The world's explosive enough

Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

It was a birthday celebration, a country club throwing itself a fun little party. Nothing unusual about this.

Only a lot of people in Canton, which is 15 miles south of Boston, didn't have a clue about Wampatuck's 100-year birthday bash. It was to most a surprise party.

People were aware of other things, though. They knew that the Democratic National Convention was in town, that the terror-threat level was high, that commuters were being searched, that there was more air traffic than usual and that these were perilous times.

So when fireworks began Sunday night around 9, (Who expects fireworks in late July in a small town?) many people didn't think celebration. They thought terrorists. And they thought bombs.

At the Canton police station the phones began ringing. ``We got more than 75 calls in 20 minutes,'' Sgt. Patty Sherrill said the next day.

By then, of course, it was over, the panic, the fear, the overreaction to a little night noise. It's easy in the light of day to see that shadows are just shadows, not monsters that inch closer when the door is closed and no one is looking.

But Sunday night in the dark, the shadows had shapes and motives. And relatively sane people who would have heard booms and thumps and guessed fireworks over mass annihilation just a few years ago, thought uh-oh, and panicked.

``I started crying,'' said Melissa Mayer, 31. ``At first I thought people were trying to break into the house and I grabbed the phone to call 911. I thought there were a lot of people, that we were surrounded. But then I thought, no, we're being bombed and that's when I really panicked and yelled for Billy,'' who saw not terrorists with guns but fireworks lighting the sky.

``Stay away from the window,'' Melissa screamed. And Billy said, ``It's just fireworks. It's OK.''

And it was.

That's how it went for most of us. Panic first. Reason second.

``At first I thought someone was in my house and then I thought someone had bombed the Red Sox game because John Kerry was there,'' said the very sensible Canton librarian, Bonnie Lenehan. Her son was at the game and she was terrified. ``I watched TV and I waited.'' And after a while when nothing happened, she realized the sounds were fireworks.

I heard the cracks and felt the thuds, too, and wondered are we being attacked. But the Sox were still playing and the commentators were still chatting. So are we being attacked and no one knows, I asked my son-in-law?

My youngest daughter, a new mother, had been upstairs lying down. ``Are they bombs or fireworks?'' she said holding her baby.

The phone rang. It was my friend Beth. ``Do you know what's going on?'' Her adult son had just called her. ``What's happening?''

A few miles away my other daughter and her husband were asking each other the same thing.

Not one of us phoned the police. We all just waited. And when nothing happened, when the lights stayed on and the Red Sox continued to play, we thought, could all this noise be fireworks?

In Boston, Monday someone left a camcorder unattended. The bomb squad was called and it was blown up. Anyone could see it was just a camcorder someone forgot. But was it?

We live in a time when no one is sure about anything and things aren't always as they seem. We live in a time when we are repeatedly told to expect the unexpected.

The fireworks were unexpected. Once they were simply a happy summer sound, somebody celebrating somewhere. But not any more.