A suitable accompanying quote (one of my favorites):

"I thought about the pleasure of it afterward as I stalked around the kitchen. There is a kind of delicious trepidation involved. First, after lighting the fuse, there is sometimes a wait before the shell--with a kind of harrumphing sound--leaves the mortar whose iron clangs with the sudden blow of the propellant charge. Until this happens, the mind races with the worry that the shell may refuse to budge. It will have to be removed. So the relief when the shell goes up is considerable. Even then, it takes so long for a large shell to reach its apogee--up to four or five seconds--that an additional worry takes over. One waits, looking up into the darkness, until the possibility occurs that the shell is coming back down, this awful projectile, invisible in the night, what pyotechnicians refer to as a 'black shell' . . . and then just as one thinks about desperately scurrying for cover, far up the shell snaps open in its huge enveloping umbrella of stars, so intensely beautiful that it invariably produces a cry of delight, partly in appreciation, but also in relief that the thing has gone off properly.

It is an infectious practice."

-- George Plimpton, "Fireworks: A History and Celebration"