MARIETTA — With July 4 falling on a Thursday this year, many people will have a four-day weekend for holiday and those who don’t travel will be looking for something to do.

In Marietta, they’ll have a parade on Thursday, and on Saturday have the chance to spend a day at the fairgrounds, where they can sample some food, put the children on amusement rides, watch a tractor pull, and after dark — fireworks.

Kurt Bohlen is president of the Washington County Fair Board, and he said the board this year decided to add some attractions for its annual Independence Day activities at the fairgrounds.

“We had some complaints last year that there wasn’t enough for kids to do, so we decided to step up and add some rides and games,” he said.

Bohlen said there are logistical challenges for a one-day event.

“The amusement rides, it’s not the same people we had for the county fair,” he said. “It’s expensive and not very practical to get them for one day, with all the set-up and take-down.”

However, Bohlen said, the board managed to get Calliope Productions out of New Matamoras to offer a single day of rides. Bohlen said he expects about four or more food vendors to be available,

“There won’t be many craft or merchandise vendors, but there will be games and other stuff for kids to do,” he said.

The grounds will open at 10 a.m. and admission is $5 for adults and free for children 10 and younger.

A tractor pull is scheduled for noon, and a mini-modified event will be held at 7 p.m.

The fireworks start at 10 p.m.

Hamburg Fireworks Display of Zanesville, which has provided fireworks for the fair for several years and is the third largest such enterprise in the country, will be in charge of lighting up the sky.

Bill Parker is a veteran pyrotechnician with the company. They call themselves shooters, he said. The Parkers are a fireworks family.

“We’ve been doing the Washington County show for about 12 years now, and I’ve been doing this professionally for 33 years,” Parker said. “My son Lee has been doing it for eight years, my father and brother, my wife, they’re all shooters. Our family will do nine shows from June 30 to July 7.

That’s not unusual in the profession, he said.

“To get into it you kind of have to know somebody who does it,” he said. “You go to a class, you have to be licensed and do a federal background check, then spend at least three years under a licensed shooter.”

Lee Parker will run the show at the fairgrounds this year, Bill said.

The process involves several steps, starting with the fair board acquiring a permit and having a “flight check” done to ensure the show has adequate clearance around the area where the fireworks will be launched and the air space where they explode. For the Washington County show, he said, the upper limit on shell size will be six inches.

“It takes us about five hours to set it up. We use racks of mortars, they’re all hand-lit, we do it by hand and have the sequence and timing of the whole show in our minds,” he said.

Once the racks are in place, the set-up is inspected by the fire department, he said, and while there are explosives on the grounds, police provide security.

The fairgrounds show will launch 500 shells and take about 20 minutes, he said.

“We have a rule of thumb – less than 15 minutes, people don’t feel like they got enough, longer than 25 minutes, they get bored with it,” he said. “Even if I have a show with 1,000 shells, I’ll still do it in 20 minutes.”

Acquiring the pyrotechnics is complicated, he said, with much of it coming from China.

“They’ve been making fireworks over there for a very long time,” Parker said. With the tariffs and trade irregularities that recently affected U.S.-China commerce, pyrotechnics companies made sure they placed their orders well in advance of the season. “There’s a lot of paperwork involved,” he said.

As in most businesses, new and interesting products become available.

“They come up with new designs and mixtures of compounds that make it look different. It’s fun to get something new, see what it does,” he said. “We sometimes put on an appreciation show at home with the new fireworks, invite people to come out and see it.”

The goal is always the same, he said.

“We try the best we can to put on a beautiful show, what we say is, ‘Let’s make the sky look pretty,’ ” he said.

Michael Kelly can be contacted at mkelly@mariettatimes.com

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Washington County Fairgrounds Independence Day Celebration

* When: Opens 10 a.m. Saturday

* Where: Washington County Fairgrounds

* Events: tractor pull, noon; mini-mods, 7 p.m., fireworks 10 p.m.

* What else: Food trucks, amusement rides, games for children