Independence Day in Carthage

Area residents by the hundreds filled Carthage Municipal Park early on a warm sunny Friday perfect for outdoor fun to enjoy the events at Red White and Boom.

The Carthage Municipal Golf Course closed down at 2 p.m. and crews stripped the course of everything not tied down to let residents start taking their positions.

Angie Hoskins, Joplin, brought her family and friends back to her old hometown to watch the display she used to enjoy as a child.

"Last year we went to the Joplin fireworks sow, but we had to watch it from a viaduct and it wasn't as much fun," Hoskins said as she prepared a spot on the golf course. "I watched these displays growing up and we always loved coming to the golf course and having a picnic."

Hoskins said she brought along her husband, Mark, and daughter, Olivia along with their friends Jim and Debbie Hamilton and their daughter Hannah. They also brought a big picnic of antipasto kabobs, apple onion tarts, rainbow cake and other goodies.

The Pennington family, Frank and Kathy with children Brice, Brook and Drew, went the easier route with a picnic of fried chicken and fixings from a local restaurant.

Johnna Williams and her children Gage, Gavin and Ethan, engaged in a pickup game of wiffle ball with other people on one of the greens.

Johnna Williams' brother and sister-in-law, Tim and Laura Williams, and son, Andrew came all the way from Statesville N.C. to show Andrew his first fireworks display in Carthage.

As the sun went down, the pyrotechnics went up, even before the city-sponsored display began around 9:30 p.m.

Despite the city ordinance banning all fireworks in Carthage, people started firing off sparklers and small aerial fireworks. Police officers were busy for about 45 minutes scrambling around the golf course on golf carts warning people to put away the fireworks.

That all paused for about 20 minutes as technicians with A and M Pyrotechnics filled the sky with colorful bursts and loud reports.

Cleanup and aftermath

No one was hurt and no major incidents were reported among the thousands of people gathered in and around Municipal Park.

Carthage firefighters did respond to put out a fire in an old tree on the golf course that was caused when someone threw a burned out sparkler through a hole in the tree.

Carthage Fire Chief John Cooper said the still-hot sparkler set fire to the rotted interior of the hollow tree. Firefighters spent several minutes cutting into the tree to pour water and soap in to douse the flames.

Kurt Neubert, golf course superintendent, said crews spent hours overnight and into Saturday morning cleaning up the trash and replacing the flags and tee-box markers to make the course playable.

"There was a lot of debris from the commercial display," Neubert said. "The ninth green and three tee boxes were virtually buried in the stuff."

Neubert said there wasn't any real damage to the course other than the trash and debris left by hundreds of people. He said he wished the city would consider holding the Fourth of July event somewhere else, but he doesn't hold out much hope.

"We have to close up the course on 2 p.m. of what could be our busiest day of the year, then we have to push start times to 7:30 the next morning when we could start at 6 a.m., just to cleanup and get everything back together," Neubert said. "I always thought Fairview Acres or Myers Park would be a good place for a fireworks display, but this is tradition and we'll keep cleaning up."