Good day, Boothbay region residents.

Our job, should we choose to accept it, is to help raise $10,000 for the region’s annual Windjammer Days and Fourth of July fireworks displays.

This mission comes with its own brand of danger: Should we fail in reaching this goal, our 53rd festival and Independence Day will lack the drama and excitement fireworks add to each celebration.   

This mission will be known as Operation Firecracker.  

People flock to the waterfront, the east side, McKown Point and take to the water (in boats of all sizes, of course) to be dazzled. Boat horns sound enthusiastically during the ebb and flow of the fireworks displays. Those on shore whistle, whoop, clap and holler. Watching fireworks we may find ourselves transported to another time in our lives when we saw a display with family, friends, or a special someone or child for the first time.

During Windjammer Days, fireworks in their many colors, shapes, patterns and sounds bring a particular type of excitement and drama, creating a moment in time when we simply give way to the awe and joy that is ever elevated until the last of the finale “crackers” and rockets have sounded. Until the last bit of color fades and the boat horns sound loud and long amidst the lingering smoke in the sky.

John Adams, our second president, would heartily approve of Operation Firecracker.

Yes, the addition of fireworks began with his belief that signing the Declaration of Independence should be a “great anniversary festival” and include “bonfires and illuminations from one end of the continent to the other from this time forward forever more.”

Such were his impassioned words to his beloved wife Abigail in 1773.

The sound of a firing and exploding firecracker, the smoke, the big kabooms — they’re all symbolic of the battles of the Revolutionary War.

But enough with the romanticism and Mission Impossible references, already!

Let’s get cracking!

Let’s work together and light up the sky in fine fashion by mailing our donations (checks and money orders made payable to Community Fireworks Fund) of any denomination to: Community Fireworks Fund, c/o Town of Boothbay Harbor, 11 Howard Street, Boothbay Harbor, ME 04538.  

See you on the waterfront!