The Firecracker Lady of Buffalo

When July Fourth is nearing, most children watch the weather reports daily. They do not want it to rain the night of July 4th. I used to spend hours reading about ways to prevent a light rain, or any rain for that matter. But I also didn't mind if there was some rain on the days leading up to the Fourth. If that happened they couldn't get into harvesting the wheat if it was slightly wet. I didn't worry about the poor farmers that needed to get their wheat harvested. I was just worried about our fun on the night of the Fourth.

(You realize this was the time that harvesting wheat had several steps. First the wheat was cut. Next the wheat stalks were bound into bundles. Various methods were used to handle these bundles. They could form the bundles into little shocks where the rain would run off the grains. Or they could store the bundles in the barn until time to haul them out to be threshed in the big threshing machine that moved from farm to farm in the neighborhood. Then there was still the storage or selling of the grain and disposition of the straw that remained after the grain was removed.) If the families were busy on their farm with one of these steps, even if the weather was OK, perhaps the most cherished youth might be detained to continue to work on the wheat.

Somehow most of these obstacles were erased by dark on the Fourth and we could start with our $1worth of firecrackers and fireworks. When our Uncle Ches (who was a colonel in the U.S. Army) came to visit anywhere close to the Fourth, he gave us $5 to buy our evening's fun. That was enough to keep us going for hours. We usually had either a cold watermelon or a freezer of homemade ice cream to go with whatever some neighbor has brought for the celebration.

That remained our biggest Fourth ever, until my sister Ellen met the Firecracker Lady. Jane Hale, from Buffalo, Mo., had started a firecracker stand in front of her house when she was a child. She learned about the economics of selling and buying and each year she enlarged her stand somewhat, until she finally went big time. She and her children organized and had several stands, then that changed into tents of fireworks, Instead of renting their tents each year Jane decided to buy several tents and rent them out for various functions in addition to selling fireworks. They bought fireworks wholesale and stored them on the Hale farm. Soon she and her sons had a big business going.

Jane loved to write, but she couldn't get published. She came to Ellen for help since she was a published author already. They began attending writers' conferences, book signings, and workshops together. Meanwhile Jane had added a sports clothing shop to her Buffalo fireworks corner, and a sports restaurant. When Jane finally got a series of books published she knew that Ellen's family was having a big reunion on the family farm here in Vernon County. She gave Ellen the huge box of fireworks as thanks for all her work. It was similar to the ones bought by towns or businesses to entertain or advertise.

Ellen was never too thrilled with fireworks and some of the family members were not familiar with setting off such high powered toys, so our sons and their sons went to the island in the Gray Lake to set them off. It finally became almost boring to watch and was tiring for those setting them off. But we could all say we had Uncle Ches' generous gift surpassed. Maybe he saw the display from his grave in Arlington, Va.