IT'S 4TH OF JULY WEEK

Which mean fireworks, barbecues, and beaches. Swimming and eating and ballgames. Picnics and homemade ice cream, and snakes.

They were the perhaps the stupidest of fireworks. They came in a match box size container. They looked like little fat black pills. You held a match at the side or over the top of them and they let off a pungent odor, yellow/green in color, as they curled up taking the snake shape.

And that was it. If one ever went unbroken in its shape, you had one good snake. Most of them broke in two or three places. A real dud, five. But what did you have if the snake skin stayed in tact? Nothing really. Just a shell of a stinky black pill when burned at high temp.

But we loved them. Not quite as much as bottle rockets (my personal favorite) or cherry bombs (number 2) or even lady fingers, but snakes were cool.

Maybe because they scarred our driveways and we could look back in fond remembrance on, say the middle of July. Unless a gully washer had left no traces of July 4th fun.