remembering fire balloons

National Review, May 23, 2005

James E. Person, Jr.

Review of

The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury, by Sam Weller (William Morrow)

LONG ago, within the living memory of very few people, there were fire-balloons. These delicate

fireworks - each a colorful paper balloon designed to be filled with the breath of a small fire in a

miniature basket hung underneath - were carefully lit and sent skyward into the night on special

occasions. They seem to have been especially popular in the small-town American Midwest. Ray

Bradbury remembers being five years old and watching his grandfather light and release a

fire-balloon outside the older man's home in Waukegan, Ill., on the Fourth of July in 1925: He and his grandfather together “held the flickering bright-angel presence in our hands a final moment in front of a porch lined with uncles and aunts and cousins and mothers and fathers, and then, very softly, let the thing that was life and light and mystery go out of our fingers up on the summer air and away over the beginning-to-sleep houses, among the stars, as fragile, as wondrous, as vulnerable, as lovely as life itself.” Tears filled his eyes during this timeless moment - tears of joy, love, and a bittersweet sense of loss amid the beauty of life.