaving our wives behind in Rhode Island (they had better things to do), an old friend and I drove the inland route to Florida the other week, mostly to check out what was happening in the inland southeastern corner of “Flyover Country.’’  We traveled in a huge Chevy Suburban, whose gas-guzzling appetite was gargantuan. Thus we did our part to boost global warming as we drove through weather that stayed nippy until we got to not-very-lovely Ocala, Fla., where it finally warmed up.F

Much of the route was in  the Appalachians, with the most spectacular sections, of course, in Virginia, East Tennessee and North Carolina. I was particularly eager to see the Smoky Mountains again. Some of my East Tennessee relatives had taken me up there when I was a boy. On this trip, the mountains still looked softly spectacular.

Most of the folks we met on the way were at least superficially friendlier than New Englanders, who tend to be guarded. I’m mostly referring to hotel staffers, restaurant workers serving deliciously unhealthy  fatty and salty Southern food, the personnel in a Civil War museum in the Shenandoah Valley, in Virginia, who had good feelings about the Confederacy and the good ole fraternity house boys near the campus of the University of Georgia, in  Athens. In front of their plantation-style house, they gave us directions to a couple of quirky restaurants, one of which would have fit in well in late ‘ 60s San Francisco, with waiters in clothes that looked like Hippie outfits, or at least Halloween versions of same.

Athens and  Asheville, N.C., (also a college town) were the most engaging cities we visited.

There were innumerable attractions along the way, with seemingly every burg with more than 5,000 people with a museum or other attraction peddled on roadside signs, with such curiosities as upside down airplanes as graphic blandishments. I particularly liked such examples of local charm as the large but mysteriously closed auto museum (with big car models  sticking out from the brick exterior walls) in a remote area of Georgia; the billboard advertising “Virginia’s only cavern with elevator service’’;  a Virginia town named “Rural Retreat,’’ and a village in North Carolina called “Forks of Ivy.’’

But most illuminating were the big billboards along the Interstates seeming to give contradictory messages about the region’s moral climate. Hypocrisy, or just psychological/ sociological complexity in the Bible Belt?

Among the most numerous billboards were for those “Adult Superstores’’ (porn and sex toys), along with such related enterprises as strip joints (“Café Risque: We Bare All’’);  gun markets and such related attractions as “Machine Gun America,’’ and Protestant evangelical churches (“Jesus Paid for All’’), some of them put up to promote attendance at an individual institution in a small town. There are lots of simple crosses but we didn’t spot any roadside crucifixes. This  was Protestant Bible-thumping country.

And, yeah, fireworks signs remain plentiful. But with the loosening of fireworks-sale controls in the Northeast, that draws much less excitement for travelers from up here these days. I remember my father filling the back of our station wagon with fireworks he bought in South Carolina back in the early ‘60s on our way back from Florida. That both my parents smoked added a touch of suspense to the rest of the trip home.

The billboards become more conventionally commercial from Orlando south, but then as they say, the further south you go in Florida, the further north you go.