1st day of firework sales is in the books
 

and as usual it was a pitiful day.I sure wished people would shop earlier but maybe the temptation of lighting them off is too great or the parents don't want to listen to the kids beg them to shoot something for the next two weeks.

Either way it was a slow sales day but we got alot done and the place is looking good.T-minus 10 days before all hell breaks loose.

So...how far is Columbia from where you're at?

About 180 miles

They don't go on sale here until next Tuesday.

Well nevermind then...I might be in KC and Columbia this weekend picking up a crotchrocket.

Yeah,the company I sale for has a location there,unfortunately Kansas has much stricter laws on what can be sold.

I have plenty of rockets for sale but crotchrockets are not one of them.

Is there a special Chiefs Planet Package?

We have so many damn laws on the things, I wonder why we even bother buying them.

Tell me about it; if your caught bringing bottle rockets a crossed the Kansas / Oklahoma line they'll nail ya.

Are you going to get a helmet?

It's not mine, it's my buddies and yes he has one. I make him wear it when he's on the highway.

Good, I am pretty sure I would have expired at 21 if it was not for the one I was wearing. :thumb:

Yeah...he use to never wear one, until I threatened to whip his ass. I'd hate to lose my closest buddy over something like that.

I do not know the Laws about fireworks here in Illinois, but we do not need to buy any. Our fatass ****ing mayor puts on professional fireworks displays to celebrate a damn barometer movement. I only live about 4 blocks from where they shoot them, it is a pretty common event. Hope your business gets better Joe!

Do you advertise what day you open up for business? I know here they don't, and I don't know what day they start selling unless I happen to drive by and see they're open.

The Missouri to Kansas way is much easier. My friends and I brought back about 500 gross of bottlerockets when we found them on sale for $ .49. We even got pulled over for speeding on the way back and no problems whatsoever.

Just a quick question, how long does it take one to fire off 500 gross (72,000) bottle rockets? I can remember one time having a dozen gross and I was so sick of shooting them off I just lit 2 gross on fire in a paper bag just to get it over with.

Some buddies and I used to buy about 20 gross per year... we'd be done in an hour or two. Of course, one of the coolest things to do is to unwrap a gross at a time, douse the suckers in lighter fluid and light the whole bunch. It's really fun if one of your buddy's younger brothers is in front of them........ so I've heard. :D

Every year I spend more than I should and I get sick of lighting them far before I'm out.

Not this year.. damnit.. I hope... yeah.. probably I'll just do the same thing I always do.

Heh...the last time I can recall having a large number of bottle rockets we did crazy stuff like that...trying to light 12 at a time, tearing the sticks off and twisting them together like firecrackers. That's always fun in a crowd.

IMO, if you didnt have about a dozen burn marks in your tshirt after you were done, you werent really getting into the spirit of bottle rocketry.

:thumb:

Pffftttt. How are they gonna catch you?

My wife's extended family lives in Peoria, Il. I was under the impression that fireworks were illegal in that state. :hmmm:

RFID tags...if you see a black helicopter following you while transporting bottle rockets...dont cross the state line!

You mean to tell me those black helicoptors are real? All this time I thought they were just flashbacks from my younger, LSD years. :eek:

"You're gonna stand there, owning a fireworks stand, and tell me you don't have no whistling bungholes, no spleen spliters, whisker biscuits, honkey lighters, hoosker doos, hoosker donts, cherry bombs, nipsy daisers, with or without the scooter stick, or one single whistling kitty chaser? "


Send me a case of snakes and sparklers.

I always used to make it a point to be there on the first day. Its good to scout stuff, find the new stuff and since its slow the workers are always able to answer questions and let you know whats new and good. Of course I couldn't resist the temptation to buy some as well. But if you wait too long it gets too crazy and you might miss out on some things.

I have not seen a stand in Illinois, maybe they are. However, my neighborhood will sound like a war zone for about 48 hours during the Holiday. Professional firework displays are a big item up here. I think our Mayor is related to one of the people in that business. Our property taxes have gone up about 10% five years in a row. I hate her! :cuss:

Hehe. We would take about 4-5 gross at a time, put them in a large coffee can with sand in the bottom to hold them upright. Then someone would light them up with a can of hairspray and a lighter. It was a pretty impressive show.

