esrosedotblog

INDEPENDENCE DAY

I won't have much of a holiday here today.

Nothing unusual.

I don't really celebrate any holidays.

I am more of an internal celebrator.

I like to think about the day and what it means and have some memories about past days and then let it go at that.

Since I don't work anymore it is not a day off.

When I was a kid, we mostly saw July 4th as a day to have fireworks.

That was the big thing.

There might be an extended-family picnic but for many years we had those every summer Sunday anyway.

We would take a carload to Promised Land Lake and have a swim and watermelon then head back to our own town for oven fried chicken and all the trimmings.

But the focus would be on the fireworks.

Ours were at a private club at the north end of town, The Skytop Club.

They set them off for their members.

Townies would park along the road outside the estate and sit on the edge of the golf links to watch from a half mile or so away.

The whole thing may have lasted 20 minutes. One display at a time. Every two or three minutes. There was a lot of waiting.

I don't think there was a grand finale and if there was it wasn't that grand.

But it is all we had and we absorbed every second of the spectacle.

We also had a lot of hand fireworks available although I wasn't allowed to have any.

I had to do with powder caps made for a cap pistol. Does everyone know what a cap pistol is?

We would take the rolls of caps and hit them with a hammer. Quite a flash and bang.

There were sparklers too.

I doubt whether we thought one second about what the day meant beyond the noise and flash.

I will try to make up for that today and think about our country and its history and how, eventually, the good overwhelms the bad in it.

I sure hope we haven't run out our ability to do so with all the evil of the last 6 years.

But I am sure we will. A long hard road is ahead. But it is doable.

Labels: holidays, nostalgia