This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories,

the show where America is the star and the American people. And all show

long were celebrating July 4th. And what's a July 4th celebration without fireworks? Up next is

story from Joel Wagoner from Loveland, Ohio, which is just outside of Cincinnati. Joel and his

bride have 10 children. And working in

the education field, Joel had to find ways in the summer to make some extra cash. Here's Joel

to tell us about one of the more explosive business ideas he has. So we ran the fireworks business for about 15 years.

It was a tent business, and it was along Highway 61 between St. Louis and

Hannibal, a busy highway there.

And it was a relatively small tent and we leased the area and then we brought in a tent every year and put fireworks in it.

The people that frequent a fireworks stand are just a little bit different.

And not in a bad way. In fact, there was one part of me that just kind of related really well with them.

And so it was always a fun time just to go and hang out with pyromaniacs.

And my daughter, my oldest daughter actually named our business Pyromaniac Paradise. And so

that's what we called the business. But yeah, we met some very interesting people. Unfortunately, many of the

people that buy fireworks and many of the events around the 4th of July also involve alcohol.

And that is never a good combination of fireworks and alcohol, but that was

often the case. And I remember one evening, we were getting close to the end of the day, and a guy

rolled up in his pickup truck and had obviously been drinking and in the back of his truck

he told us that there was a fireworks that didn't work and he was very upset that the fireworks was not

working and so we looked in the back of his pickup truck

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