We also used to have some pretty hellacious bottle rocket wars. My buddy's parents used to head out of town every 4th of July and they had pretty big yard (.5-.75 acre or so). There'd be about 8-10 of us and we'd spend the day building our "forts" out of old window screens, cardboard boxes and such. We'd use conduit or something similar as a bottle rocket launcher (pre-sighted in, of course). It was a blast.

I never said we were smart...

Bottle rockets are for wimps. For us PVC tube-loaded saturn missiles were the "small arms" of choice, and those 2" ariel shells loaded into about 4' of schedule 40 PVC were the heavy artillery. One of those 2" shells was accurate out to about 2 blocks that way, and would put quite a dent in a car from that range.... don't ask me how I know that, but I worked one whole summer paying for the damage when the cops showed up.

We also used to shoot roman candles at each other, and I can't believe none of us ever got hurt doing that. The funny thing I remember is that they just seemed to bounce off you without doing much damage.

DT

Ahhh, yes..the wars. Funniest time I remember was there was this one family with two kids on our block out in Blue Springs that everyone hated. The kids were grade A a-holes and they took after their parents. The oldest one was a bully and weighed in about 250 in 5th grade. Every year around 4th of July was just miserable...his parents would buy him about eleventy billion dollars worth of firecrackers and we were constantly terroized by this goober and his younger brother because we had nothing to fire back in return.

Anyway, one day, the youngest was out talking crap about their firecrackers and one of my buddies older brother who was in high school at the time overheard it and got out his bottlerockets.

From across the street, he was deftly aiming those rockets at the kid. The kid picks up their water hose with one of those sprayer attachments and is trying to stop them mid flight...well...it's at that point that one of the rockets hits the pressurized hose and burns a hole in it screwing up the pressure through the sprayer...kid panics and as we shoot several more salvos his way he's running toward the front door. Only problem was it was locked or something and he's standing in between the storm door and front door banging on it and crying as more rockets are lobbed his way...I was lauging my ass off.

Oddly, we never had a problem with them after that as I can recall.

Let me know if you ever get any M-80's or mortars.

Is it saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafe? ROFL

U were quite the Hellraiser, mullet head.

Wow. It's stories like these that make me understand why the emergency rooms are so busy around Independence Day.

You think it might be because everyone waits until the last minute clear the inventory markdowns?

2s are nice but 10s and 12s are nicer....

Yeah this company does extensive advertising,in my area alone they're dropping a little over $10,000 to promote 2 warehouse locations.

Actually,today has picked up quite a bit over last year,I just snuck upstairs for a smoke break.

I got a buddy that fills a washtub full of them and drills holes in all four sides.He then inserts two of the 3ft sparklers through the holes to create a cross.When ready you pull the sparklers out enough to get them lit,shove back into the middle and run like hell.

sparkler bombs
:hmmm:

Not here,we have no such thing,whatever doesn't sell at the price we have marked goes back into the box and back to the warehouse.

Amazing though what some parents do,had a guy in a bit ago with his son,he just let him fill two baskets for $140 and then said these were to get them by for a week and that they'd see us before the 4th.

A real man would take his smoke break right there next to the fireworks. :harumph:

Yes, but I don't think I could put one of those on my shoulder and chase the "enemy" down the street :)

DT

I always use a mini propane torch for lighting my bottle rockets.

I usually prefer to pay a little more cash and get the whistling bottle rockets over the ones that just pop.

yep-gotta have that whistle!!!

Just got this in a email at work

Enjoy



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In a small town in southeast Kansas, with nothing else to do, it took us about a year to get rid of them all. Although we did take a break for a month or so after yours truly blew one up in or very near a cop car. We were all up on the roof of a three story building and shooting at semi's as they came down main street at 3 in the morning, and here comes a cop. My dumbass decides to shoot at it, scared the shit out of him. We never got caught thank God.

Pretty funny

Day 6 and things are looking much better,have already started my re-order form on a few items and we're still over a week away from the 4th.

good for you, joe.

