“Why does Providence have its fireworks on July 3?” someone asked. Three of us don’t live in Rhode Island, and two of us were new to the city. We were sitting around behind Sally’s house waiting for it to get dark.

“It’s because of the Bristol parade,” said one of the Providence residents. The other Providence described the parade to the rest of us.

Rob and Sally and I wound up talking together, first about how Sally found her house, and then about how she had been living a few blocks from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. “I saw the first plane go in,” she said, and told us the whole story of that morning. She had worked in one of the towers, and many of her co-workers had died. But what she really remembered was how her neighborhood had rallied, and pulled together to support the relief workers.

The conversation drifted along from there, covering Providence’s ex-mayor Buddy (who’s getting our of prison soon), Warren Buffet (I was the only one who thought his philanthropy less than admirable), historic preservation (inevitable, given that there was an urban planner, two New Urbanists, and two owners of historic houses present), sailing (when Chris is around, sailing will come up in conversation) —

— and then the first rocket went up, and the fireworks began in earnest. As fireworks displays do, it started slowly, and gradually built up momentum. A particularly good one went off. “Baby!” shouted a man from the top porch of the triple decker up the hill from us. The fireworks were framed by the trees down the hill from Sally’s house. They lasted for a quarter of an hour, and built to a deafening climax that left little spots of light in my eyes, like looking at a camera’s flash. Boom! boom! boomboomboomboom!

A car alarm went off, and we all laughed: someone had predicted that would happen. The fireworks were over. “That finale was actually a little frightening,” said someone. It had been, and I fleetingly worried about returning veterans suffering post-traumatic stress disorder.

On the drive back up to Cambridge, Carol said that Norwegians celebrate their national independence with a children’s parade. We speculated on why fireworks became a tradition for our Independence Day. I mean, why do you set off fireworks to celebrate the signing of a document? Maybe we should celebrate by writing pamphlets on democracy and liberty. But we both agreed the Providence fireworks had been well worth watching. They were so good that Carol is now thinking she doesn’t need to fight the crowds to go see Boston’s fireworks.