I don't want to be a kill joy but people really need to cool it with the illegal fireworks.

Last June a week before the Fourth of July, one of my neighbors at around 1 a.m. decided to set off car alarms with three explosions about a minute apart that turned out to be illegal fireworks designed for maximum noise production.

Fireworks — the legal ones anyway — can only be fired off from noon on June 28 through midnight on July 4.

That may surprise a lot people, but the state has a stipulation that if a city allows the sale and use of legal fireworks they can be shot of only during the time they are legally sold.

So if you have a desire to turn Manteca into Kabul circa 2015 beyond the traditional time frame of after nightfall on Independence Day, wait until June 28 to do so.

I've got to be honest. I'm not a big fan of fireworks.

 Over the years I've bought them for the grandkids and I've gone to my fair share of aerial shows.

I'm more attune, though, to what my mom used to say, "If you want to burn $20 just take a $20 bill and light a match to it."

A product of the Great Depression, she thought it was financial lunacy.

 That said, she never stopped her kids once they were old enough from being able to use them on the Fourth of July as long as they bought them with money they earned working.

I never really enjoyed using fireworks.

 It has a lot to do with what my older brothers would do such as throw lighted sparklers in my direction.

When you are the little brother among three, you sometimes have to think of survival first instead of giving into the desire to belong.

My cousin, who was a year older, always wanted to hang around Ron — my middle brother — and his friends.

With a three year age difference, Lyle ended up taking a lot of grief.

One incident happened on the Fourth of July.

My mom was working as she did six to seven days a week holidays or not to feed, clothe, and shelter four kids after my dad died.

 So without an adult around, Lyle became a target.

What they ended up doing was grabbing him, throwing him into our grange that was accessed from the alley.

They locked the door and made sure he couldn't open two windows or move the wooden garage door by more than an inch at best and then started tossing smoke bombs in.

Finally Richard — my oldest brother — interceded when he heard a commotion out back.

Lyle got out but not until he got to fully enjoy six smoke bombs.

Everyone then went down to the Fourth of July activities at McBean Park.

After 3 p.m., Lincoln’s fire siren went off to summon volunteer firefighters. Our garage was on fire.

Lyle, desperate to breathe, had tried to push the smoke bombs out under the garage door. One or more got lodged and burnt the garage down.

Ron tried to tell my mom it was Lyle's fault.

She didn't see it that way.

It wasn't Ron's first rodeo damaging property with fireworks.

While at a neighbor's house swimming one August, he wanted to see if he could flush an illegal cherry bomb down a toilet in the pool house they had before it went off.

Ron ended up that summer spending his earnings from two months of delivering the Sacramento Bee and the Roseville Press-Tribune paying to replace the toilet.

The point is legal — and illegal —  fireworks can be dangerous and start fires or do property damage.

Look around Manteca. The dry winds have taken its toll.

While dried grass kept relatively short isn't a big issue there are plenty of stressed and dead shrubbery out there.

There are instances almost every year in Manteca of a structure of some type, often a home, that sustains substantial damages.

And it might not happen right away, meaning the consequences of launching something that burns well in excess of 1,000 degrees — sparklers reach temperatures twice that amount.

A number of years ago, ember fallout from one of those illegal fireworks that went airborne landed in a row of Italian cypress in Raymus Village.

It festered undetected for a while before expanding into a fire that ended up doing extensive damage to a home.

It is why fireworks that are airborne or are propelled by themselves —  either via manufacturing or modification — are illegal in California. It is no different than embers from wildfires that have been known to travel significant distances on the wind to ignite fires elsewhere.

Ten years ago, part of a home in the Woodward Park area burned when safe and sane fireworks were placed in a garage cart without being properly dosed for an extended period of time. The trash eventually caught on fire and spread to the house.

Over the year, teens — and even adults — have been badly burned or lost a finger in incidents that Manteca Fire has responded to on the Fourth of July.

The odds are if you are predisposed to launch illegal fireworks you are going to do so anyway.

And if you are reckless like my brother even with the legal ones the odds are you are going to eventually do damage.

This year already has had some frightening wildfires. Toss in fireworks and you're just asking for it.

For the common good, be careful with the legal ones and refrain from launching illegal fireworks.

If you ignore both warnings, then perhaps karma can take over and you burn down your family's home instead of a neighbor's.

 This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com