Happy B-day America; let’s not blow it (up)...

Photo source: MPR/ Remembering
Dululth's Infamous 1988 fireworks explosion/07-04-18

Written By Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/7-4-26

 So, we’re 250 years old today. America, that is. Pretty old by American standards, not very old by European standards and those of some other civilizations.

 

And not really very old by MY standards. Here’s why:

 

My paternal grandfather — pay attention here — MY (there goes that upper case again) grandfather was 21 years old when America celebrated its centennial in 1876. He was born in 1855.  There were people around then whose lives overlapped with George Washington’s (he died in 1799), and that grandfather lived long enough to see me as a baby. Yes, I was once a baby like so many others.

 

My other grandparents were a bit younger, all born in Europe around the time of America’s 100th birthday. Their countries of origin — Sweden and Germany (that older grandfather was an Irishman from Canada) — had been around for a millennium or so, but these immigrants ended up in the United States, and Duluth, when the country was just over a century old. Ancient history? Not very. Greece has ancient history.

 

Of course, I’m no kid. America was only 163 years old when I was born in Duluth on the cusp of World War II. You can count on your fingers to figure out my age, but you’ll need a lot of fingers.

 

So we’re a young-old country.

 

Like so many other Americans, over the years my family celebrated the Fourth of July with appropriate exuberance. Flag hanging on the porch, picnic food prepared in the kitchen and placed in a wicker basket, gathering with relatives for a feast, a parade (Moose Lake, near our family cabin, always had one), kids’ rides at their carnival in the park, fireworks after sundown. America a year older.

 

Not a lot of talk about the birth of a nation, which is why we all had gathered. Oh, we held all those truths of the founders to be self-evident and got on with feasting and having fun on the Fourth.

 

This year is different, of course. America is two and a half centuries old and deserves to be honored despite certain shortcomings in our society that also are self-evident. Most of us know what they are.

 

Whew, sounds like I’m getting serious. Well, try this.

 

One Fourth of July celebration in Duluth stands out from all the rest. Ever since Duluth started hosting fireworks displays on its Bayfront, our family has attended. The tradition was started by the late Mayor Ben Boo in the late 1960s or early ‘70s and it has lasted all these years — Boo’s enduring legacy. Before then Duluth was a nothingburger on July 4. 

 

We always went to the fireworks as our children were growing up, year after year, throughout their early childhoods, teen and college years, extending into early adulthood before they married and started families and developed their own traditions here and elsewhere.

 

After so many years viewing fireworks at Bayfront shortly after sundown on Independence Day, they tend to run together in one’s memory. Spectacular displays of sprays of lights flashing high in the dark sky above our heads, the sounds of explosions on the ground as the rockets are catapulted into the firmament, huge crowds of onlookers.

 

We always watched from the same place, a grassy hillside not far from The Depot. Great spot, no longer there.

 

But one Fourth display does not blend in the memory with the rest: The year the whole kit and caboodle exploded on the ground almost immediately after the display started. It was July 4, 1988. The explosion was deafening, the conflagration on the ground as the fireworks all went off at once, spectacular, yet frightening for most viewers, especially those up close.

 

Hundreds of viewers close to the explosion fled. My family largely stayed put — we were far enough away. But we wondered if we should flee.

 

After the explosion everything went dark and ominously quiet for a few moments before the wail of emergency vehicle sirens pierced the air.  No one knew the extent of the damage or if viewers were injured or even killed. What about the workers who’d set them off? How could anybody up that close survive?

 

Fortunately, everyone did. There were no serious injuries or burns. A few viewers complained about small burning fragments drifting in the air, but no serious damage resulted from that.

 

Some 10,000 spectators, give or take, left the greater Bayfront area that night 38 years ago with an eternal memory of that spectacular, if ominous, fireworks explosion. As with me, it will never be forgotten.

 

Now here we are again celebrating Independence Day, this time on its 250th anniversary. Let’s hope it’s a safe one.

 

Happy Semiquincentennial America! Whew…long word. Absolutely supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org 

Pope Leo off to good start says old Lutheran...

Pope Leo XIV, official portrait

 Written by Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/6-6-26

 I like Pope Leo XIV, and I’m a lifelong Lutheran. Brought up in Lutheran Sunday School a long time ago, I was always wary of anything pope related. Most Lutherans were.

 

Furthermore, I was kind of scared of the first pope I was ever aware of, Pius XII. He was pope during World War II and after and showed up in movie newsreels a lot being carried around the Vatican on the shoulders of Swiss Guards in gaily colored outfits. This was before the popemobile.

 

Skinny Pope Pius XII looked very grim and, besides, he was the No. 1 Roman Catholic and I was a Lutheran child in an era when American Catholics and Lutherans (as well as other protestants) did not get along that well. Blessedly, things have changed quite a bit in recent years; we’ve become more ecumenical. Also “ecuwomenical.”

 

Still, as a non-Roman Catholic I didn’t pay too much attention to popes over the years. You hear about them on the news, Popes Francis, Benedict, kindly old John XXIII, John Paul, others, but it doesn’t mean too much to a protestant. I remember thinking when Pope Benedict was in office that perhaps his Vatican cook would ask him for his breakfast preference thusly: “Eggs, Benedict?”

 

But enough about recent popes. My favorite Pope Leo, until the current one, was 11 Leos before him, Pope Leo III. He was pope in medieval times, also known as the Middle Ages. Pope Leo III looms large in world history because he was the pope who crowned Charlemagne Holy Roman Emperor ruling much of Western Europe in the late 800s.

 

This stuck with me after studying as much history in college as possible to avoid classes in math and science. 

 

While many years — make that decades — have passed, certain events in ancient history are retained in fond memory. I came to understand that the reign of Charlemagne had a profound effect on subsequent western European history, but it seemed to me, his descendants who followed him into European royalty were, well, political correctness aside, insensitively described in physical terms that were not considered that attractive.

 

One of them was known as Charles the Fat. Always sensitive about gaining weight, I was particularly drawn to accounts of Charles the Fat’s exploits, most of which I have now forgotten. I guess he is best known for being fat.

 

Same with Charles the Bald. He became a ruler too, in spite of hair issues that have lasted in recorded history for millennia. I’m not that happy with my own hair loss, but it will soon be forgotten when I am forgotten. I hope.

 

Then there was Louis the Stammerer, son of Charles the Bald. Boy, Thanksgiving Dinner must have been a riot in that family. Many readers know I kid a lot in this space, but I am not making up these names. You can Google them.

 

Also, I don’t mean to cast aspersions on readers who might be overweight, might be bald and might have speaking difficulties, especially some 1,000-plus years since these people existed. But they existed. It’s history.

 

I ran into my first pope, Pius XII, again as an adult when I visited the Vatican on a tourist trip. Walking into St. Peter’s Basilica, there he was pictured in a huge mural dominating an entire wall. Explaining my familiarity with him from early life newsreels to trip companions, I think I came off as James the Stammerer.

 

It was on that trip that we also visited the Sistine Chapel where Michelangelo’s dramatic fresco of the Creation of Adam dominates the ceiling. I had a stiff neck, so it was difficult to fully appreciate the dramatic portrayal of God, but I could see enough that God looked pretty much the way I’d always pictured him, despite being a lifelong Lutheran. Great beard.

 

We have Pope Rex Harrison to thank for that dramatic fresco. Oops, that was the movie. O, the agony and the ecstasy of it all. 

 

I wish Pope Leo XIV well. He’s started out strong with his AI encyclical that has frightened Silicon Valley. As for me, I’m frightened BY Silicon Valley.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.