Pyromaniac's Paradise: Summer Adventures Running a Fireworks Tent

On this episode of Our American Stories, Joel Wegener and his wife have 10 kids, and because he worked in education, they had to find ways during the summers to make a little extra money. Here's Joel with one of the more explosive ventures the Wegeners took on.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people and all so long. Was celebrating July fourth, And
what's a July fourth celebration without fireworks? Up next to
story from Joel Wegener from Loveland, Ohio, which is just

(00:30):
outside of Cincinnati. Joel and his bride have ten children
and working in the education field, Joel had to find
ways in the summer to make some extra cash. Here's
Joel to tell us about one of the more explosive
business ideas he has.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
So we ran the fireworks business for about fifteen years.
It was a tent business, and it was a long
Highway sixty one between Saint Louis and Hannibal, a busy
highway there, and it was this relatively small tent and
we leased the the area and then we we brought

(01:16):
in a tent every year and put fireworks in it.
The people that frequent a fireworks stand are just a
little bit different, and not in a bad way. In fact,
there was one part of me that just kind of
related really well with them, and so it was always

(01:39):
a fun time just to go and hang out with pyromaniacs.
And my daughter, my oldest daughter, actually named our business
Pyromaniac Paradise, and so that's what we called the business.
But yeah, we met some very interesting people. Fortunately, many

(02:01):
of the people that buy fireworks, and many of the
events around the Fourth of July also involve alcohol, and
that is never a good combination of fireworks and alcohol,
but that was often the case. And I remember one
evening we were getting close to the end of the

(02:24):
day and a guy rolled up in his pickup truck
and had obviously been drinking, and in the back of
his truck he told us that there was a fireworks
that didn't work, and he was very upset that the
fireworks was not working. And so we looked in the

(02:47):
back of his pickup truck and the big five hundred
gram cake of fireworks had a smoldering fire inside of
it and it had not been discharged, and he had
there were some ropes that you were supposed to use
to carry the product, and he thought that was what

(03:11):
you had lit. So he had been trying to light
these two ropes along the side, and so it was
smoldering as he had in the back of his truck.
So we quickly assessed the situation. Knew we needed to
get his truck and the firework away from the fireworks tent,

(03:31):
and so we were able to do that, and we probably,
looking back, the wise thing would have been to try
to get some water and put it all out, but
in our pyromaniac tendencies, we decided just to go ahead
and discharge it and see what happened. And so we

(03:52):
had quite the fireworks right there at a safe distance
from the tent. Another event that happened, we had a
fireworks tent, and about a mile from us, someone and

(04:13):
a competitor came in and had put in a tent.
And that always I always got so nervous if I
had competitors around me, and so I was nervous that
he was going to steal all my business and all that.
But you know, be that asn't ay. But I did
notice every night when I left, I drove past there

(04:36):
to go to my parents' house to sleep, and we
always either packed up all of our fireworks or we
had someone stay there all night to guard it. So
I noticed that it seemed that they dropped the tents
and left, and I wasn't there to see them packing up.
But I never saw them packing up. All I saw

(04:57):
was the tents were dropped. There wasn't a camper there was,
and anybody around it. And I found that very unusual.
So about a week into the fireworks season, someone called
me and said, did you hear on the news that
a fireworks tent went up and smoked north of Troy,

(05:17):
Which Troy was the town we were in. I knew
I had unloaded all of mine, and you know, so
it wouldn't have been mine, but I was curious, and
so we went and looked, and lo and behold, they
had left all their fireworks in this tent, unguarded night
after night. Somebody figured that out, and so they put

(05:38):
a trail of gasoline under the flap of the tent
and trailed it out of ways and let it and
the whole fireworks tent went up and smoked. You know,
they made the mistake of sticking around to watch it
too long. Not the smartest pyromania around, And so it

(06:02):
was going off. A neighbor woke up and saw these
guys running across his yard. There was dew on the ground,
and so the police were able to track their tracks
back into the woods and find them. But anyway, it
was an exciting time, not the way that I really
wanted to get rid of a competition, but definitely eliminated

(06:23):
that competition for that year. But yeah, a lot of stories,
a lot of interesting people that we met, but we
always had fun. Always excitement happening at the fireworks stamp.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Yeah, and it's so true. Fireworks and alcohol not a
good combination. And I've seen it myself. And a great
job is always by Robbie on the production, the storytelling
and the editing. And thanks to Joel Wegener for sharing
his summer job stories. By the way, if you've got
a good summer job story of first job story, share
them with us. We continue with our fourth of July

(06:57):
special here on our Americans sty Worries. Folks, if you

(07:30):
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(07:51):
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