“In the old days we’d use a road flare to lit the fireworks, cross your fingers, touch the fuse, duck and hope it got out of the Shute,” Garden State Fireworks expert John Grimes tells me.

John is in charge of putting tonight’s fireworks display together for the New Jersey based company which has been in business since the Augustine Santore family opened their first fireworks plant in 1891.

Gingerly he pulls one of the fireworks out of a thick-walled tube. It’s not like any fireworks I’ve seen before, more a wadded up ball of clay about 4 inches in diameter. 

I’m thinking rockets being shot out of a cannon not a blob-like cannon ball being launched up into the sky. 

When the fuse will be ignited is determined by what might be called an “electronic match” — signals send from several hundred feet away and routed along a complicated set of wiring harnesses — in a sequence pre-determined by software programmed thousands of miles away.

But as I watch the crew connect the wires from each of the fireworks to a corresponding location on the module I’m realizing the complexity that will allow complete control over when and which each will be fired.

The work is tedious. Each module will connect to as many as a hundred of the fireworks. As they move along the the number of wires continues to addd up with the potential for them getting tangled increasing by the minute.

It will be another few hours until all of the wiring has been completed.

As I sit back and watch the fireworks go off a few hours later, twenty solid minutes of incredible colors and sounds blasted across the sky, I am happy to have had the opportunity to meet John and his crew and see the magic that they have provided.