Sparky did fireworks! Me and Chris, who both work for J&M Displays, headed up to Marshalltown with two other employees and did the municipal display for the city. We started loading shells around 13:00 after pulling all the product off the truck. Here are some pictures that we took.

After unloading the product from the truck, we sort through it to find out what we have to work with. I appear to be sneezing.

Chris and Me take turns holding the twelve-inch shell that we used, with a four-incher for size reference.

Here's the three and four-inch shell racks set up in the field. This field really worried us because of all the recently-cut dry grass lying around. Fortunately, we only had a few small fires while shooting.

Five and six-inch shells in their racks. These things were loud going off. Chris would call "SIX!" and we'd all duck down behind the shoot panel and cover our heads.

Finale racks. They're covered with foil to keep out burning debris which could cause an early launch.

The big mortars. In the foreground are tubes for the last part of the finale, a three, four, five, two eights, a ten and a twelve all fired right after the other. In the background are twenty-five eight-inch shell mortars.

Shells being wired before getting dropped down into their mortars.

The panel used to fire the shells electronically. Sadly, electronic firing is reliable but means you have to hand-wire every shell, which is an excruciating task.

Wide shot to show how close we were to the shells being fired. There was about thirty feet between us and the first racks of shells. This is not ideal.

The "Shoot Shack" If anything goes wrong you all duck into this three-quarters-inch plywood shack. Comforting. I know you can't tell from the picture but it's just to the right of the shoot panel.

The fruits of our labor. This was one of the prettiest shells of the evening.