Here they come, then they’re gone again — sprouting like the exotic summer insect that might live for a week, then evanescing like a flash of summer lightning.
Sizzle … pow!
“More Roman candles, please.”
Pop!
“OK, I’m back for more.”
The fireworks stand: the den and din of all that is invigorating and unsettled and fleeting about summer.
Where menacing pyrotechnic assortments named Pit Bull, Artillery Shell, Firestorm and Mad Dog Fountain are juxtaposed against the splendor of Ground Bloom, Butterflys & Flowers, Southern Night and Glittery Fountain.
They are depots selling fun: the promise of trails of sparkler light going ’round and ’round and children sword-fighting in the cloud of a smoke bomb.
They’re here, and then they’re not. And then they go … somewhere.
Only to return again.
“It’s so busy,” says Alison Standridge, a Simpsonville Church of God youth pastor helping operate a stand in the Wal-Mart parking lot in Simpsonville. “Then, it’s just like, boom! it’s over. Kind of like a firework, it’s over.”
***
For these precious few fleeting days leading up to the Fourth, Hunter Moss the professional photographer is Crazy Hunter the mad fireworks tycoon.
Crazy Hunter has put up no sign that says “Crazy Hunter’s Fireworks Stand.” It’s just the name he penned on the business license because he figured it was somehow appropriate.
Crazy Hunter dresses in an Uncle Sam costume, waving American flags to passersby along Haywood Road and clicking his heels mid-flight every now and then for some extra attention.
He’s made a mock commercial on his video camera — in true hyperventilating, used-car-salesman form.
He plans to sleep in an air-conditioned tent next to his temporary enterprise, with some willing friends on hand who think this whole selling fireworks thing is a party worth throwing.
And when he closes shop on the day after the Fourth and turns in his unsold product, he’s taking his 20 percent commission and boarding a plane to the Dominican Republic to enjoy the fruits of his labor.
Why bother with a fireworks stand?
The better question, Crazy Hunter says, is why not?
“It’s just right up my alley,” says Moss, whose day job is a mercurial profession that depends on the whims of whoever might need a family portrait or a wedding photographer that weekend. “I didn’t have anything else to do. I might as well just be out here selling fireworks. It’s a good time, like a Visa commercial or something.”
***
The temporary fireworks stand business is a lucrative one — and a particular boon to the nonprofit groups that typically run them.
A church youth group’s entire budget can be met with a little more than four weeks of work a year. Most of the money is made (and the more than 250 million pounds of fireworks sold nationwide) over the Fourth of July, with the rest in the days leading up to the turn of the New Year.
Charitable groups operate as many as 80 percent of the 200 fireworks stands TNT Fireworks sets up in South Carolina each year, says John Johnson, regional sales manager for TNT.
“Instead of going out here and having to sell hot dogs and hamburgers and having pizza parties and all that,” Johnson says, “they just work with us twice a year and do one fund-raiser and have their whole budget for the year.”
The formula is simple: Fireworks companies such as TNT provide the product, building and land, and the temporary owners provide their labor.
The business model is one centered on a maelstrom of business concentrated tightly around two holidays.
It’s like a bride spending months planning a wedding that will last one day.
“We work all year getting permits, leasing properties and making sure our stands are fixed up for the next season,” Johnson says. “It’s a full-time job for me, but the groups only come in for about 10 to 15 days.
Prospects are checked for good credit and given training in safety, securing permits and the products they sell.
TNT sets up the stands, helps facilitate the permitting process and provides the fireworks based on how well it expects a certain location to attract traffic.
The stands open about two weeks before the holiday. Business is a trickle at first, but the early opening lets people know the stand is there for when the frenzied rush ensues.
When the party’s over, usually the day after the holiday, the workers clear out the stands and board them up. Within a few days, the fireworks company carts the stand off for storage.
Fizzle.
“It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it,” says Standridge, the Simpsonville Church of God youth pastor. “We really depend on this for our budget.”
The church has had a lock on its location for years and operates a total of three stands on the Simpsonville Wal-Mart site. Most sales take place the day before and the day of the Fourth of July, Standridge says.
Each year, she says, the church brings in about $20,000 from its fireworks sales — enough to pay for youth trips to Florida and to help keep up facilities.
The New Harvest Church of God in Gaffney travels to the Woodruff Road Wal-Mart to help raise money for its Revolution Teen Ministries youth group. The money from last year helped turn a church garage into a youth room.
Michael Perry, the youth pastor, used to run the Woodruff Road location when he worked for a Greenville church. The location is so busy, Perry says, he requested to move into it when his old church gave up the spot.
The hours are tough — 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. each day leading up to the holiday, then until midnight the night before and the night of.
Shifts are spread among volunteers, Perry says, and those who work are credited with a discount on their next youth trip. For the most part, parents work the stands for their children, who must be 18 to legally dispense fireworks.
The rush of activity is fun, Perry says, but exhausting, too. He sees bottle rockets and sparklers in his sleep.
“My wife woke me up one morning and asked me what time it was,” Perry says. “I told her, ‘$9.99.’”
***
There’s a distinct culture to the fireworks stand — one of fascination, mirth and the occasional odd characters who explain in great detail what they plan to do with the fireworks they’ve bought.
Fireworks speak to something primordial, drawing us in and turning our eyes upward. The phenomenon is as old as the ancients, dating back to the Han Dynasty and the world’s first bamboo firecracker and the hope an aerial display gave our Revolutionary War forefathers before they knew they would win the war.
To stand behind the counter and hand out smoke bombs and bottle rockets is to attract conversation, like the cashier at the newsstand who spends his entire day talking to customers about the news, whether he’s read the newspaper or not.
“The people who come up here, man, it’s a trip,” Crazy Hunter says. “Just random people, man. All walks of life. People just come up and here and tell me random things.”
For Angel Butler, the fireworks stand is a social event.
For 14 years, Butler has worked or owned a fireworks stand. Her location on Anderson Road in the Big Lots parking lot has brought the same faces back each holiday.
“I look forward to seeing people,” Butler says. “They’re like extended family. You learn a lot. A lot of characters.”
All kinds, she says, step up to the stand and squint at the buy-one-get-one-free specials — rich and poor folks, church groups, neighbors chipping in on a big package for a block party, kindly people who buy fireworks for the disadvantaged kids in nearby neighborhoods.
Butler’s family spends holidays at the stand.
Angel’s Fireworks is even open on Christmas.
“We have breakfast Christmas morning, then everybody comes down here and just hangs out,” Butler says.
This Fourth of July will be no different, she says.
Family both near and distant.
Then … until the next the holiday … poof.
