It’s like it happens every year.
Just as sure as your Instagram feed will fill up with screenshots of weather apps showing 100-degree temperatures, there will be fireworks, a lot of them, in Oak Cliff.
We heard the first pops Sunday, when half of Oak Cliff must’ve driven to stands beyond the city limits to stockpile their armories. Tonight, July 3, I am Francis Scott Key over here with the rocket’s red glare near Kiest Park.
It is illegal to pop off fireworks in the Dallas city limits, but the driveway pyrotechnics will continue, as they have for years, through the fourth and probably into next weekend.
Here’s a terrifying news story: The Dallas Police Department seized 3 tons of fireworks from a home in South Dallas today. THREE. TONS. Of fireworks. It’s not like a firework weighs a lot. It’s paper and boom powder. They said it was valued at $8,000, and the police bomb squad will have to dispose of it all.
Besides that, fireworks scare pets and can trigger people who have lived through war zones. Also this is July in Texas. Good job that our fireworks holiday falls in the dry season, America.
And yet.
It does happen every year.
And, I’ll say it.
The romantic in me secretly loves the bootleg fireworks shows. Is there something so Oak Cliff about it?
Hail Mary, full of grace, it won’t be romantic if a house with 3 tons of fireworks blows up.
Also, please, don’t fire a damn gun into the air. Jeeze, be safe out there, Oak Cliff.
