“Shine bright like a firework in the darkest night.”
— “Firework” recorded by Katy Perry
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Holiday lights are the best. When colorful decorations delight, and fireworks illuminate the night.
While I was fascinated by fireworks as a kid, I’m even more mesmerized these days by the growing phenomenon of drone light shows. Mindboggling artistic exhibitions in the nighttime skies using lighted drones driven with computer precision.
My son, Lee, became a skilled drone pilot a few years ago. Marveling at his breathtaking nighttime photos of lights on the horizon intrigued me to give it a try.
Snagging a simple example on sale, I headed for an empty field near my house. Loaded with instructions and optimism, .
“This lever is up; this one is down … I’ve got this.”
Enthusiasm turned to confusion on the first real test flight. “Was that the right stick forward or the left one back?” I watched as the just-out-of-the-box bird flew away, ignoring my futile attempts at any description of control. I was still watching when it disappeared into trees on the far side of the field.
A couple of hours of fighting briars and poison ivy, scanning treetops, and crawling through brush piles proved pointless. Dusk ended my doomed drone search.
Follow-up expeditions the next couple of days yielded not a peep from the locator beacon that the owner’s manual assured would sound if the drone were “accidentally” lost . “Guess I’ll leave the drones to Lee,” I conceded.
My son also loved fireworks as a youngster. With a passion. Every holiday, he stashed money away anticipating the opening of the first fireworks stand. The year of his most memorable fireworks show, he amassed an arsenal capable of defending our southern shores Lake Murvaul home against any invasion. Should one occur.
Dark descended as he opened the large plastic bucket full of “buy one get a dozen free” bargains.
Spectators unfolded lawn chairs and opened refreshment coolers. Lake Murvaul holiday fireworks shoreline displays border on legendary.
“Oohs” and “aahs” arose from the darkness as brilliant, colorful displays began lighting the night sky, painting the water with shimmering reflections.
Lee strated his contributions with small “twirly-thingys” whizzing upward. All was bliss until … until that one spent glowing winged ember thingy drifted downward. The one that descended into the arsenal bucket.
And that’s when the “really big show” began. Everyone broke into retreat mode toward land. But curiosity got the best of me. Looking back at the inferno, I saw several things.
I saw a fireworks display the likes of which I’m pretty sure had never before been seen on the lake, perhaps never since. Rockets shooting in one direction, buzz bombs going off in another. The light was blinding. The noise was deafening. Not since Wolf Blitzer’s CNN coverage of the invasion of Iraq had I witnessed such ferocious firepower.
I saw neighbors hunkering down, dodging bottle rockets as they folded lawn chairs and scrambled for safety.
Then I saw a broom in the boathouse. Wielding the makeshift shovel, I braved the rogue pyrotechnics show, pushing what was left off the pier and into the water.
Almost as fast as it had started, Lee’s fireworks show was over. With a muffled sizzle, the mass of embers, melted plastic, and detonating devices sank in a cloud of steam that lingered over the murky depths.
The silence was deafening. Not one frog or cricket was heard. Then someone applauded. Another. joined in. Clapping spread around the cove.
Lee was devastated. He had just watched weeks of allowance and pay for chores go up in a flash and die in a puff of smoke.
There was talk for days afterward. “Did you see that on the south shore the other night?” Everyone was pretty sure it was the most spectacular event since lightning hit the oil storage tanks over on FM 1970.
It was still being talked about years later, the day we moved from the lake.
Lee recovered, later earned a degree in computer networking and is tech savvy in ways I won’t pretend to understand. I haven’t asked him about fireworks lately. But who knows. He may consider tackling this amazing new field of drone powered nighttime light shows replacing fireworks.
Not me, though. I never did find my derelict drone.
—Leon Aldridge
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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.
© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2026. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.
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