I’ll bet the official Lakeland fireworks Thursday night were glorious, animated scrimshaw on the clouds over Lake Mirror. They sounded robust from a distance, like Blue Man Group doing really badly at anger management therapy.

Hearing fireworks, of course, is as satisfying as tuning in to finger painting on the radio. Then again, the biggest star in radio’s golden days was a ventriloquist; go figure. But by the time the fireworks finally made liftoff nearly an hour late, just before 10 p.m., I’d been forced to pack up my son and head home.

Timing wasn’t Lakeland’s strong suit this year in its zest to celebrate our independence. First, the city scheduled the fireworks for July 3. Independence Eve? Next up: trick or treating on Oct. 30. Easter services on Saturday. And don’t forget to vote Nov. 3!

Then the effects of a gullywasher of a storm delayed the lighting of the bombs bursting in air, likely leaving lots of sleepy residents wondering if the soggy booms were more thunder on the horizon. 

Back at home, I put my boy to bed and settled back to celebrate my independence by listening to some George Carlin. This was the first Fourth of July without the red glare of Carlin’s gaze on America. Carlin spent most of his career challenging us to think hard about what freedom is, what freedom of speech means, what it takes to be an informed citizen in a democratic republic—and just how absurd our country and lives can be.

I interviewed Carlin in 1980 after his performance at the Bayfront Center. I waited backstage for him, pacing nervously: the nebbishy guy who dusts the pews awaiting his audience with the pope. I imagined what it would be like to chat with the sweaty, kinetic, feral man who’d just prowled the stage for an hour, to the raucous delight of the audience.

When the quiet, professorial fellow walked toward me, extending a hand as though to ask for more tweed, it took me a moment to recognize him.

This was George Carlin?

This was the seven-dirty-words guy? The football-baseball guy? Al Sleet? Biff Barf? This is the guy who said, “The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other in opposite directions”? Who admonished, “In America, anyone can become president. That’s the problem”? Who wondered, “Whose cruel idea was it for the word ‘lisp’ to have an ‘S’ in it?” Who observed, “When you step on the brakes your life is in your foot’s hands”?

Carlin was a gentle, courteous man, soft-spoken behind his neatly trimmed beard, patient with trite questions, grateful for interesting ones. Many dismissed him as irreverent and foul-mouthed, before stuffing their heads back in the sand. Carlin was reverential about a lot of things: truth, intelligence, wit, human decency, rationality, skepticism, individuality, ethnicity. He had reverence for who and what we can be as a species, and growing contempt for what we’re letting ourselves become. He had reverence for family; he was married for 30 years until the death of his first wife, then almost another 10 to his second, and he doted on his daughter, Kelly.

I guess there’s contrived irony in emphasizing how much heart the man had in person and in his performances, when it was that heart that delivered its ultimate punchline June 22 and took this irreplaceable comic mind from us.

America’s skies, like Lakeland’s on Thursday night, seem dark. There are fewer colorful, concussive lights to chase the shadows. We lost Kurt Vonnegut a year ago; Arthur C. Clarke in March; former Mad magazine artist Will Elder in May; Tim Russert in June. Now George Carlin.

So it goes. Or, as Carlin so eloquently put it: “If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest drown, too?” Thanks for the fireworks, George. Now if only Lakeland could get its fuse lit on time!

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