Northeast News
July 8, 2015

Another 4th of July holiday is behind us and once again, the streets of HNE rang out with all manner of explosives over the weekend, including the peppered shots of semi-automatic weapon fire.

This careful lil’ news pooch doesn’t much take a hankerin’ toward those who idiotically unload weapons skyward given that hot lead has to fall somewhere. As is normally the case, Concourse Park looked like a war zone with spent fireworks wrappers littering the lawn, fountain and streets. Last we heard, fireworks were illegal in this cowtown, but that didn’t stop people from letting fly with the roman candles and bottle rockets to celebrate the birthday of America.

Sadly, the meaning of the holiday is lost to most. Sadder still, is the case that the vast majority of those who shot off fireworks this weekend in the streets and the park, left their mess for someone else to clean up, namely neighborhood volunteers. This old school news-dog always operated under the mantra of leave an area cleaner than when you found it. Apparently, these trashing ner do wells operate under the paradigm of somebody else, not me.

Kudos to the neighborhood volunteers and Parks and Rec crews who swept and shoveled spent fireworks into trash bags the morning after the holiday. To those of you who left your spent illegal fireworks trash for someone else to deal with, you’re part of the problem, not the solution and need to find somewhere else to trash.