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Jul. 4th, 2009 02:25 pmWhen I was a child, Fourth of July was almost as big a holiday as Christmas. I grew up in Takoma Park, Maryland - a town just outside the district line of Washington DC - that had been going strong as first a summer get-away and then a bedroom community for the capital since the 1890s. It was a small town just a bus ride from a big city and was filled with rambling, old brick or frame houses, tall trees, a few parks and schools, a very few churches, and only a dozen stores all sitting next to each other along one block.
Fourth of July began early with the push to be allowed to go NOW and stake out a good place on the curb three blocks away to watch the parade. My family liked to sit on the wide, stone window sills of the bank building, but for most of my childhood I wasn't big enough to climb up and down by myself and had to either be shoved into place by a bigger brother, or wait for my mother to arrive and lift me up and down. The parades were glorious! There were marching bands, and groups of soldiers, there were some floats - either built over a car with a little square in front for the driver to look out, or pulled behind someone's car. There would be lots of shiny decorated convertibles with gowned ladies and dressed-up men sitting on the top at back and waving. We had no idea who they were, and cared less, but we waved back.
And there were flags. Each time the flags came you had to stand up and put your hand over your heart - making watching the parade rather a jack-in-the-box affair. When I was four or five my mother bought my brother and I little American flags to wave, and mine was fairly swiftly taken away and not returned when I dragged it on the ground instead of holding it high. The next year I knew better. Flags were not to be triffled with.
My Granny never came to watch the parade. She didn't like to walk up the hill, but she'd spend the entire morning while we were away standing in front of a hot stove in the kitchen frying chicken. Because the next part of Fourth of July was the "cookout" - not that we actually cooked anything outside - but we ate outside on the back porch from plates of fried chicken and cold cuts and deviled eggs and potato salad. Neighbors came by and were encouraged to sit and eat and drink. Children - our own family and all the neighbors - flowed from house to house like shoals of squirming, squealing fish.
Eventually it was time to begin teasing for permission to head out and "find a place" at the recreation center playing field. "It's hours until dark, honey. Why do you want to go now, there won't be anything to do!" But we did want to go. There was a tearing urgency to get there before anyone else and not miss a single minute of the spectacle. So along around six o'clock we'd be allowed to head off for the fireworks site - along with nearly every other child in town. We'd swing on the swings, and walk the hilside picking out the "best" place to watch, but never staying there long enough to actually claim it until the grownups came along to spread blankets on the ground sometime around eight o'clock. At this point mother would give us each, not a nickel for a popscicle, but a whole dime for real Good Humor Bar - Fourth of July was the big time.
There were speeches. I remember not a word, just the buzz of male voices on a microphone along with occasional polite applause. With immense slowness the twilight would settle around us, as we, one by one, returned from our adventures to sit close together on the blanket waiting, breathless, for the color guard to march onto the field to mark the beginning of the fireworks. Everyone rose as the flags came out, a little more slowly now than with the morning's jerking quickness, and everyone said the Pledge of Allegience and sang "Oh, Say Can You See" - even parents! And as the music faded and the flags retreated the first rocket would launch into the now dark sky.
Rockets, and rockets within rockets. Reds and greens and blues and glowing flowers of hot yellow-white sparks. Pinwheels would turn on the field, and always a giant red, white, and blue flag would light up. With every pause, with every spectacular set of booming, dripping fire, you wondered, "Is this the end? Was that one the finale?" And eventually in a superbly spectacular crash of fierly blossoms, it WAS the finale. Blankets were picked up and shaken off, the slow walk home in the warm dark began - this time holding mother's hand. At home we were given sparklers for one last run around the back yard, nearly an anticlimax after the excitement of the fireworks, and then up to bed to lay and listen to the murmer of adult voices and the occasional boom of a bottle rocket as we planned already for next year's Fourth, because each year would be as wonderful as the last and nothing would ever change.
