Features

Remembering the Fourth of July 1976 (First Person)

By Gar Smith
Wednesday July 06, 2011 - 02:09:00 PM

(July 4, 2011) -- With the July 4th bombs (at this very moment) bursting in air and the fog basking at bay, I find myself recalling a long-ago, fog-cursed day that I was part of the pyrotechnic gang in charge of the Chronicle-sponsored 1976 Bicentennial Fireworks Show on Alcatraz Island. 

Several years earlier, I had hooked up with Jerry Gertz and the crew from AstroPyrotechnics. As a teen in the suburbs of outer LA, I had built bottle rockets and conjured homemade fireworks with store-bought saltpeter and magnesium shavings gathered from a metal shop so interning with a pack of real-life, paid, professional pyro-geeks was a dream-come-true. 

We had done fiery extravaganzas from the Oakland Coliseum to the Hollywood Bowl (“the 1813 Overture,” natch, complete with pyrotechnic cannon fire) but it was still a rare and special honor to be chosen as the team to light up the Bay on the night of our country’s Bicentennial.

By mid-day, we were hard at work parceling out our secured crates of explosive goodies. We set up our long wooden containers and filled them with sand into to hold the metal “mortars” used to fire the powerful aerial shells. The biggest shells were the size of cantalopes. All the shells came equipped with long lengths of papery “match” – the fuses used to light to set the “works.” (When firing a volley, we would run an additional length of match to connect a series of aerials together so they would blast off nearly simultaneously.) 

We knew the drill. When the time came, we would follow a detailed choreography, ducking-and-dashing to the mortars and using blazing road-flares to set fire to the match. The fuse would ignite the bomb of the shell, blasting it skyward. A second internal fuse would create a trail of sparks chasing the invisible burning shell until it reached altitude where a burst of flash powder would turn the encased copper, strontium, iron and magnesium particles into ooh-and-ahhh-inspiring cascades of patterned color. 

It was the first time I’d been trusted to wield a flare and light the mortars alongside the grizzled vets. Adding to the excitement, Charles Kuralt had come out with a CBS film crew to profile out labors and all seemed well and good. But after Kuralt left, the sun went down and the fog came in -- about 15 minutes before the show was timed to begin.

We had our mortars lined up in sandboxes pointed at the sky but when we sent the aerials off, they simply vanished, followed only by a brief blush in the underside of the fog as the flash-powder and metallic compounds ignited. (The next day, friends watching from the Berkeley Hills reported that only the highest-bursting shells were visible -- and then only the top half of the bursts broke through the fog-bank.)

Meanwhile, back on the island, we received a frantic phone call from the SF shore telling us to stop the show and cut the sponsor's losses. After stowing our huge inventory of undetonated aerial rockets, we noticed a strange glow flickering on the mesa above the level spot where we had set up our battery. I raced to the top of the hill and discovered a story that (fortunately) was not to be uncovered by the local press: "Aborted Fireworks Show Sets Alcatraz Ablaze."

I started stamping patches of flaming grass with my boots and was soon joined by several other members of the pyro crew. It took a few desperate, breathless minutes, but we finally stomped the fire into submission.

What followed was much less exciting.

In the rush to cancel the fogged-out show, whoever was supposed to dispatch the boat to return us to shore, was not alerted. (We were left to wonder if this was intentional. After all, a lot of people felt disappointed and it could seem that we, as the blokes most responsible for the promised fireworks extravaganza, were the most eligible goats to be scaped.)

So there we were, stranded on Alcatraz Island with only the fog and the night chill for company.
 

We tried calling for help but there was no response. We called the Coast Guard but they dismissed our calls (apparently thinking a message that began "We're trying to escape from Alcatraz" was a prank).

Fortunately, one of the pyro-files left behind on the island was a state official who had business in Sacramento the next day (no, it wasn't the omnipresent Willy Brown). He placed a couple of calls and, finally, the first-responders responded. A Coast Guard vessel arrived at the Alcatraz dock and we rode home in style.