Freeport events

Fireworks in Freeport to be rescheduled

Wind, threat of rain canceled Tuesday's plans

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Everybody loves to gather for Freeport’s fireworks — including rain and its devious buddy, wind, which have shown up repeatedly to kick the planned display to its rain date.

In 2017, wind blew the lights out on the June 29 show, and on the rain date, July 6, the Pyrotecnico truck bringing the fireworks broke down on its way to Woodcleft Avenue. The event was not rescheduled

This year, once again, the Chamber of Commerce arranged a fireworks display to be viewed from locations on the Nautical Mile, and once again, impudent showers and inconsiderate winds forced the postponement of the July 5 show to a date that had not been announced at press time.

In 2019 and 2021, both shows were rained out, and the rain dates were dicey as well. In 2019, crowds had already gathered for the makeup show on July 11 when a freshet burst from the sky. Turnpike Joe and the Traffic Jam, playing on the Esplanade, grabbed their musical setup and raced to finish their concert in the comfort of BrewSA. Families dined at their favorite food establishments along Woodcleft Avenue, and then darted to their cars to peer at the fireworks through closed windows, or skittered underneath the Woodcleft Scenic Pier Gazebo with umbrellas.

Last year, the rain date of July 9 drew hesitant onlookers, made cautious by the unresolved threat of the coronavirus as much as by a thundershower earlier in the evening. But they kept their social distance, doffed their masks, and shouted with pleasure when spears of platinum pierced the cloudy darkness and chrysanthemums of brilliant colors illuminated the watchers on the pleasure boats.

“We had a nice crowd here for the fireworks,” Ilona Jagnow, owner and manager of Otto’s Sea Grill, said after last year’s fireworks — and that was saying a lot. At that time, Freeport’s businesses were struggling mightily to recover from the Covid-19 shutdowns.

Looking further back in time at July 4 through the pages of the Freeport Leader shows that cancellations through the years competed for frequency with events that went off without a hitch. The newspaper, which changed its name after the Herald bought it half a decade ago, is preserved digitally at the Freeport Memorial Library.

In 1941, communities trooped to Jones Beach State Park for their Independence Day celebration. A three-part series of displays on July 2, 3, and 4 included magic water ballets and comedy. It evidently was untroubled by weather.

In 1949, Freeport held its own event and endured a brief, powerful downpour. Afterward, an editorial in the Leader exhorted everyone not to conclude that a month-long drought was over, and instead to conserve water.

During the 1950s, many families trekked to the Coney Island boardwalk for New York City’s pyrotechnic spectacular.

The Freeport Stadium, which once existed where BJ’s now stands on Mill Road, hosted the 1964 village fireworks.

From 1965 on, the Leader published regular editorials to warn of the dangers of buying fireworks individually and setting them off in the streets. In 1965, Police Commissioner Louis J. Frank reminded readers that, a year earlier, a Long Island teen accidentally blew himself up with a pipe bomb he’d made out of fireworks.

The Freeport Fire Department emphasized the word “legal” when it presented a fireworks display in 1975, at a time when the county’s Project Revitalization was providing funds for the village to rehabilitate the area around Helen, Gold and Liberty streets.

By 1982, people were annoying their neighbors with sporadic blasts that started six weeks before Independence Day, a trend that seems to have eased only in recent years.

Freeport’s community events in 2021 and 2022 have gradually started to look like those held before the pandemic, with unmasked clusters of family and friends, still cautious but shedding the burden of fear imposed by a year and a half of restrictions.

So, even though the Nassau County Bomb Squad called off Tuesday’s show, villagers should watch Freeport’s Facebook page for the rain date, and look forward to a happy, and dry, gathering.