>Few years ago we watched it from a hill above Charlottesville. Than I understood how Smoky Mountains got their name.
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>Haha! Yes, that wonderful smell of gunpower is a great reminder that it's summertime.
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>Of course, fireworks aren't the only thing that can generate big clouds of smoke. A few weeks ago, my riding mower blew up (and I mean BLEW UP) when I was cutting the grass. There I was, riding along, happy as can be, beer bottle securely in my cup holder...the engine made this strange sound, and then BOOM!!!!! . Immediately, this huge cloud of smoke went across the neighborhood. Our next-door neighbors are still frosted at me (I guess I interrupted their tea-time or something).

I had a good smoke generator back home - the Trabant. It's an amazing minimalistic vehicle: two cylinder, two-cycle, air-cooled, no distributor (it simply has two switches on the oposing sides of the main axle), no fuel pump (gravity works), but it had a digital fuel gauge (with real digits on the dipstick). Occasionally, there'd be some important guy's car parked just in front of the door of the city hall (which had its own parking just behind the building), and I then took a chance to fake a suffocation of engine, which would then relieve itself in a large cloud of blue smoke. It's because of these guys that I couldn't have a better or newer one, so let them eat the smoke, I'm gone in a second.

My other smoke generator is my barbecue kindling. I openly despise gas and phosphor-laced coaldust briquets. Real charcoal or wood or nothing. For quite a while I was using peanut shells to start a fire (as any chemical starter is guaranteed to spoil my appetite). It is great, but for a few minutes it makes such a thick column of smoke, you can send messages in any font you like. I had to make sure everybody sees where the smoke is coming from, or else I'd have twenty guys with hoses, axes and funny suits jumping out of those christmas-tree trucks in no time :).