Swallows, Quick Salutes, Happy Springs, Colors of the World, Golden Waterfall, Peonies, Chrysanthemums, Coconuts, Willow. At about 6 p.m., Ron Evans and his crew begin setting them all up.
Out of a long white van, he and his four employees started unloading about 29 boxes of fireworks - or "cakes," as they called them - and about 96 two-inch shells, a loot totaling $2,000.
For the fireworks show Wednesday night, RKM fireworks began setting up at LaFollette Field's north side to end the evening's set of Homecoming events with an array of explosions.
RKM owner Evans seemed like a field commander in battles of yore, setting the field artillery. He stood on the hill as he led his crew around with cakes for the evenings show.
It's a fun job all right, Evans said, but more like 80 percent of his time was spent with completing paperwork. Last year he went through four FBI background checks and four finger print tests to shoot fireworks. He even needs a permit from the Department of Homeland Security to shoot fireworks, he said.
But he didn't bother with paper Wednesday night. Instead he kneeled, surrounded by firework charges with electric fuses stringing from them.
As Evans did before, RKM employee Rob Jordan read off a sheet and told Evans where certain electric charge wires would go on an electrical panel. Evans began stringing those wires from the charges to the panel, which were to be connected to a primer to light all the fireworks electronically.
"One - 300 shot Color of the World," Jordan said as he looked at a sheet with the lineup of the night's fireworks.
"All right," Evan's said. "That'll be the next one then."
After the sunset while 8:30 came closer, the whole crew was excited. Flashlights turned on and off across the field as they checked the wires. Then, at show time, Evans sat more than 30 feet away at a table with the primer attached to a 12-volt car battery.
Jordan lit one warning shot to get the attention of the student crowd across the field.
"I love the smell of fireworks," Brock Fluhr said, a 19-year-old employee with the crew.
"I do too," Jordan said.
Jordan said he had been shooting off fireworks for 38 years.
"Once you get the smell of gunpowder in you, you can't get rid of it," he said.
At 8:30, the five who began preparing the show had the best seats in the house. Evans was the maestro as he began flipping switches to let the fireworks roar.
It started out with about 180 whistlers and a few big booms "for the guys," he said.
Ashes started to rain down on the crew as the show progressed, while the explosions echoed of the walls of LaFollette complex and sounded like thunder.
"Sounds like a M60 machine gun," Joe Lawecki, another RKM employee, said.
The show ended with 72 two-inch shells lighting off the sky within 10 seconds of each other. The crowd cheered as it ended, but it meant Evans and his crew had to clean up as gunpowder hung in the air.
Then Fluhr walked toward the leftover fireworks with an extra spring in his step.
"That's the finale, baby," he said. "Whoooooo!"
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