Sunday, July 09, 2006

It's Illegal, So It Stops?

I laughed out loud when I read a letter about fireworks to the editor of the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel:
Thanks for nothing

I want to say a big thank you to the people who approved the sale of formerly illegal fireworks. For a week or so, my 2-year-old and my 5-month-old did not get to sleep until midnight because of the noise of those fireworks in the neighborhood. Again, thank you for making them legal, and thank you to those people who obviously don’t have young children who set the hours when people can fire them off, and thank you to those in my neighborhood who have no respect for others when lighting off their two hours’ worth of grand finales.

I hope you are catching the sarcasm here; I am laying it on thick.

Michael Smith

Thanks for a fun letter!

These things were all true before the laws changed. It sounded no different in my neighborhood this year from last. It was noisy then. It was noisy last night. Laws that nobody is willing to enforce are a sham and cheapen respect for the law. Good that the restrictions were peeled back.

4 comments:

Doug said...

I think Daylight Saving Time was more a factor in late firework detonations than the new fireworks law. It doesn't get dark until later, so folks wait longer to start blowing up their fireworks. But yeah, those fireworks went off every year -- says the guy with little kids and easily spooked dogs.

Anonymous said...

My 3 year old and 6 year old stayed up until it was dark and we shot the heck out of our fireworks. Then they went to bed. Sounds like Mr. Smith is just another fun-Nazi. Of course the Star went out of their way to print a few letters on the subject. I even covered this on, (with movies) the other day. Seems you have a Fishers neighbour who hates fun, too!
It wasn't bad to NOT be a fireworks outlaw this year!
Of course we never had any problems anyway. My neighbours aren't buttheads! Next year...bigger and better!

Mike Kole said...

Michael- The letter was sarcastic. He's not against the fireworks.

I have a 1-year-old and neighbors who love the boom-booms. We just put on a white noise soundtrack in her room. Is she too young for Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music"?

Anonymous said...

It would be interesting to know if the number of arrests for firing guns went down with the change in the fireworks law.