SALE OF FIREWORKS GEARS UP; POLICE ARE ALREADY FIELDING COMPLAINTS

Steve Schmidgall spent part of his Father's Day shopping for fireworks in Cape Girardeau with his two sons.

"Daddy, let's get the boat," his 5-year-old insisted. "Let's get the boat it really floats."

"No, we've already got a tank," Schmidgall told his son. "We don't need to kill the whole yard."

Schmidgall had traveled to Cape Girardeau from Carbondale, Ill., in an annual pilgrimage of preparing for their Fourth of July celebration.

"We shoot them off either the day before or on the Fourth," Schmidgall said. "It all depends on how long we can wait."

Sunday marked the opening day for the sale of fireworks tents all over the area, and fair weather conditions brought several people out shopping. Fireworks will be on sale up to and including July 4.

Derek Zerbe, 14, of Cape, loaded up on bottle rockets, which were selling two-for-the-price-of-one everywhere in town.

"The bottle rockets are pretty fun," he said. "You can throw them in the water, shoot them in the air just all kinds of stuff."

Zerbe headed home with a few gross of bottle rockets, but said he will definitely be back.

"We'll set these off right away," he said. "I've gotta come back and get some smoke bombs, too."

Mark Cook and his son Casey worked the Kinder's Fireworks tent on Morgan Oak Sunday.

"We always sell a lot of bottle rockets and firecrackers," Cook said. "Sparklers and fountains are always real popular, too."

Cook, a teacher at Franklin Elementary School, has worked at fireworks stands for the past five years. His son has joined him for the last three.

"It's a totally different line of work for me," he said. "It's a good summer job and I get to meet a lot of interesting people from all over."

Cook said that the first sale he made Sunday was to a Chicago man passing through Cape Girardeau.

"I've met people buying fireworks from New York and as far west as California," he said. "We get a lot of Illinois business, too."

Cook said that customers frequently ask about appropriate fireworks for small children and have other safety concerns.

"There are harmless poppers for little kids and novelty items their parents can set off that they can watch," Cook said.

"Fireworks don't have to hurt kids if they are used wisely. All of the fireworks have warnings printed on them saying that they should be used only under adult supervision."

Fireworks in the smaller tents are packed up every night and put into locked trailers or buildings. But larger tents are secured at night by a night watchman, with drive-by police supervision.

Sue Beck, a teacher at Jackson Junior High School, was taking an inventory at one of the larger tents Sunday afternoon.

"A lot of people will come in looking for something they fired off last year but don't quite remember the name of it," she said. "They tell us, `It did this...' and describe it; we do our best to help them find it again."

Beck said many area teachers work in fireworks stands during the two weeks they are on sale prior to the Fourth of July.

"A lot of the companies like the older help," she said. "And we need the money most teachers don't have summer jobs to supplement their incomes."

"These two weeks really go by in a hurry," Cook said.

Beck said people from out of state will buy a lot of the bigger, more dramatic fireworks for block parties, business picnics or for private fireworks displays.

"We sell a lot of the packaged assortments," she said. "They are a really good value for the money, especially for someone who doesn't know what to get.

"The assortments are designed for kids and usually have a little bit of everything in them," Beck said. "You can't go wrong with them."

New items this year in the fireworks tents include Chinese Celebration cakes, colored firecrackers, Cracking Artillery Shells, the Snap and Pop Collection Series, Nebula and Sunburst.

"They come in all different colors and sizes," Beck said. "You can find just about anything you're looking for here."

Around this time of year, the police are looking for violators of the fireworks code.

Early Sunday evening just hours after fireworks had gone on sale in the region police received a call about a group of juveniles shooting bottle rockets at passing cars.

"That's the most common complaint we get at this time of year," said Sgt. Brad Moore of the Cape Girardeau Police Department. "People will shoot bottle rockets out of cars, out of houses or at passing cars."

Moore said police also get complaints from residents who do not like the litter from discharged fireworks blowing through their yards.

"People can set fireworks off in their own yards or in city parks," Moore said. "But you can't shoot them into someone else's yard or at anything."

Persons who do violate fireworks codes are cited with a court summons and their fireworks are impounded as evidence.

Violations include: selling fireworks to anyone who is under 12 years old; discharging or selling fireworks within 100 feet of a gas station; smoking in fireworks stands; discharging or selling fireworks within 300 feet of a church, hospital or school building; discharging fireworks within 75 feet of a selling location; and shooting fireworks at people or cars.

In the city of Cape Girardeau, only Class C Fireworks are allowed to be sold or discharged. They may be sold and/or discharged from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. from now through July 3. On July 4, fireworks may be discharged from 8 a.m. to midnight.

Vendors must have a city and county merchant's license, as well as approval from the Missouri Department of Fire Safety.

The city of Jackson has recently adopted the same standards. Cape County has no existing fireworks standards or codes.