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My father dislikes firework shows, for all the reasons that a man who passed his youth squeezing a trigger in the name of God and country dislikes firework shows. He loves fireworks, however, if he’s the one lighting them, a psychological loophole that he and I have availed ourselves of at a number of East Coast tourist-trap locales over the years. Our most recent adventure was an excursion to South Carolina when I was in my 20s: We loaded up a rented golf cart with an immoderate amount of fireworks and a moderate amount of Miller Lite and set off for the beach to enjoy both. The golf cart was road-legal, but whether the fireworks were beach-legal was a question I didn’t think to ask. I was living in New York City at the time, besotted with its buzzy restaurants and rooftop bars, and that trip, with its unpretentious excitement, is when I started to appreciate my dad’s quiet enthusiasm for simple fun. It was also when I began to suspect that I might one day run out of zeal for New York’s inexhaustible supply of novel experiences.

That was about a decade ago, when I was unencumbered and not especially concerned with following local fireworks ordinances. Now, however, I am a father and a husband, have decamped to Maine, and am an ostensibly respectable member of the nation’s citizenry. So when I set out this week with the goal of re-creating the fireworks-on-the-beach experience I’d had with my father, I wanted to do it by the book.

I thought this would be straightforward. Fireworks, like sports gambling, weed, and other common vices, have been on a slow march toward legalization in recent decades. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, fireworks injuries in America have risen as legalization has spread. A report released in June estimated that the number of fireworks-related ER visits in 2024 was 40 percent higher than in 2014.) The only state that still bans all consumer fireworks outright is Massachusetts, which means that the one place where you can’t celebrate American freedom with a bang is where the fight for American freedom began with a bang. Maine, by contrast, has some of the most permissive fireworks laws in the country. I assumed that all I would need to do was drive to the gas station for beer, the fireworks store for supplies, and a local beach for kaboom. I had no idea I’d end up on a days-long odyssey with the un-Homeric goal of finding a stretch of oceanfront on which to legally deploy several hundred dollars’ worth of consumer-grade pyrotechnics.

Read: Fireworks: A poem

I was right about one thing: Procuring fireworks legally was easy. (Though it was not cheap—prices this year are considerably higher than I remember, the result of inflation and tariffs.) I walked into my local Phantom Fireworks store on Monday, showed my ID to an employee—who apparently forgot to give me the safety spiel that I later heard him rattle off for other customers—and walked up and down the aisles, surveying the merchandise. I was at once overwhelmed by the panorama of distinctly American excess and moved by the great variety of American life to which it attested.

I discovered recreational explosives for every sort of person residing within this country’s borders, befitting every kind of enthusiasm and ideological commitment: castle-doctrine “STAND YOUR GROUND” fireworks for the Second Amendment fanatic ($349.99), Rosie the Riveter fireworks for the feminist ($120.00), Illuminati-triangle fireworks for the conspiracist ($49.99), “SINGULARITY” fireworks for the AI enthusiast ($135.00), lobster-festooned “Wicked Pissah” fireworks for the New Englander ($49.99), Battle of Yorktown fireworks for history buffs ($179.99), “Shagadellic Mojo” fireworks for the horny customer ($44.99), suggestively silhouetted “Mega Mojo!” fireworks for the very horny customer ($149.99), and, my personal favorite, Boyz II Men fireworks for those who love soulful harmonies ($199.99). Of the available ways that an adult can spend hundreds of dollars on 20-odd seconds of pleasure, the Boyz II Men “End of the Road”–themed Phantom Fireworks special is certainly among the more virtuous.

The store also offered an abundance of firework types: bombettes, mortars, ground-bound fountains that emit a volcanic torrent of sparks. I was nearly seduced by a Komodo-dragon-themed fountain, but I believe that a true firework should go up and go boom, and a man must stand on principle. After half a dozen laps through the aisles, I marched up to the cash register with five offerings, all in the aerial “cake” style that fires flaming balls from a series of concealed mortar tubes: one that seemed inspired by Jaws and one by Jurassic Park (my favorite Spielberg movies); one “Wicked Pissah” (which seemed obligatory); one “Bait a Hook” box, catering to fishermen (in keeping with my angling obsession); and a generic rah-rah-patriotism package with the overwrought name “’Neath the Red, White and Blue.”

Later, seized with irrational panic that I lacked a real showstopper, I returned to the store and asked the first purple-shirted Phantom employee I saw for something under $200 that would make a real impression. He wordlessly shuffled to the farthest wall, pulled a package labeled “Geomagnetic Storm” ($129.99) from a high display, and gave the box a hearty slap on its side, as you might burp a baby. “They like this one,” he reported. I do not know who “they” are, but I trusted their taste implicitly. I left the store considerably poorer and with the unshakable conviction that although the American project may not yet endure, no one can say we don’t have fun.

Read: The Fourth of July has always been political

Where to have that fun was another matter. The ease with which I legally purchased the fireworks lulled me into overoptimism about the ease with which I could legally deploy them. As I soon found out, although Maine takes a rather laissez-faire approach to fireworks at the state level, many of the state’s local municipalities enforce their own restrictions. Some areas designate specific dates and times when fireworks can be set off (most commonly, July Fourth and New Year’s Eve); others ban them year-round. On top of this, my desire to launch fireworks from a beach was a problem: Maine allows consumer fireworks to be used only on private property, and I do not, alas, have a house with its own beach.

I was curious if I might be able to finagle a maritime workaround. I contacted some local fire departments to ask about the permissibility, and wisdom, of deploying small fireworks from a boat. (I do not have a boat, but I do have a friend with a boat and poor judgment.) At first, no one I spoke with was able to definitively say whether this option was safe or legal, but one recommended that I call a Coast Guard information line. My Coast Guard query yielded no answers, but it did lead to the suggestion that I contact Maine’s fire-marshal office, where at last a diligent and helpful public servant told me that launching fireworks from a personal watercraft is absolutely illegal. But they also added—perhaps wink-winkingly, definitely humorously—that the fire marshal “issued zero citations for this in 2024.”

My many phone calls, one in-person visit to the fire department, and hours of scrutinizing local fireworks laws led me to realize that my modest goal of legally setting off fireworks on a beach in observation of this country’s birthday was far too ambitious. I was forced to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and to compromise. The specifics of that compromise I leave up to the reader’s imagination, but the upshot is that $300.60 of civilian-market explosives eventually met their logical end in an extravagant and all-too-brief flurry of detonations. To my slight disappointment, the fireworks I had bought, including the fabled Geomagnetic Storm, were largely indistinguishable from one another. Regardless of price or theme, they did about the same thing after I lit them: shot up into the sky with a hiss, exploded in a cacophony, and issued a last burst of light and color. But they still had their evergreen capacity to elicit an involuntary squeal of delight from a grown man. In the end, fun was had, 10 fingers were retained, the holiday was celebrated, and the resulting video was texted to my father, who immediately asked the only question that matters: “What else do you have? Any mortars?” God bless America.