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Diary of a Pyro

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The brains behind the boom - continued

That represents the eternal question for pyrotechnicians: aggression or aesthetics, booms vs. blooms. Pelkey strives for both, but occasionally the boom predominates. He says he was trying to please the audience in Montreal, and his instincts may have been correct. John Conkling, president of the American Pyrotechnic Association, says the length of the average fireworks show in the United States has gone from about an hour 50 years ago to about 15 to 20 minutes today. There's no longer much appreciation for the well-shot peony - people prefer Arnold Schwarzenegger, guns ablazing. ``Life is more frantic than it used to be,'' Conkling says. ``People want it fast and furious and something going on all the time.''

Ken Clark, whose company, Pyrotechnology, shoots Boston's Fourth of July Esplanade show from a barge in the Charles River, is an advocate of the ``less is more'' school of shooting. He won in Montreal in 1991, by shooting fewer shells than the average competitor. ``I warned Mr. Pelkey,'' Clark says, sounding a little like a schoolteacher. ``I said you had to be careful. The Canadians are sophisticated. The Montrealers see half a dozen international displays per year, so they know. I told him to use just the right amount and no more.''

We can thank the 1976 Bicentennial for the growth in professionally choreographed fireworks shows, Clark says. So many great shows happened across the country that year that people wanted more. In the 1980s, advances in electronic firing enabled shooters to ``choreograph'' shells to recorded music and calibrate firings down to a split second.

In 1990, Desrosiers, Pelkey, and others at the company decided to put their skills to the test by turning Atlas's annual show at the Jaffrey Jubilee into a display worthy of world-class competition, one that would generate publicity and impress customers. Since then, it's become a word-of-mouth favorite among New England pyrotechnic fans. Pelkey estimates the cost of the August show at between $70,000 and $80,000. ``We put a lot more into it than we could ever possibly get paid for,'' Desrosiers says.

``This year, we're more or less going to lose our shirts.''

Pelkey starts work on the show in February, when he sits down at his Gateway 2000 computer with a stack of compact disks to lay out the musical bed. Some years, it's show tunes: from Les Miz, Phantom of the Opera, The Lion King. ``First, I try to pick music that's conducive to fireworks,'' Pelkey says. ``I look for music with a lot of hooks. And then I work on the color combinations.''

Then comes the computer programming that will fire the right shell at the right moment. In the end, each minute of the August 1996 show will have taken about 10 hours to plan.

The thing about fireworks is that you get only one chance. There are times when you get things just right, like the time that Pelkey played ``When You Wish Upon a Star,'' and, every time the lyric hit the word ``star,'' a star magically appeared in the sky. And, sometimes, nothing works as planned. In 1993, the theme was ``Pelkey's Rainbow,'' and a new shooting system went on the fritz: In the middle of ``Over the Rainbow,'' the wires melted. A fabulous pastel rainbow was blasted out of the sky by salutes intended for the finale.

Legend has it that the Chinese first developed fireworks, although that has never been confirmed, according to John Conkling, of the pyrotechnic association. ``It was somewhere in Asia,'' he says. ``Maybe China or India. The borders weren't that well defined.'' George Plimpton writes in his seminal tome, Fireworks, that pyrotechnics made their way to Europe, where they were used as early as 1532 to celebrate military victories.

Appropriately, says Conkling, when Americans celebrated their independence with fireworks, they also democratized pyrotechnics. Until then, fireworks shows had been the domain of European royalty, who used them to celebrate birthdays or weddings, as well as military triumphs. Today, nearly every country has its traditional fireworks day, and often it is in celebration of independence or some kind of uprising. In France, it's Bastille Day, July 14; in England, it's Guy Fawkes Night, November 5, the anniversary of the night Fawkes tried to blow up the king and both Houses of Parliament.

Despite the long tradition of fireworks in the United States, there are many people who hate them and want stronger regulations, especially of the Class C variety. At the same time, there are others, mostly guys, who really love their fireworks. What are we to make, for example, of David Hall, a performance artist in Bloomington, Minnesota, who straps flaming Roman candles, fountains, and pinwheels to his body? Or John H. DuBois III, who reveals his fascination in his 15-chapter Web tell-all, Diary of a Pyro? At another site, there's even a link to a police report on his arrest for possessing illegal fireworks.

Though enthusiasm for fireworks crosses the political spectrum, resistance to the regulation of Class C fireworks shares the rhetoric of the militia movement. It's not just the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms that gives fireworks freedom fighters the hives; they're also critical of the Department of Transportation, which regulates the transport of Class C pieces, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which tests them.

