We received the following letter in response to Bill Herr's July 23 article on Bluffton rodeos.
My father Lester Neuenschwander (Niswander – as in Niswander’s Newsstand) and I were responsible for procuring and setting off the fireworks for the July 4th rodeo. We drove a van to the manufacturer near Dayton and returned with aerial bombs of various sizes and material to make ground displays. I remember a large field with a dozen or more very small, widely separated buildings; a way to minimize both injury and loss of product if something accidentally ignited what was inside.
Aerial bombs were launched from cast iron pipes we buried in mounds at the stone quarry. We alternated walking from the van, dropping them in the pipe and lighting the fuse. They were easily seen from Harmon Field. (40 years later I talked my way into observing the modern way: preloaded pipes mounted on a flatbed truck trailer with fuses snaking into a console containing a hundred or more switches, often synced with music.)
We built wood lattices for ground displays, like the American flag. Phosphorus (I think) candle-like structures about four inches long were attached to the lattice by a nail from the back and a fast fuse – 30 feet a second – stapled to the exposed end. Dad once took the skin off his index finger and thumb by not using the proper technique to light the fuse. It would burn for about a minute.
Addendum: I used to begin Trout Derbies with the same process using an aerial bomb that was made for sound without a colorful display. I’m wandering how that is done today.
Charles R. Neuenschwander
Danville, CA
