USA. July 4th, 9 p.m. My neighborhood went to war with the sky, and the sky lost. I had been warned. "It gets a little loud," Dale said. A little loud. The first shell rose from behind Rick's fence and bloomed over the cul-de-sac, and before it faded, an ANSWERING shell rose from two streets over. They were not coordinating. They were competing. In Japan, fireworks are handled by licensed masters. You sit by a river and receive the display with gratitude, like a tea ceremony made of fire. Here, every man with a driveway is his own gunpowder shogunate, supplied by a tent at the edge of town. A tent. They sell the sky-fire in TENTS. "Where did you train?" I asked Rick between volleys. "Train?" He lit another fuse with the focused calm of a man grilling. "You back up, is mainly the thing." His son ran past holding a small fountain of sparks, laughing. The dog hid under my porch and would not look at me. I joined the dog briefly. I am not ashamed. I was, briefly, ashamed. By ten, the street smelled of smoke and hot dogs, and the displays grew desperate and magnificent. Walt brought out something cylindrical that required two men to position. The wives watched from lawn chairs with the unbothered faces of veterans' wives across all of history. "Is this legal?" I asked Dale. "Depends," he said, and lit it. Depends. The national answer. When the finale came — everyone's finale, everywhere, at once, no one willing to end second — I stood in the road with my hand on my chest. The sky over this ordinary street was, for one minute, more glorious than any castle's. A man does not ask the Fourth for silence. He holds his dog, and salutes. Next year I will buy the tent's finest. Rick has already offered to teach me. The lesson, I am told, is one sentence long: you back up.