For two glorious years I was the president of Inglewood Little League in Los Angeles, a position that depends on three things: unfortunately, the parents; a large turnout of players and the annual summer Fireworks sale to buy the uniforms, balls, Lyme for chalking the lines and the tons of bags of Fritos for Little Leaguer’s gourmet dish, “The Frito Boat”.
But where there’s a will there’s a way and in the name of fire safety those charities who may be negatively impacted by an end to all fireworks sales are simply going to have to get more inventive when it comes to raising money. Fire Chief Doug Greener stumbled, staggeringly, haphazardly into the truth when he said one burned down home is one too many. How in the world can we put our selfish need for an exhilarating fourth ahead of the needs of our neighbor or neighbors.
There’s a classic scene in the old film “True Confessions” starring Robert DeNiro and Robert Duvall, the only time they would co-star together. (No, “GF II” doesn’t count. They were never in the same scene together.) Duvall plays a cop opposite DeNiro’s role as his brother and a fast rising Monsignor in the LA Catholic church. DeNiro gets mixed up with gangsters and Duvall warns, “Dez, you’re in the Holy Ghost business, so if you tell me to do 10 Hail Mary’s I do it.” And so it goes. If the man in charge of keeping us safe from fire says knock it off that’s good enough for me and if the folks at ALS can come up with a kooky fundraiser like the Ice Bucket Challenge, where no less than the president of the United States doused himself to help raise funds, then those charities left in the lurch by a fireworks ban can certainly do something more creative then selling fireworks. In the words of Former Boxing Champion Roberto Duran, NO MAS!
