So this happened last night.Story here via News on 6. (follow the link for video)TULSA, Oklahoma –
Dramatic video Friday morning showing someone shooting an exploding firework at Tulsa Police. It happened around 1 a.m. at Chamberlain Park near North Hartford Avenue and East 51st Place North.Police say firefighters were responding to a small fire on the roof of a building when someone started shooting fireworks at them.The firefighters called police, and the same thing happened to them.News On 6 photojournalist Gary Kruse was responding to the building fire and had his camera rolling when the firework showered sparks at some emergency responders.Officers ran after the group, but they escaped.No one was injured
I just have a few basic questions.
How do you get to this point?
“Hey guys, let’s shoot these fireworks off.”“Y’all know it’s illegal here, right?”“Who cares, I’ve had 3 PBRs. Let’s get crazy!”“‘MURICA.”
*fireworks commence*
“Guys is that the cops?””IT’S THE COPS RUN!””I don’t run from nobody.””Let’s shoot fireballs at them!””Guys that seems like a bad idea.””FIRE IN THE HOLE.””Now run!”
This seems appropriate.
Also this picture is gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous.
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| Picture courtesy of Newson6.com. |
If you’re a cop, what is your training for this? Is there a CLEET Class in fireworks dodging? Do you use a taser in response? Pepper spray? Hand grenades? A gun? Also, is this something they talked about later at the bar?
“There we were, pinned down. The enemy had artillery shells and Roman candles.” “Sweet Moses. Artillery shells? In Tulsa?” “They were fireworks, son. Shut up I’m talking.”
I really want to hear the radio transactions that took place during all this.
“Unit 1, this is Unit 2. We have a problem up here in the park.” “Unit 2, what is the problem?” “We’re hemmed in here, the enemy has us surrounded.” “Unit 2, you say surrounded? With what?” “Bottle rockets, Unit 1. Bottle rockets and Black Cats. Maybe some snappers, I can’t t…”BOOM“UNIT 2 GET OUT HERE NOW IT’S GETTIN’ REAL!”
I bet the whole scene looked like a Michael Bay film. Rockets and explosions and Shia LaBeefy riding a motorbike through it all with a Muse song playing in the background. Like the founding fathers intended.
I know I’m kind of poking fun at this, but in all seriousness, the people that did this are freaking idiots who deserve to have fireworks shot straight up their nostrils.* Regardless of how you feel about police or the media, you cannot shoot freaking legit fireworks at them. You see that picture? That’s a legit firework. You want to shoot a Roman candle at someone, fine. It’s dumb, but the very worst is someone takes a slight burn.
The best part of this story is that whoever did it got away. Right now there are a group of people somewhere sitting in a coffee shop** in North Tulsa talking about their “Eff the Police” moment in the sun.
Shout out to the video guy. Staying in there when it got hot. Sort of the Geraldo Rivera of Tulsa photojournalism.
* buttholes
** crack house(Hey guys! It’s Memoir Monday! Everyone should know what to do, just steal my little button code down there, then paste it onto the Edit HTML section on your post. Type up a memoir, spank yourself a little, and call it a win! The only rule? It must be true. So go on! Get you some!)
It’s very easy to get bored in my home town.
Very easy.
We’ve got 2 convenience stores, a couple of restaurants, a bar, some stop signs, and we’re right on the lake, but if you don’t have a boat, that’s really useless, right?
So when the fourth of July rolls around, I always get wicked excited.
Fireworks and fun times, right?
This story is about what happens when a semi-grown man and two teenage boys with some fireworks get bored.
Wow. I need to clarify. In a hurry.
Have you ever made a sparkler bomb? If you haven’t, you probably should, although I’ll take no responsibility for what happens to you if you do it wrong. You just take a bunch of sparklers, tape them together with electrical tape, leave one of the sparklers sticking up just a bit like a fuse, light it, and get the hell away.
So anyway, these two kids came over, and were busy putting holes in my lawn while I drank a Bloody Mary, and just generally enjoyed myself as much as one can when holes are being put in their lawn. Since I was renting at the time, and since I’d only had one Bloody Mary, I was quite in agreement when it was suggested that we take this party on the road. So they gathered up their gear, and we rolled.
Teenagers notice mailboxes. They notice them faster than anyone, because most teenagers notice federal crimes pretty easily. These guys noticed some mailboxes.
“Let’s put a sparkler bomb in one!”
“Dude. Hell yes. Travis?”
I was driving, so the final decision was mine. I was also the semi-grown man, and I knew I had to make the responsible decision. I hated it.
“I’m in. Who we hittin?”
So they talked about it for a minute, then settled on a person that none of us really liked. A real doucher. I’m not saying her deserved it, but maybe he kinda deserved it. So we headed that way. We got to the place, they got the bomb all taped up nice and neat. It was their biggest one yet. They lit the fuse. They put it in the mailbox. I drove away.
Have you ever heard the Saliva song Click, Click, Boom?
Yeah. It was kinda like that. Only without the Click, or the other Click. And the Boom was spelled like this.
FaaaaaaaaaaaaaBOOM!
So yeah. This thing went off, and we FELT it in the truck as we were driving away. I was amazed. I thought for sure we’d hit a gas line or something, and people were dying in a fiery explosion as we drove off. I was kind of panicky, because I didn’t really wake up that morning in the mood to kill anyone. So I drove off faster.
“Dude. We have to go back and look at that.”
“Yeah man!”
“Guys, no. That’s returning to the scene of the crime, and that will get us caught.”
“Just drive by like you were driving by it for the first time, only slower so we can see it!”
