The Great Roman Candle Fight of 1990

Nobody Got (Permanently) Hurt

I grew up with one foot in the city and the other in the country. My childhood neighborhood was located right where two cities and counties came together. Our phone number belonged to one city and our mailing address belonged to the other. Technically I didn’t even live in the same city where I attended school, but I could hit it with a rock. To the south of my neighborhood was a convenient store where my friends and I played arcade games, bought soda and candy, and skateboarded until the owner would run us off; directly behind my house was an unkempt creek that might as well have been the jungles of Cambodia. We lived ten minutes away from a grocery store and less than a hundred yards from crawdads and snakes.

Most of the neighborhood kids I ran with were a year older than me, and most of them had one or more older brothers. When they weren’t busy beating us up they would share stories of girls and beer and cars… all sorts of things we had no experience with or were even that interested in.

One story I remember the older kids telling me about were the Great BB Gun Wars. The wars took in and around an abandoned house not far from our neighborhood. No safety equipment was involved, although there was apparently a gentleman’s agreement as to how many pumps a rifle could be pumped before firing. While nobody ever lost an eye or ended up in the hospital, it was apparently an errant shot to someone’s forehead that put an end to the war.

I had no interest in partaking in a BB gun war — like, ever. In a neighborhood full of reindeer who liked to occasionally lock antlers to sharpen them up and see who was the strongest, I was Rudolph — a weirdo who liked to read and play on the computer as much as I liked being outside, was always picked last when it came to neighborhood sports games, and would find an excuse to go home if forced to take my shirt off in a “shirts vs. skins” game.

Eventually those older kids grew up and moved away, and then it was our turn to rule the neighborhood. We were the ones with motorcycles and go-karts and eventually cars and stories about girls, even if most of them were made up (both the stories and the girls). I don’t remember terrorizing any kids younger than us. We were a more civilized ruling class.

I don’t remember where I first heard about Roman Candle fights. If you don’t know, Roman Candles are tubes full of fireworks that shoot about ten fireballs out of the tube up into the sky. I believe the directions say you’re supposed to bury them in the ground before lighting the fuse and running away, but none of us ever did that (unless an adult was around). We would just hold the tubes in our hands, light the fuses, and shoot them into the sky as if we were wizards shooting fireballs from a magic wand. One day we learned that Roman Candles can backfire and after somebody shot themselves in the crotch with a fireball, we learned to hold them out to our sides after lighting them. Amateurs would hold one up like the Statue of Liberty’s torch, while the rest of us would light two at a time and hold one in each arm as if they were a snow skier’s poles.

Somebody somewhere once saw a beer, a tube, and a funnel all in the same place and said, “hey, I got an idea!” I can only assume something similar happened the first time someone shot a Roman Candle at another person. Now like I said, I don’t remember where my friends and I heard about Roman Candle fights — in fact, I think the only thing we had heard about Roman Candle fights was the name. None of us knew what the rules of engagement should look like. All we had was the name to go off. And to be quite honest, I’d rather get hit with a fireball than a BB any day.

In the summer of 1990 I had just finished my junior year of high school. I and most of my friends were all working at various fast food restaurants. Even though most of us were only making $3.35/hour (minimum wage in 1990) or maybe a few coins more, this new source of income was enough to fuel our increasingly dumb ideas. It had paid for the rope we used to pull one another on a skateboard behind our cars, and for the wood we used to build increasingly large and sketchy bicycle ramps.

And when pooled together, it was enough to buy a couple of cases of Roman Candles, especially on July 5, the day fireworks are sold for pennies on the dollar before being packed up to be resold 51 weeks later.

In the end three of us agreed to do battle: myself, my friend Jeff, and an acquaintance, Bob. Jeff and I had been friends since middle school, but Bob was a newcomer to the group. I didn’t even know him all that well — my friends had met him through vo-tech and he started coming around. Bob was the type of guy who would snort packets of sugar and chase it with packets of hot sauce — anything to get attention or impress his friends. Tlalking him into a Roman Candle fight wasn’t that difficult.

The rules of engagement were pretty simple. Each of us would start in a different driveway. Putting your hand on the garage door at the end of that driveway was your base, a place you could not be shot. Other than that… I don’t think there were any rules. There was no score, and certainly no safety equipment. The three of us divvied up the Roman Candles we had purchased and went back to our assigned driveways before someone shouted “GO!”

It should be stated that word of this insanity had spread. In my mind a couple dozen kids (and more than a couple adults) had gathered to see what we were up to. My next door neighbor’s mom stood by with a garden hose, ready to extinguish anything that might catch on fire — you know, a front yard, someone’s house, a kid’s t-shirt…

Upon hearing the word “GO!” the three of us slowly walked toward the center of the street with lighters in one hand and Roman Candles in the other. Each of us had our own style of attack. I’m the sneaky and shady one, the one most likely to shoot someone when they aren’t looking. Jeff is more fearless and brave than I am; he’ll walk calmly into battle and calmly back to his base when it it’s time to reload. Bob was like a kamikaze pilot who would run toward us at full speed with no plan as to what he would do when he was out of shots.

For a few minutes, it went about as expected — three teens all wanting to shoot fireballs at one another with none of us particularly wanting to get hit by one. If this had been Call of Duty I would have been a sniper, trying to hit opponents from afar. Jeff would be a guy on the front lines who advances, finds cover, shoots at the enemy, and strategically retreats. Bob was Leroy Jenkins — run toward the enemy and engage as quickly as possible, consequences be damned.

The thing about me and Jeff is that we know one another; I know he’s fearless and he knows I’m a sniper. As the two of us began approaching one another in the middle of the street like it was high noon in an old western, we suddenly heard Bob yell as he ran toward us, full speed with a lit Roman Candle in hand. As I turned in hopes of guarding my face and taking a fireball to the back, I heard a sound. The sound was similar to that of a can of pop opening after being shook violently. In this case, it was the sound of a Roman Candle fizzling out.

Like I said, jeff and I had known each other for several years at this point and the two of us have always had (and still have) the ability to communicate simply by looking at one another. Without saying a word, the two of us lit our Roman Candles and began to chase Bob.

“Base! I’m safe!” he yelled as his hand touched the garage door at the end of his assigned driveway. Whatever he said next was cut off by the sound of the first two Roman Candles hitting him squarely in the chest.

“Stop!” he screamed, quickly balling up into a fetal position. We did not stop. From a distance of no more than five feet away, Jeff and I stood over Bob, shooting him repeatedly in his back and side. While I don’t think he got burned, his formerly white t-shirt definitely had round burn marks all over it by the time we were finished.

By the time we were finished pelting him, everyone who had come to see our neighborhood’s first (and potentially only) Roman Candle fight was either clapping or cheering.

It’s been 35 years since the Great Roman Candle Fight of 1990. I still talk to Jeff multiple times a week. Neither of us know what happened to Bob.

When my kids were younger we would buy them an assortment of fireworks to pop on the Fourth of July. My wife always makes sure there is a pail of water nearby and enforces all the safety warnings and labels printed on the side of each firework.

I have been instructed never to tell them this story.