Weekend Plans Post: Hey, Baby! It’s the 4th of July!
When I was a kid in the 1970’s, you could still get pre-ban cherry bombs if you knew a guy who knew a guy (they were banned in 1966). My dad got his hands on a few and we went down to the beach and we did this thing where we buried them in the sand and then ran away and heard a large bang and went back to what looked like an ant lion trap that was about two feet wide across. We waited until sunset and shot some roman candles over the water. We lit black cats and threw them seconds before they blew up. We lit sparklers and drew our names in cursive.
Since then, of course, I’ve seen fireworks shows that you wouldn’t believe. I was in New York City for the 1990 Independence Day fireworks show and, lemme tell ya, there were *FOUR* times that we all said “that’s it… that’s gotta be the finale”. I saw the 2005 or 2006 “Disney Dreams Come True” fireworks show celebrating Disney World’s 50th Anniversary and that show might have been even better than the NYC one.
But I think my absolute favorite 4th of Julys were the ones where we played with our own fireworks and did sparklers on the beach. I mean, it’s not like “the best fireworks shows made at the absolute height of fireworks technology” weren’t absolutely *AWESOME*. They were! It’s just that I remember the NYC and Disney shows as being technically perfect and the sparklers as being magic.
So, tonight, I’m going to run out and see if we can’t scare up some sparklers at the giant fireworks tent in front of the grocery store and boggle at how you can’t buy roman candles anymore, you can’t buy M-80s, you can’t buy black cats, even…
But you can buy sparklers.
So… what’s on your docket?
I took the dogs for a walk this afternoon (it was cool-ish) and youngest boy and I finally replaced the broken-for-two-plus-years-and-just-propped-up mailbox post, complete with a new locking mailbox. As with all tasks, this one turned out to be slightly more difficult than expected, but nothing major (a 30 minute job became a 1 hour job). Imma call that “good enough” and take the rest of the day off as the Founders intended. Happy Fourth!Report
When I was a kid in certain parts of rural Iowa in the 1960s, if you knew the right person you could get a quarter-stick of dynamite and a fuse cap with a safe length of fuse. In the tiny town in southern Iowa where my Grandparents Cain lived, the old guy at the hardware store would sell me all sorts of interesting stuff since I was “Bill Cain’s grandkid.”
It was years later that I finally realized most of my contemporaries hadn’t been able to buy a quarter-stick of dynamite when they were eleven. More years after that before I started digging a little, and discovered that particular corner of Iowa had a coal-mining industry that did hundreds of thousands of tons of annual production in the late 19th and early 20th century.Report
Sat on the sidewalk watching the little kids wave sparklers around while, at the same time, noticing how about four of the households in the neighborhood drove up to Wyoming and spent at least 4 figures.
Most of them would be appropriate for the middle part of a AAA baseball after-the-game fireworks show but two or three would be appropriate for a finale.
And, here we were, sitting in a cul-de-sac at a little suburban enclave, watching little kids wave sparklers around.
Hey, baby. It’s the 4th of July.Report