Friday the Fourth!

It's July!  Summer's here!  It's almost time for fireworks but it's actually started already here in my neighborhood.  People have already made the trip to Vancouver for illegal stuff and are "testing" them to make sure they're loud enough or dangerous enough and figuring out if they themselves might be able to manage them after downing a number of growlers on Friday.

When I was a kid, the Fourth of July meant sparklers.  While waiting for the California sun to fade into the West, we would start begging my dad to light up "just one," sort of like asking to open one Christmas present on Christmas Eve.  We always managed to wear him down for that and we knew we'd soon have him looking for the candle and isolating himself way out on the driveway to light it.  Then the big moment arrived.  He'd light it; we'd jiggle and dance and then swoop in with screams of delight when he signaled the "okay" then he'd carefully light ours and hand them over.  More screams and swooping as we made sparkling circles and other fabulous designs in the air until all the sparklers were gone and lay dead on the cement and in the lawn with the stench of their smoke lingering for what seemed like forever.

One Fourth when I was about nine, we were invited to watch the fireworks over Lake Merritt in Oakland from the top of my mom's cousin's apartment building.  Several people we knew lived in apartments around the Bay Area but we actually rode the ELEVATOR up to the cousin's place (her name was Beans which made the excursion just that much more exciting - how could you not have fun at the apartment home of someone called Beans?!) and then went up even higher to the roof. The display scared me a little at first because the booms were so loud and the popping and bursting and wild colors seemed to be at eye level from our lofty viewpoint.  And they reflected in the water!  It was all so exciting.

When we had our own family and lived out in the country, six of the neighborhood families would gather together every Fourth of July for a gigantic barbecue and fireworks display of our own illegal purchasing. We moms would have a special meeting to plan the menu and the tables would be absolutely loaded with all the most delicious picnic food ever.  All of our kids would be excited for days ahead and ran around like wild beasts on the day of.  We all ate ourselves sick and then gathered our folding chairs for our glorious display where no one got hurt and everyone was able to make it back to the fire pit for s'mores.

This Fourth, as we have in the last several years, we'll go over to the Burton's who live on the bluff.  The party will be for adults with only one, maybe two or three little kids present.  They will shriek and run amok as all the 35 and probably more grownups will drink more than usual, eat a fabulous gourmet barbecue dinner and then retire to the backyard where we'll be able to see the fireworks displays from all over the surrounding area.  Pat and I will make the five  minute drive home and wonder how we'll get to sleep as the bombs literally bursting in the air outside our open windows rattle all the pictures on the walls.

Our house is decorated inside and out with flags and red,white and blue objects and will stay that way for a few more days as the neighborhood lets off a few more rounds of fire crackers and bottle rockets just for the heck of it.