Fireworks…by the middle of the afternoon in my neighborhood on Staten Island, South Beach projects you couldn’t even see the smoke was so thick and fireworks were illegal!!!! Actually the fireworks for the 4th usually started going off around June 20th (right after we got out of school) and we’d see all the people coming up from the South (where fireworks were legal) opening up their trunks and selling fireworks to anyone who had money…one summer we bought a mat of firecrackers (144 packs)…I was so tired of them after that!! Blue Angels always few at South Beach every 4th of July and you could see them from the roof of our projects…1976 4th of July was awesome…one of the best other than 1986 when the Statue of Liberty reopened after being renovated…one million people in downtown Manhattan…if you were claustrophobic you would have died! Bud beer being sold out of garbage pails in Chinatown…what a city! I live in California now and would never move back but my childhood was the absolute best! maryfinn