Breathless in Fall River
McGowan, Jo
JO McGOWAN BREATHLESS IN FALL RIVER Fireworks & other unnecessary treats Fireworks! Who came up with the idea? Who thought of spraying the sky with color and light, dazzling thousands of people...
...What is the point of a shooting star...
...Fireworks are somehow immune to our usual disapproving, pen-nywise natures...
...I have never actually heard anyone, in any city, no matter how poor, argue that fireworks shouldn't be indulged in...
...I was visiting with my parents recently here in the United States, in Fall River, Massachusetts...
...Imagine the thrill of turning the corner and seeing the sky full of fire and glory...
...But where fireworks are concerned, even the prudent and the sensible are silent...
...Each burst seemed better than the last, each one simultaneously a miracle of delicacy and flamboyance...
...I thought that evening that we had the "best view in the house," there on the fourteenth floor overlooking the river...
...And there is, of course, much to be said for being sensible...
...The mills that once provided jobs for most of the city are almost all closed now...
...Their fourteenth-floor apartment looks over the river, so I had a perfect view of the fireworks display the city put on to celebrate its bicentennial...
...So, thank God for fireworks...
...Thank God for profligacy and abandonment and reckless spending...
...and those who offer such advice always sound so smug and self-righteous, as if the correctness of their position is self-evident and impossible to refute...
...Such extravagance, such a careless, unconstrained outpouring...
...Fireworks are like that...
...Even when we are expecting them (I had been planning to watch them all week), they leave us breathless...
...Do we really need a rainbow at the end of a storm...
...What a crazy, marvelous thing to do...
...Are waterfalls strictly necessary...
...The town has no university or bookstore, and young people growing up there mainly want to leave...
...Who thought of spraying the sky with color and light, dazzling thousands of people all at once, causing collective sighs of delight and amazement...
...Why, after all, should the sun set and rise in a splendour of orange and gold instead of just switching off and on like a light bulb...
...After all, a city which is in debt really doesn't have the right to throw a birthday party for itself, does it...
...It has been at least twenty years since I have seen fireworks, and even weeks later I still have not recovered from the sight...
...Its unemployment rate is high and its downtown is practically deserted...
...And unlike most memories, the Fall River fireworks were much more glorious than any that I remember from childhood...
...God likes to celebrate, and when she provides treats-the electric blue in a kingfisher's feathers, the heavenly scent of hyacinth and honeysuckle, the amazement of wine, the intoxicating pleasure of sex, the astonishment of a baby's smile, all extra, all unnecessary-she provides them for everyone, regardless of the ability to pay...
...What is the need of a field of daffodils by the interstate...
...So you would think the city could have found some better way to spend its money than to lavish it all on a twenty-minute riot of color and thunder in the sky that was over almost before it began, leaving only a memory of brightness and sparkle (my photographs, as usual, didn't come out), and a large bill to pay...
...Although the art originated in ancient China, it is only in the last hundred years that the amazing colors we see today were developed, and only in the last decade that computers have created such remarkably synchronized effects that even words can be created in the sky...
...It's the same logic that instructs poor families to have fewer children, people on food stamps not to buy ice cream, and weeping women not to pour expensive perfume on visitors' feet...
...Then I noticed the people stopping their cars on the bridge, too dazzled to continue on whatever humdrum errands they were on, and no doubt overwhelmed by what must have seemed a show meant just for them...
...And thank God we get to be part of it occasionally, to imitate, however fleet-ingly, her spirit of playfulness and delight...
...People all over the world study, research, and experiment in the field of pyrotechnics, and there are numerous magazines, Web sites, and documentaries on the subject...
...Do they, perhaps, remind us of the generous, surprise-loving nature of God...
...Fall River, however, is not a prosperous city...
Vol. 130 • October 2003 • No. 17