I left Takoma Park for Texas just a few months after the Fourth of July when I was eleven. So I never had to grow out of that fantastic childhood experience. I never had to be, or pretend to be, a bored teenager at festivities that had once pressed band music, and parades, and flags, and exploding fireworks to fill my world from edge to edge.
Fourth of July began early with the push to be allowed to go NOW and stake out a good place on the curb three blocks away to watch the parade. My family liked to sit on the wide, stone window sills of the bank building, but for most of my childhood I wasn't big enough to climb up and down by myself and had to either be shoved into place by a bigger brother, or wait for my mother to arrive and lift me up and down. The parades were glorious! There were marching bands, and groups of soldiers, there were some floats - either built over a car with a little square in front for the driver to look out, or pulled behind someone's car. There would be lots of shiny decorated convertibles with gowned ladies and dressed-up men sitting on the top at back and waving. We had no idea who they were, and cared less, but we waved back.
And there were flags. Each time the flags came you had to stand up and put your hand over your heart - making watching the parade rather a jack-in-the-box affair. When I was four or five my mother bought my brother and I little American flags to wave, and mine was fairly swiftly taken away and not returned when I dragged it on the ground instead of holding it high. The next year I knew better. Flags were not to be triffled with.
My Granny never came to watch the parade. She didn't like to walk up the hill, but she'd spend the entire morning while we were away standing in front of a hot stove in the kitchen frying chicken. Because the next part of Fourth of July was the "cookout" - not that we actually cooked anything outside - but we ate outside on the back porch from plates of fried chicken and cold cuts and deviled eggs and potato salad. Neighbors came by and were encouraged to sit and eat and drink. Children - our own family and all the neighbors - flowed from house to house like shoals of squirming, squealing fish.
Eventually it was time to begin teasing for permission to head out and "find a place" at the recreation center playing field. "It's hours until dark, honey. Why do you want to go now, there won't be anything to do!" But we did want to go. There was a tearing urgency to get there before anyone else and not miss a single minute of the spectacle. So along around six o'clock we'd be allowed to head off for the fireworks site - along with nearly every other child in town. We'd swing on the swings, and walk the hilside picking out the "best" place to watch, but never staying there long enough to actually claim it until the grownups came along to spread blankets on the ground sometime around eight o'clock. At this point mother would give us each, not a nickel for a popscicle, but a whole dime for real Good Humor Bar - Fourth of July was the big time.
There were speeches. I remember not a word, just the buzz of male voices on a microphone along with occasional polite applause. With immense slowness the twilight would settle around us, as we, one by one, returned from our adventures to sit close together on the blanket waiting, breathless, for the color guard to march onto the field to mark the beginning of the fireworks. Everyone rose as the flags came out, a little more slowly now than with the morning's jerking quickness, and everyone said the Pledge of Allegience and sang "Oh, Say Can You See" - even parents! And as the music faded and the flags retreated the first rocket would launch into the now dark sky.
Rockets, and rockets within rockets. Reds and greens and blues and glowing flowers of hot yellow-white sparks. Pinwheels would turn on the field, and always a giant red, white, and blue flag would light up. With every pause, with every spectacular set of booming, dripping fire, you wondered, "Is this the end? Was that one the finale?" And eventually in a superbly spectacular crash of fierly blossoms, it WAS the finale. Blankets were picked up and shaken off, the slow walk home in the warm dark began - this time holding mother's hand. At home we were given sparklers for one last run around the back yard, nearly an anticlimax after the excitement of the fireworks, and then up to bed to lay and listen to the murmer of adult voices and the occasional boom of a bottle rocket as we planned already for next year's Fourth, because each year would be as wonderful as the last and nothing would ever change.
I left Takoma Park for Texas just a few months after the Fourth of July when I was eleven. So I never had to grow out of that fantastic childhood experience. I never had to be, or pretend to be, a bored teenager at festivities that had once pressed band music, and parades, and flags, and exploding fireworks to fill my world from edge to edge.
