Navy Story #17
Fourth of July Fun
This is a fun story. There's not really much of a point to it, except to say that if you want to have fun, you can find it just about anywhere!
My Deck Department department head at one point was Lt. Harry Campbell, who is a Christian and was a good friend during my tour on the Pensacola. My brother and sister-in-law lived
in an apartment in Newport News, Virginia for awhile, and during that time I would frequently go over to their place to stay for the weekend when the Pensacola was in port. One Fourth of July, for some reason Harry's
wife was out of town, and he was able to join me over at John & Martha's place. It might not even have been a weekend, I don't remember. But it was definitely the Fourth of July holiday.
What I do remember is that since we were law-abiding citizens, we didn't have any fireworks for our own personal celebration that night. So Harry, John, and I did the next best
thing: we went to the store and got some of those big "light anywhere" matches, the wooden kind, and took them back to the apartment. Later that night, you would have seen three grown men out on the sidewalk by
the parking lot (where there was no chance of a stray fire breaking out -- children, please note that point!), putting the business end of a match against the pavement, holding the free end with a finger on it kind of like
how you hold a football for the kicker, and flipping the match away with a flick of a finger of the other hand. When done properly, the match flies pretty far in the air and leaves a smoke trail and makes a bright trail of
fire, a little bit like a Roman candle! I recall that we stayed out there for quite a long time and had many a good laugh over our flubs and successes.