Fourth of July Fireworks Over the Neenah Harbor

The Fourth of July has looked about the same for me for as long as I can remember. Once it gets dark, you make your way down toward the water in Neenah, find a patch of grass, and wait for the first shell to go up over the harbor. I have been watching these fireworks most of my life, either from my parents’ yard or from down at the park. This year I walked down from my parents’ house to Riverside Park with my camera to catch them up close.

It was one of those warm, easy evenings you hope for on the Fourth. Hardly any wind, the water sitting nearly flat, and a big crowd spread out along the shore and out on the anchored boats. A really good turnout, the kind of night where it feels like the whole town turned up for the same thing at the same time.

A Neenah tradition

The show is part of CommunityFest, the Fourth of July celebration that Neenah and Menasha put on together every year. The fireworks are the Festival Foods show, launched out over the Neenah channel where it opens into Lake Winnebago, so the whole thing goes up over open water. That is what makes it worth the walk. Every burst opens over the harbor, and then a half second later it happens all over again upside down on the surface, sailboats and all.

I could not tell you the exact year Neenah started doing this. It has simply always been here. I grew up with it, and it has been a fixture at Riverside Park and out on the water for as long as I have been around, right along with the water ski show and the lighted boat parade earlier in the evening. Some traditions you never think to put a date on. You just show up for them.

From the water’s edge

I got down early enough to shoot the reflections, which are my favorite part of photographing fireworks here. When the harbor is calm like it was this year, every burst lays a long ribbon of color straight down the water toward you. I have come back for that same view in other years too, like this golden burst over the harbor.

By the time the finale came around they were stacking them up fast, filling the whole sky over the boats.

A couple of minutes of the show

Photos only get you so far with fireworks. Here are a couple of clips from down at the park, with the sound and everything. The first one runs about two minutes and covers one of the better stretches of the night.

We stayed until the smoke drifted off the water and people started folding up their chairs. Same as it always goes, and I would not want it any other way.

One more, from the driveway

After the city show we lit off a few of our own back at the house. Here is the last one, going straight up off the top of the recycling cart, which seemed like a perfectly good launch pad at the time. A fitting way to close out the night.

One note, looking back. Riverside Park is the same spot I walked back to a few weeks after this, once the tornado had come through and torn up some of its oldest trees. On a calm Fourth of July night, with the whole town down at the water, it is hard to picture the place any other way.