Did somebody say 10s and 12s?

(Begin spam...Everybody come out to Lake Shawnee in Topeka on the 4th of July! I'll be shooting the show.)

what day do fire works go off sale?
i will be in southeast Ne on the 5th or 6th
are sales in MO still legal then?

Do you have any of the good stuff? *Wink Wink* Bwana wants some more that will uproot a tree stump again. :)

Im in NE Missouri and my liscense allows me to sell to the 10th.


:rolleyes:

You should have no problem finding one one of the highway superstores to buy from.As for me,I close on July 4th when people stop coming,two weeks is plenty for me.

Sounds like you may be in need of a sparkler bomb,of course I've only heard that those will uproot a tree stump.

Whats the biggest rocket you ever buy ?

Man those things are cool.

These are f-ing crazy. I would like to light one of these. They look like shells ontop of huge rocket. Some UK site though.

http://www.galacticfireworks.co.uk/rocketset.htm

http://www.galacticfireworks.co.uk/images/grrockets.gif

Nice racks. Do you have any cremora bombs or kerosene fountains for the opener? Fire those up along with some 8" salutes and the people know the show is starting!

Rather than hijack this thread any further, I've replied in a separate thread here.

You haven't hijacked anything,I've quite enjoyed keeping up with all this.

Only a year? Wow...that's a lot of bottle rockets.

fire works are band here in Florida

AM, FM, VLF, VHF, UHF or what?

ROFL

LOL

I was gonna ask what type of music they play.

Yeah, they are a 5 piece heavy metal band.


Sparkler - vocals
Saturn Missile - lead guitar
Bottle Rocket - rythm guitar
M80 - drums
Thunderbomb - bass

Interesting season so far,I've now met 5 people who made the trek down from Nebraska to buy some good stuff including our very own Bugeater.

I've met a family that just moved here from California that had never stepped foot inside a firework outlet and were,to say the least,in awe of everything that was available to the public.

I met a guy on his way to Alabama that had me go through and show him anything and everything that did not go in the air.

And lastly a young lady who said she was surrounded by trees and nothing she purchased could go over 8 feet in the air yet she wanted some good fireworks,that one was a little tough.

Yeah, big deal. I bet none of them are willingly facing a $600 fine and days in jail for setting off 'legal' fireworks.

on the plus side, my wife agreed to 'take care of' the cops when they show up. I'm not sure what that means.

According to the Alabama guy if any firework leaves the ground it's handcuffs and off to jail no matter what.I don't know for sure I just sold him what he asked for.

I'm not sure either but look on the bright side maybe they'll show up with a COPS camera crew and you'll get a shot at being a tv star.

I have no idea what the penalty for illegal fireworks use is here. I should look into it sometime.

Yeah,with what you just bought from my place that might be a good idea.




BTW,good meeting you and thanks for the business.

Peh. I'm relatively sure that my wife can disarm any cop.

http://www.fireworks.com/fireworks%5...s_nebraska.asp

You may have county/city restrictions as well.

Most of the stuff is legal in the state, just not in the city. I'm not too worried, people light stuff off all the time anyway. I'd think you would have to do something pretty stupid to get in trouble.

It was worth the trip, and it probably won't be the last time you'll see me.

The group I manage for has some locations in Lincoln,I still find it hard to believe that those guys inventory and set up etc. fireworks for two days of sales,they must rake it in.

That doesn't tell what the penalties are, but I am somewhat disturbed that we don't require insurance for display operators.

The penalty is living in Omaha in the first place.

Sorry, I couldn't resist. I love Omaha, really.

ROFL Yeah, I'm serving a life sentence.

Back in high school, we made VERY LARGE pipe bombs. We would take them out in the boonies and blow the hell out of various inanimate objects to entertain ourselves. They were also called the “DuPont lure”. They were also great for all our fishing needs when the monster Hawg refused to take other kinds tempting bait we we offering up on any given day. Looking back, we were damn lucky no one got killed with some of the stupid crap we pulled. A close call with one of my friends when we were out one day put an end to our “super fireworks.” He came very close to becoming prairie pizza.