Fireworks, and childhood in Guatemala

Having grown up in Guatemala. One of my memories of the November-December holiday season was the ready availability of fireworks.

Thus I embarked on the favored pastime of kids and youths in Guatemala. Fireworks and the things one could do with them...

I used to have fun lofting empty tin cans (I preferred Tuna fish cans) into the air using a bomba or two. These were of a triangular package made out of paper, wrapped in colorful paper.

What put an end to my somewhat risky holiday fun was that like any tinkerer I started to push the envelope on how high I could loft the can using Bombas. One bomba hey it went up 10 feet or so let's see what two will do and so forth it got riskier the bombas sometimes did not go of together and one with a smoldering fuse was an issue at times. Also the heights did go up althou locating the lofted cans sometimes posed a challenge. Innocently I though that tuna cans that had enden up in a dome shape where cool..

What finally made me stop doing it was the time I put one or two bombas two many and managed to have the entire can burst into shards of shrapnel which went all over the place. Luckily no one was hurt but that experience introduced a much needed element of caution...

It also led me out of sheer curiosity to test just how potentially dangerous some fireworks were on a Banana tree relative some of those charges did make some pretty big holes and in one memorable occasion actually shattered the stem of 6-7" in diameter maicena.