Happy Fourth of July everyone! Share your memories

Ah, fireworks! Living in downtown Chicago, walking down to Grant Park and partaking in "Taste of Chicago" by day, then coming back at night to hear the
orchestra in Grant Park, followed by the most AMAZING fireworks over the lake. Walking home tired, but happy....thanks for your memories, Rady, and asking us to share!

When we lived in Chicago, my spouse worked at CNA ( the big red building). We watched the fireworks from her office, which mean we looked out, rather than up and them. Very nice displays.

My 4th of July memories from my early childhood:

Dad making hand cranked vanilla ice cream, letting me crank while it was still very soft, then letting me add salt to the ice when I couldn't crank anymore.

My dear, sweet, kind, shy and soft-spoken grandpa drinking a couple of beers (gulping them as I remember, but never getting drunk) and then telling some of the dirtiest jokes you can imagine, his face turning beet red with each telling. It was only later as I grew older that I understood the jokes and the total contrast to the grandpa I knew most other days. The man was a socially awkward genius, and couldn't carry on a normal "small talk" conversation. Despite the raunchy jokes, he was truly one of the kindest, gentlest souls I have ever known. But those jokes - oh my!

Eating watermelon with the big fat black seeds - no such thing as seedless watermelon back then. We would sit around after the barbeque, eating the watermelon and then having a lively seed spitting contest. But you didn't dare throw away the rinds! You would get a tongue lashing from Grandma! My grandmother would take the rinds and make watermelon pickles. Never cared for them, personally, but the rest of the family loved them!

Then there was my crazy ol' Aunt Ginny. She LOVED her fireworks. Oh, no, not those little sparklers, fountains and Black Cat and Red Devil fire crackers of days gone by. She had the big ammunition - the aerial mortars, the cherry bombs, the M-80s! She always stocked up each summer in the early '60s, so she had M-80s long after they were made illegal to sell. She would sit there in her lawn chair, her precious coffee can containing WMD at her feet, cigarette dangling from her mouth. She would pull out a cherry bomb or M-80 (later M-60's when her heavy ordinance ran out), take her lit cigarette and hold it to the fuse until the sparks started. She would hold it in her hand for a second - or two - before tossing it away, usually to explode in the air before hitting the ground. Oh, did I mention she was also an alcoholic who was usually drunk off her keister by the time the firecrackers came out? It was many years before I fully understood the craziness of what she was doing. She was always one or two seconds away from blowing off her fingers and one dropped cigarette from blowing her self away. Not sure how we all survived. But at least she never put a mortar on her head and lit the fuse. She was, even in her drunken state, smarter than THAT guy (may he rest in peace).

As I got older and we moved to Omaha, the town where my high school was had a huge Fourth of July parade, one I marched in several times in the high school flag and drill team. Following the parade, in downtown, the volunteer fire department would have a water fight. This consisted of a barrel suspended above the street on ropes, two teams of firemen on either side, and they would each have a fire hose. The object was to use the water hoses to move the barrel to the opposing teams side - kind of like a water "tug of war". Boy, on some of those really hot 4th of Julys, there was NO better place to be than on the sidewalk, getting sprayed with the water that fell down during the water fight! They also had the BEST fireworks in the entire metro area of Omaha. We would have the barbecue at our house - usually ribs, corn on the cob, baked beans, potato salad, cole slaw and watermelon. Well before the sun would start to set, we would head over to the middle school, and stake out our place on the hill facing the golf course where the fireworks would be shot off. By the time the fireworks went off, it was wall to wall people. Once the fireworks were over, we would go back to the house and have some of Dad's home-made ice cream. That was the one constant every year. Even in my later teens, he would hand crank the ice cream to a perfect consistency every 4th of July morning. He liked to experiment with flavors, but on the 4th of July it was always vanilla.

I hadn't thought of all that in many, many years. All of my relatives that were so much a part of our 4th of July celebrations have passed away now, except for my sister and my father. Those are precious memories. Thanks, Rady, for starting this thread. A stroll down memory lane was long overdue.

My father just informed me that the son of close childhood friend of my mother's (who we frequently celebrated holidays with) died suddenly. He was three years younger than me, but I remember fondly playing with him and his older brother when my family went to Omaha. They lived next door to my grandparents and without their company I am afraid my visits to Grandma and Grandpa might have been dreadfully boring.

The strange thing is my father suddenly decided to tell me this in an email he wrote last night. See, Michael died in early MAY. And Dad finally decided to tell me in an email written at about the same time as I was writing my post last night. Weird, isn't it? The fact that my father waited almost two months to tell me is not unusual. He waited almost a month to tell me about his mother's passing (my paternal GRANDMOTHER!). I only heard about my Aunt Jean's passing (Dad's sister) after an off hand comment from my mother about 5 months after Aunt Jean died. Clearly I wasn't that close to that side of the family, but still. I mean, they do count as a close family member. As dysfunctional as I think my mother's side of the family was (those of which I shared 4th of July memories), the Johnson's can't hold a candle to the Burrell's.

Enough talk therapy for today...

Yes, for many dogs they really work well.