Fireworks Go On Sale Today: Little Boys and Men Everywhere Cheer

By Rachel Belle

Listen to Fireworks: The Perfect Job For Men Who Like To Blow Stuff Up

Fireworks are officially on sale in our state, starting today, and you can buy your fill of explosives through July 5th. There seems to be something inside of most little boys that makes them want to blow stuff up. To prove this, I asked some of the guys around the newsroom if they liked fireworks as kids.

“Absolutely. Anytime. Any chance I could get to blow things up,” says Josh Kerns with the enthusiasm of an 8 year old boy. “Usually it started with your Army men. Like, you’d strap firecrackers onto the guys and see if you could blow off their arms and legs. Then you graduated up to GI Joe’s, and remember in those days GI Joe was big, he was a great toy. So you could get total dismemberment. Oh my God, it was great.”

Luke Burbank says the foundation of his childhood was based around blowing things up.

“We would scrounge up all this pocket change and do little odd jobs and get our, like, $4 or $5, go and buy fireworks and and blow all the fireworks up in front of the fireworks stand at, like, two in the afternoon. We were so excited about it that we couldn’t even wait until it was nighttime.”

These guys ended up working in radio, but some little boys with big explosion dreams eventually get paid to do just that. Gary Lauderback is the head pyrotechnician at Western Display Fireworks, where he has been blowing things up for the past 27 years

“My job is to set it up, blow it and then tear it down.”

Gary is proud to say he still has all of his fingers and toes and his job has both little boys and grown men drooling with jealousy.

“I get quite a few who say ‘Gee, I wish I could do that.’ until they find out actually just how much work it is to set it up and then tear it down afterwards. It’s a long day. Usually you start at 8 in the morning, if you shoot at 10 at night you’re not done until two or three the next morning, getting it torn down and then back in the truck.”

Gary says it’s not just a once or twice a year gig. Gary’s fulltime job is working for a utility in Pierce County, but his pyrotechnic passion has him working seven days a week in the summertime.

“I usually do somewhere between 20 and 30 shows a year, and I’ve done as many as 42 in one year. I enjoy it. This is fun! I like being right there while they’re going off, that’s what I enjoy the most. It is extremely intense. There’s nothing that pumps the adrenaline, for me, like fireworks. It takes me, like, two and a half hours to come down after I shoot a show.”

“You need me to explain why blowing stuff up is fun and rewarding?” quips Luke Burbank when I ask him to help unravel the mystery of why fireworks are so awesome. “Well, it’s really loud, which is pretty awesome. It usually smells like a fart afterwards because there is a lot of sulfuric activity. You have a thing that used to look like one thing and now it looks like a different thing. Do I have to draw you a picture?”