Indeed, fireworks enthusiasts regard the right to bear a Whistling Colour Changing Wheel as one of the reasons we came over on the Mayflower. ``Your freedom is in jeopardy!'' shouts the message on Bob Weaver's Web site, urging visitors to lobby the Consumer Product Safety Commission against its proposed nationwide ban on bottle rockets.

``There are more deaths caused by toothpicks than there are by fireworks,'' says Beth Kellner, of the National Fireworks Association, a 200-member group that is the fireworks supporters' equivalent of the National Rifle Association. ``I'm not saying you can't get burned. But anything can hurt you. It's up to the individual to take responsibility.''

Kellner's not sure where the toothpick statistic came from. But according to the office of New York City's mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, Class C fireworks result in 12,000 emergency-room visits per year across the country.

When killjoy Giuliani banned the use of illegal fireworks at this year's Chinese New Year celebration, Chinese-American groups claimed that he was violating their freedom of speech and religion: The red firecrackers had been used for centuries to scare away evil spirits. (Some parade marchers made do with boombox recordings of exploding firecrackers.)

Most shooters are men, although no one in the scores of shooters who are barbecuing food in the VIP lot before the Atlas show in Jaffrey can say exactly why. Then someone offers a theory. ``You know what it is?'' says Joyce Chalifoux. ``They're frustrated generals who never got to shoot the biggies!'' Chalifoux is one of the few female fireworks shooters in the business. As she talks, she's preparing supper in front of the 37-foot mobile home that she and her husband, George, drove to New Hampshire from Attleboro. A whole clan - about 20 friends and family members - is in Jaffrey with her. Experts from Atlas trained Joyce Chalifoux to shoot 10 years ago; today, the grandmother of three travels all over New England shooting for the company. She and her husband have shot the opening exhibition-game show for the Patriots in Foxborough for six years. ``Now I'm developing my own style,'' she says. ``A woman does things differently. A woman knows how to design things.''

It's about 10 minutes until showtime, and Steve Pelkey stands at a makeshift gate on the periphery of the minefield. It's warm and still, a perfect summer night. Maybe too perfect. ``You need about a 7- to 10-mile-per-hour breeze to blow the smoke away,'' Pelkey says. ``Still, it's a corker of a night.''

Four or five salutes - single-shell big booms with no color - break the air, teasing the audience. Pelkey listens to a squawking radio: Traffic on Route 202 is backed up for miles, and a couple of hundred cars are waiting to get into the parking lot.

A few minutes later, Pelkey and four or five other men are out in the minefield, standing around the suitcase-sized console, which is lit like a Christmas tree. Now he's wearing a miner's cap with a light on top, which he shines on his watch. Another series of salutes - one big one and a half-dozen smaller ones - goes up.

``Ten seconds,'' someone says.

``OK,'' says Pelkey, ``fire her up.'' Pelkey shines the miner's light on the console and begins pushing switches. The music swells: It's Yanni, a song called ``Santorini.'' The first shell goes up and explodes in a canopy of light and color, blue in the center with a spray of gold.

Then comes ``Night on Bald Mountain,'' every shot a small-town grand finale: purple, gold-orange, silvery whites, a red, white, and blue orgy of sparkles. ``Rhapsody in Blue'' comes up, with blue sprays in the foreground. Then the urgent vocals of ``O Fortuna'' from Carmina Burana. Pelkey brings the volume back down with Bolero, five candles flittering up softly from the ground like dancers.

So it goes - up and down, loud and soft, dainty and bombastic - for 20 minutes more. Then comes Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and Pelkey's finale, which is all gold, with two dozen fountains lighting up the hills. The shells keep firing, and the night sky is as bright as day and sounding almost like the end of the world.

The explosions are so intense, so unrelenting, that, within the border of yellow tape, it feels as though something has gone terribly wrong. You're certain that the night is about to take a tragic turn, like the feeling you get when flight turbulence goes on for just a little too long. When it doesn't, though, you stand, neck craned back, awestruck, dumbfounded, filled with a weird joy.

Pelkey, hands on hips, miner's hat perched on his head, is illuminated by the white light as he sneaks a rare look up at the sky to check his work. The ``Atlas Pyrotechnics'' sign is lit and sparkling. By this time the next day, he'll be deep into what he calls post-pyro depression: ``Nothing you can possibly do in the next 72 hours can top this.'' But for now, he is The Man, standing in the afterglow of a thousand shells, savoring his moment.

And though this is not a Bolero crowd, the cheer of 30,000 exhausted fans issues forth. It's a massive human salute, one that slaps Mount Monadnock and ricochets through the hills for a long, long time.