Here’s what not to do on the Forth of July.

[El Paso Pete]

Do not go to the hardware store and buy a bottle of muriatic acid.
Do not stop off at the dime store on the way home and get a bunch of big balloons.
Do not rummage around in yer shed lookin for a heavy glass returnable Coke bottle.
Do not take the pure zinc serial number tags off the electric company’s poles.
Do not fill the 5 gal. pail half full of water.
Do not take yer 5 gal. pail half full of water and sneak out back of the barn with it.
Do not remember ya forgot somethin and sneak in the kitchen and steal yer wife’s ball of string.
Do not fill the Coke bottle half full of  muriatic acid.
Do not stand the Coke bottle up in the 5 gal. pail half full of water.
Do not scrunch up the pure zinc serial number tag off the light pole with yer pliers so’s it fits in the Coke bottle.
Do not drop the scrunched up pure zinc serial number tag off the light pole into the Coke bottle half full of  muriatic acid.
Do not make a hydrogen balloon by puttin the part of the balloon ya blow into over the neck of the Coke Bottle.
Do not wait till the hydrogen balloon fills up and tie off its neck with the string ya stole from the kitchen.
DO NOT wait till it gets dark, light the string, and let the hydrogen balloon go.
Cause if ya do, the balloon will go up a ways, dependin on how much string there is, there’ll be a big ball of orange fire in the sky followed by a WUMP.     

Have a safe and sane Forth.

    

[Micheal Fortune]

We pulled all them zinc tags off years ago....

But not to worry, I won't do any of the above.

[Big John Denny]

Georgia now allows "sparklers" to used in the state. From all the booms in the local neighborhoods on the 4th and New Year's you'd never know fireworks were illegal to possess or use in Georgia.

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[El Peludo]

Zinc tags?? ??  They ain't used pure zinc in many, many years; some are now galvanized, but most are aluminum, and have been for at least the last 40 or so years.  Good idea, though; would make real good "whumps".  At a place I used to work, we had some machines that were sealed up, and filled with pure hydrogen for insulation and cooling.  We used to fill sample bags (flimsy baloons) with the H2, and do just what you are proposing.  It always stirred up the authorities - we were in the middle of the greater Los Angeles "megalopolis".  

[Hemlock Mike]

I get to handle the BIG stuff for our show in Clear Lake.  No balloons or M80's !!! We use 3" up to 12" shells off boats.   BBBOOOMMMMMMMM !!!

Mike

[The Arapaho Kid]

Oh Geeeeze!  Ya went and spoiled m'whole 4th of July!  I was gonna go wumpin all over the neighborhood!

[Delmonico]

Never take an Oxy/acetylene torch and fill such a ballon with a equal mix of both gases.  They won't flot and they don't whump, more of a earsplittin' bang that can break windows if it is close enough.   Sounds about like a 375 H&H.

[litl rooster]

I want Hemlock's job

I thought balls of foil could be used as a subsitute for the zinc?