Ohio Fireworks

These look to be 1 &1/2 inchers, which were the biggest firecrackers anyone had in our Ashland neighborhood. The only ones I was "permitted" to have were ladyfingers - I had purchased a package in Canada when we visited Niagara Falls.

And true to my mother's prediction I did have one go off in my hand, the fuse burned down instantly and the ladyfinger went off before I could throw it. It stung but did no damage; and I never trusted them enough to hold one again - I just light them on the ground. They were so cheaply made that the reliability was questionable.

We made do with sparklers and rolls of caps. The sparklers were pretty tame but if you didn't mind wasting your caps you could make a very loud bang by exploding a full roll at once. That was done by putting a roll on the top of the curb and smashing it with the top of a baseball bat.

By high school I had developed a source at school for hammerheads, cherry bombs, and M-80's (the ultimate). These were sold for agricultural purposes (blowing up yellow jackets and scarring crows). Apparently some adult was supplying them to us illegally at inflated prices, not unlike weed a few years later. They are broadly known as "salutes" and are powerful enough to blow a small crater in the dirt or rocket a tin can to treetop level. In model rocketry we found them ideal for the final booster engine, they would ignite a hundred feet in the air and the noise of the explosion could be heard for a mile.