Tuesday, July 03, 2007
The Fireworks
The 4th of July used to be my favorite holiday. Since I had nothing to do tomorrow - pretty much the case for the past decade of 4ths - I accepted a WFMU fill-in from 8-11 pm so a family guy could have grilled whatever & watch the fireworks, which I hope he does.
The 4th was ritual when I was growing up. Backyard barbecue. Hoping there'd be no thunderstorms. Around 8 o'clock my parents tossed some blankets & a couple of beach chairs into the car & we drove to Nomahegan Park for the fireworks. Sometimes other kids who happened to hanging out at the house came along. Dad drove to his "secret" parking place in Cranford, a gravel road next to the river that hadn't been a secret to anyone for 20 years, considering how far we had to walk & how many other cars were parked closer. It never ceased to annoy him. We threaded through the gathering crowd as dusk seeped in, found a plot of ground & set up camp. The routine up to this point, from dad's grumpy inability to procure us a VIP parking spot to mom settling into her low folding chair & lighting her first Raleigh, was remarkably similar to going to the beach. In a good year, there weren't many mosquitoes. The fireworks were provincially unspectacular, same as most community displays are today. Although I swear they used to put more bang in the ordinary bombs. I loved the groundworks, Lots of audience-pleasing ooohs & ahhhs for those. Always the eerily burning dollar bill face of George Washington framed with spinning wheels of fire, & a fluttering Stars & Stripes with sparklers shooting off around the edges. Children waved their own sparklers indiscriminately - none of the cold light glow-in-the-dark things. Around the fringes of the crowd near the woods wandered gangs of lucky brats setting off cherry bombs & whole strings of firecrackers; their dads probably made special trips to Pennsylvania just to load up the car trunk with the good stuff, including roman candles. Less fortunate kids had to pay rip off prices at the playground for illicit explosives of any kind.
After the deafening but all-too-brief finale, we did everything in reverse, except now there were traffic jams on every street & no secret shortcuts. When we arrived home, I used kitchen tongs to grab the remaining softly glowing charcoal briquettes from the grill, flinging them into the street where they popped into a shower of sparking pieces & seemed to go out until passing cars stirred them up into small, fiery whirlwinds.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
The 4th was ritual when I was growing up. Backyard barbecue. Hoping there'd be no thunderstorms. Around 8 o'clock my parents tossed some blankets & a couple of beach chairs into the car & we drove to Nomahegan Park for the fireworks. Sometimes other kids who happened to hanging out at the house came along. Dad drove to his "secret" parking place in Cranford, a gravel road next to the river that hadn't been a secret to anyone for 20 years, considering how far we had to walk & how many other cars were parked closer. It never ceased to annoy him. We threaded through the gathering crowd as dusk seeped in, found a plot of ground & set up camp. The routine up to this point, from dad's grumpy inability to procure us a VIP parking spot to mom settling into her low folding chair & lighting her first Raleigh, was remarkably similar to going to the beach. In a good year, there weren't many mosquitoes. The fireworks were provincially unspectacular, same as most community displays are today. Although I swear they used to put more bang in the ordinary bombs. I loved the groundworks, Lots of audience-pleasing ooohs & ahhhs for those. Always the eerily burning dollar bill face of George Washington framed with spinning wheels of fire, & a fluttering Stars & Stripes with sparklers shooting off around the edges. Children waved their own sparklers indiscriminately - none of the cold light glow-in-the-dark things. Around the fringes of the crowd near the woods wandered gangs of lucky brats setting off cherry bombs & whole strings of firecrackers; their dads probably made special trips to Pennsylvania just to load up the car trunk with the good stuff, including roman candles. Less fortunate kids had to pay rip off prices at the playground for illicit explosives of any kind.
After the deafening but all-too-brief finale, we did everything in reverse, except now there were traffic jams on every street & no secret shortcuts. When we arrived home, I used kitchen tongs to grab the remaining softly glowing charcoal briquettes from the grill, flinging them into the street where they popped into a shower of sparking pieces & seemed to go out until passing cars stirred them up into small, fiery whirlwinds.
Labels: growing up, holidays
