Freelance fireworks -- Yes!

Once again this Fourth of July I am inordinately proud of the little town of Lake Elsinore, where Jen and I have lived for the last 25 years. From out back yard on the Fourth, we can see not only the fireworks display from the stadium (though no show this year, but the fireworks from Canyon Lake and Perris. What is most thrilling, however -- perhaps it doesn't take much to impress me -- are the fireworks from freelancers at about a dozen points around the edge of the lake. Whoever these people are, they don't just get a few bottle rockets. Many of them have near-professional fireworks -- rocket to the sky, boom n bloom. And they shoot them of for more than an hour -- with the occasional shot up until midnite. All quite illegal, of course, and we hear sirens as well as explosions, presumably from the cops in a vain (I hope) effort the find and arrest these miscreants. To me, they're symbols of independence.