Tall Tales from the Patterson Ranch

Our annual ‘Blow-Stuff-Up’ party was small this year. Unfortunately schedules kept most of our friends from being able to attend. Most of our family was there, and we all had a good time. It was a hot day and many enjoyed the coolness of our new pool. We gave up on the pop-up pool with the inflatable ring. The plastic had degraded significantly, and it wasn’t worth keeping up with the patches any longer, so we got a metal frame pool. So far, this pool is working a LOT better, and its bigger and deeper, as this month’s water bill bears out.

We had our normal type of display with the majority of our money being spent on the mortar-launched aerial bombs. We like those a lot! Not all of our stuff was up in the air, though. We also had a fair assortment of fountains including one that we really liked from last year called Lava Lamp. Similar, but bigger, than the Lava Lamp is the Solar Storm fountain. With a SOHO image of the Sun at solar max, how could I not get it? All of our fireworks this year, and for the third year running, were purchased from the Fireworks Supermarket in Odessa. They have demos of their stuff on-line if you’d like to see a video of the fountains.

The following weekend, Higginsville had its fireworks display at the Fairgrounds Park. Being a small town with a smaller audience, they can do more than just the standard aerial bombs that you typically see, although they have plenty of those too. They have a lot of large fountains and roman candles, and their finale is just awesome! Unfortunately this year, the wind was blowing straight toward the crowd, so we had to endure a lot of smoke and cardboard shrapnel. It was worth it!