“That is exactly what’s going to get us caught!”
“Come on!”
So we drove back by.
It was kind of getting dark, so we couldn’t see the damage to the mailbox at first. We got a little closer, and we still couldn’t see the damage, mostly because the mailbox wasn’t there anymore. Just a big, burned up wooden post. About that time, I drove over something that made a metal kind of crunching noise. It was the mailbox. About 30 feet up the road from where it once stood.
It was the most fun I’ve ever had with two teenage boys in my truck.
Wait.
What?
Other glorious walks down the Memoir Lane today… (GO READ THEM!)
Adriengirl’s Memoir Monday: The Finishing Move. Wait. What?
Daffy’s Memoir Monday: It Ain’t April Fool.
Ed’s Memoir Monday: Fun With Dirt Bikes.
Today is the 4th of July. Before I get started on this post, I would just like to thank EVERY single one of the men and women who have died fighting to give me the glorious freedoms I have, including the one to write this blog. You guys and gals are heroes, and you deserve much more. Thank you.
It hasn’t rained in Oklahoma (this part) for about 2 or 3 weeks. Before that, we had nothing but rain for 2 or 3 weeks. It was depressing. However, it’s raining today. As I’m typing, I’m looking out my window, and watching the rain. I’m also watching the sparrows hit up my new bird feeder that I made, and also watching two gigantic doves try to muscle their way in on some food. I think the only reason the sparrows tolerate it, is because the doves are the same color. My point is, it had to rain today. If it rains out fireworks tonight, I’m gonna be wicked pissed.
The 4th of July runs deep in my family. We love it. My dad loved to spend money on fireworks, and he passed that love down to his 4 boys. Unfortunately, when you lose your job the week before, fireworks aren’t too high on your agenda. Normally we go to my moms house, and we talk her into giving us an absurd amount of money, and then we treat our family and neighbors to a show. The last couple of years, we’ve even gone to Arkansas to get bottle rockets, which are illegal here in Oklahoma. Why in the world they are illegal, I have no idea. Must be some fun haters in our legislature. “Snakes and sparklers, guys. That’s all.” Anyhow, I guess we’re doing the 4th at my aunt and uncles house this year, which is cool, because they have one of those 5 foot deep pools, and I’m fairly certain I can get my grandmother to get me some floaties.
Last year, however, we did it at moms house. Bottle rockets, M-80’s, sparkler bombs, the whole nine yards. It was so much fun. For nightime, we got a bunch of those cannon ball things. the ones you put in the tube, light the long fuse, and pray to God on high that the tube doesn’t tip over and send a flaming ball of patriocism directly into the lap of dear Memaw. Once again, my mother gave us a stupid amount of money, and we bought a crap ton of these things. We spent a good portion of the day just waiting for nightfall so we could do it up big.
As darkness settled upon us, and we started pullin out the leftover food and the homemade ice cream, my brothers and I started gettin stuff set up. Lawn chairs came out, and everyone assumed the neck back, head up position. And the show began! Everyone oooohing and aaaaahing. It was nice. The Liar and The Youngest set off the fireworks for the most part, with myself and The Groom doing the roman candles and the night time bottle rockets. Then they got stupid. It started with throwing the balls in the air, which is just dumb. Wait….wait….wait….wait…NOW! Anything that involves that kind of thinking is generally a bad idea. It moved on to putting balls that didn’t belong in certain tubes into those tubes so they could launch a bunch of them at once. My family is nothing if not show offs. This is where things went horribly wrong, horribly fast.
I have a cousin. His name is The Cryer. When The Cryer comes over, he cries. Inevitably, someone will make him cry about something. The fastest way is to tell him that OU sucks. Anyways, we often times bet on how long it will take him to start crying after he gets to the house. And I’m gonna admit it here, (Ang, if you read this, I’m sorry) sometimes we resort to some low measures for making him cry to win that bet. The thing is, what I’m tryin to say, he’s kind of a crybaby. Now that’s just keepin it real.
Back to our young firework engineers on that fateful night. They were keeping the box of balls and such right behind the table that they were shooting balls off of. This is a very intelligent thing to do, and a great time saver. For the most part, things were going good. Then they decided that they were gonna do two or three tubes apiece, and make six shots go off. I think they put multiple balls in the tube as well. Well, The Youngest can’t quite light things as fast as The Liar, and he kind of got in a hurry… He knocked over one of his tubes. The word “bail” doesn’t convey the speed in which they got outta there. They were gone. They didn’t really warn us that anything had gone wrong, but we made quite the informed guess when they were back up on the porch with us. And sure enough, it happened. One of those balls rolled right off the edge of the table and smooth into the box of other balls. This is what resulted.
I’ve GOT to give The Missus credit for that picture. The rest of us were duckin and runnin for cover, and somehow she snapped that off. It looks like that was taking place in the sky, but for sure, that was about 4 feet off the ground. She’s a picture gettin soldier. I’m so proud of her. Anyways, one of these balls shoots straight for The Cryer. It doesn’t get anywhere near him, but that was enough. Everyone is kind of laughin and still screamin over it, and The Cryer gets MAD. He just started cryin and punchin people that were laughing! I have never seen a more emotional response over fireworks almost killing someone. Sure he’s like 10. But so what! Get that stuff together! Anyhow, they went through the box after a safe amount of time, and shot off what was left. But it’s really hard to appreciate fireworks when you’re locked in the house for safety.
I hope you all have a happy and safe 4th, and I’ll see you back on Monday morning.
I mentioned “balls” a lot in this post…