Editor’s Note: Reader Margaret Schiff requested this column, which originally was published on July 9, 1989.

A curmudgeon friend called last week with an idea sure to be liked by almost no one.

Except firefighters.

And grumps.

“I think the city should make it illegal to sell fireworks,” he said.

“We must have a bad connection,” I told him. “It sounded like you said the city should outlaw fireworks sales.”

“That’s what I said.”

He had to be putting me on. What could be more un-American than outlawing Fourth of July fireworks?

ARSON KITS

“I’m serious,” he said. “We preach fire safety to children 51 weeks a year and the other week we hand out arson kits at every shopping center parking lot to any little kid with enough money. It’s absurd.”

Well, yes, he had a point. In a crabby sort of way.

Still he couldn’t expect the city to take it seriously. Outlawing fireworks would be like outlawing apple pie. Any council member who voted for such a harebrained idea would be run out of town on a Roman candle.

Later, when fireworks were named as a possible cause of the Albertsons Market Place fire, his words — “we hand out arson kits at every shopping center” — didn’t seem so outrageous.

The annual rash of fireworks-related accidents reminded me of the time a childhood friend almost was blinded. Some dumb kid put firecrackers in a hole in the bill of his baseball cap, lit the fuses and put the cap on his head. It was an incredibly stupid, dangerous thing to do.

The victim escaped with minor burns and singed eyebrows, but it was all the culprit could do to sit down that night. I know because I was the architect of that blunder.

How could anyone be so stupid?

Simple. I was a kid. Kids do stupid things all the time.

Just like adults.

I couldn’t help thinking of the “arson kits” analogy the night of the Fourth of July. We’d been to a movie on the Bench and pulled off on a rim overlooking town to watch the public fireworks display.

Its sponsors spent thousands on the fireworks, but it wasn’t enough for the neighborhood bimbo, who was augmenting the program with one of his own.

This delightful idiot spent the entire show teaching his children how to shoot bottle rockets (which are illegal, the last I heard). Bottle rockets were hitting cars, landing on rooftops, falling in dry grass and weeds. Hot as it was, people were rolling up their windows for fear of being hit.

There’s no reasoning with such people. Their idea of social responsibility is using biodegradable bags to dump garbage out of their car windows.

ILLEGAL?

“Illegal” fireworks were going off everywhere that night. We saw them on almost every block. The only policemen we saw were directing traffic.

Curious, I called the police department Friday and asked how many citations were issued for fireworks violations.

“So far it looks like about six or eight,” I was told.

Then I called the fire department and asked how many fires there were the night of the Fourth of July. That night alone, the department responded to 54 calls.

According to acting fire chief R.V. Rose, the cost of a response is $200 to $500. Put another way, the taxpayers spent between $10,800 and $27,000 in nine hours for people to play with fire.

Property damage at the Market Place fire probably will exceed $1 million. Maybe outlawing fireworks sales isn’t such a crazy idea after all.

If you’ve got a favorite column Tim wrote that you’d like to see in print again, send headline or key words to Niki Forbing-Orr at nforbing-orr@idahostatesman.com.