e First fireworks displays were my own ! e ii and then shot high into the ait life i i flying saucer or a self-propel " frisbie. We'd stick the pinwheelsi 0 nearby trees, light them and tft as they spun around. And w launch the pop bottle root 8 watching to see which went ii f highest before exploding. It probably all lasted ata ; j minutes a very brieftraid display to create such i; memories. ' Of course, it couldn't coup 1 with the displays that I would it. later, first those fired off M l:; the local volunteer fire depaite as the town got big enough tot j them, then those in SugarhousePii and the massive displays now in Provo. ,.; They didn't even come closelothe Mexican Independence Da; celebration I witnessed in He mosillo, Sonora, with brifc ground displays and highliti rockets in a standing-room ii; crowd that filled the city's ceitr. plaza. But those simple displays m , in my memory as some of the m enjoyable I've ever witnessed. Because while the others wertt more spectacular, I didn't gel: plan them, or imagine for daystu they were going to look, or If them. And that was the veryi part. I By MARC HADDOCK When I was younger my best friend was a girl. At least she was my best friend until I got into the fourth or fifth grade, when it was no longer acceptable to have a girl as a friend. And then she still was; I just didn't let anyone know. Her name was Abby. Well, it really wasn't Abby, either, but that's what everybody called her. She came from a family where everyone had nicknames. She had an older brother we all called Ish. (No kidding. kid-ding. His name was really Paul, but , I never heard anyone call him that.) And the only name I knew her by was Abby. She is the one person who shared my childhood a ventures. Together, we would roam nearby M-Hill with her dog, Poody. (See what I mean about nicknames.) We met when she was 2, and I was 3. She just lived around the corner, and a shortcut through her garden made our homes much closer together. The shortcut was well-worn well-worn before we met because Ish was the same age as my older brother. And since there weren't any boys nearby the same age, it was natural for Abby and I to be friends. We grew up together. During the summer, we'd play together every day. Often we were Indians, with spears made from nearby willows with tips hardened in the fires we weren't supposed to light. We'd make small boats with pieces of wood and nails and race them in the ditch that ran across the street from my house. 1 We set up a "telephone" out of tin cans, connected from my bedroom to hers by a waxed string, and we'd try to talk to each other. For six or seven years, I had no closer friend than Abby. We developed a bond of friendship that remains even today. Abby's father was an adventurous individual. Once we were old enough each year as Independence Day neared, he would prepare us for an annual trek to buy that most wondrous won-drous of commodities fireworks. You couldn't buy fireworks in Idaho, except for sparklers. But we lived in the very southeastern corner of Idaho. In fact, Utah was only about 20 miles away, with the borderline bor-derline crossing the road along the shore of Bear Lake. You couldn't buy fireworks in Utah either at least not the good ones. But if you went in another direction, you could reach Wyoming just as soon as you could reach Utah, and Wyoming was still wild and unrestricted, with fireworks of all sizes and shapes in rich supply. Liquor must have been cheaper, too, because a cafe that was just over the state line did a booming business with the people from Montpelier, where I lived, and the surrounding towns. ' . ' As the Fourth of July neared, the cafe would turn a healthy profit selling fireworks to people who lived in Idaho (and Utah.) As the holiday neared, I started bugging my parents for money, because I knew that any day, Abby and her father would take me with them to Wyoming where we would stock up on the kinds of fireworks you weren't supposed to have in Montpelier. (I still marvel that my parents let me get away with this. My mother always eyed our explosives ex-plosives warily, as if she didn't feel very comfortable about the whole enterprise. But they let me do it three years in a row, until I was too old to play with girls any more even though I still did.) We'd load up in Abby's station wagon early in the evening, after Abby's father came home from some two- or three-day stay in some exotic place like Green River, Wyoming. He worked for the railroad. And from Montpelier, everywhere seemed exotic. The trip seemed so long any trip seems that way to a 9 year old. It would be dark when we pulled up to the cafe and went into the main lobby. As we walked in, our eyes were dazzled by the wall behind the counter in the lobby. It was filled with all kinds of fireworks fireworks with flashy names and explosive packages. And carefully Abby and I would buy cones, Roman candles, buzz bombs, pop bottle rockets and the longest, fattest sparklers anywhere. We would buy pinwheels and circular cir-cular tin foil disks with what looked like a firecracker stuck in the center. We bought as much as we could afford, including some candy to see us home, and then we'd load ourselves our-selves back in the station wagon and begin the trip home. All the way back we'd fondle the fireworks, reading the instructions on each one, imagining what each would do when it was lighted on the evening of the Fourth. If we'd had matches, we might even have lit a few inside the car just to see what would happen. The trip home was always too short, as trips home often are, and we would each hurry to our rooms and cache our goods. Then we would wait impatiently for the days to count down to Independence Day. (The wait was twice as long for me, since my birthday was two days after the holiday.) When the day finally came, we would spend the it at the lake with too many other people, as cars lined the shore of the state park from end to end. We'd visit friends and enjoy a picnic. But for me it was all just a way to make the day go faster until we could light the fireworks. And in the end, we just couldn't wait until it got dark. We'd get together, Abby and I, and start lighting the sparklers first. Once they started burning, glowing and spitting out brilliant sparks, night would come quickly. We'd let the sparklers burn down almost to the end, and then throw them as far as we could just to watch the last few sparkes glow and sputter in the air. Then we would take turns lighting off the cones that shot out brilliant colors, and firing the Roman candles. can-dles. We would light those disk-shaped contraptions and watch as they spun