Independence Day

All over the United States there are picnics, parades, and fireworks to celebrate the 4th of July.

Not so much in Seymour.  Our citizens mostly leave town on Independence Day.  Many of them have cabins "up north" and others are at campgrounds.  There are no fireworks displays here so anyone who wants noise and color go to Bonduel, twenty miles away.  Seymour has a big parade to celebrate Burger Fest a month from now so why have one today?  

So here Gary and I are on an unbelievably hot day (temperatures approached 100 degrees and not a breeze) in a very quiet neighborhood.  I think all but two houses in the block are empty.  

Gary and I started talking about Independence Days past. 

I think about a Fourth of July thirteen years ago when Tisha and Chris were married.  Tisha wanted to marry on a holiday so Chris would never forget their anniversary and he hasn't.  They were married at the Moravian Church at Heritage Hill State Park in Green Bay.  Later, we all went out to her parents place in the country for a big picnic followed by a big fireworks display paid for and presented by her father and brother.  They even had to get licenses to do it.  My favorite memory of the day was of Chris and Tisha sitting on her grandmother's quilt with the light of the fireworks shining on their faces as they looked at each other instead of the light show.  It was a perfect wedding. 

When Chris was around six or seven, over thirty years ago, he and I joined my brother Carl and his wife Sue on a camping trip at Laura Lake but spent the day and evening of the Fourth at Goodman County Park for a day of games and picnics and a spectacular fireworks display over Lake Hilbert.  I never went back for the celebration, which still goes on every year, but Laura Lake has been part of my life ever since.  

My mother grew up in North Dakota, raised by her grandparents.  Every so often, she and her brother would take a trip to visit them, always for a week or two in June. The timing was everything, because they could drive back through South Dakota which had absolutely no restrictions on fireworks.  They would come back with boxes of rockets, the really big ones, and set them off on our farm.  We had bigger displays than any of the towns in the area. I remember the hot nights, the smell of new mowed hay, and the fireflies, which were a show of their own.   

Now it's quiet and I don't mind one bit.