Celebrating America's Birthday

Memories of July 4^th Past

Today is my 63^rd Fourth of July, which means I’ve been around more than one-fourth of the 237 years this country has been in existence. Of course, I don’t remember much about the first few celebrations. But somewhere in my earlier childhood I became aware that there were two times a year, once in the summer and again just after Christmas, when there were fireworks. (Several years later I would learn that the two occasions were the Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve.)

Back in the 1950s when I was a child, there were fewer city-wide fireworks shows and more of the small scale, do-it-yourself fireworks displays. My dad’s fireworks of choice were sparklers, firecrackers, bottle rockets, and Roman candles. He always got sparklers for my brother and me, but he handled the others himself to keep us safe. I didn’t even really like the sparklers because the sparks burned my hands. The bottle rockets and Roman candles produced bright, pretty lights in the night sky so we enjoyed seeing them. I also wasn’t too fond of the firecrackers because they were so loud, louder even than my brother’s cap pistols, and those were loud enough.  Sometimes Daddy put away some of the firecrackers for a more opportune time which he wanted to play a prank on one of his friends.

During the ‘50s, my home town of Lampasas learned just how dangerous fireworks could be when a large fireworks stand located inside the city limits on the main street through town blew up, killing the man who worked there. Our house was only about six blocks away, and we heard the explosion. Daddy knew the man who was killed.

The first big fireworks show I ever saw was at Fort Hood in the 1960s. We had friends from church who had access to Fort Hood, as the father of that family was stationed there. Our family went to that show as their guests, and it was impressive, both the elaborate fireworks themselves and the patriotic music played by a military band.

In the early ‘80s when I lived in Austin, I watched a massive fireworks display over Lake Austin, accompanied by patriotic music from the Austin Symphony. One summer I watched a fireworks display from my sister DJ’s apartment on North Collins when the Rangers still played in the old Arlington Stadium. And then there was the year when I was living in a second floor apartment over on Lamar in North Arlington. From my front porch I could look to the right and see the fireworks in Downtown Dallas or to the left to see the fireworks in Fort Worth.

One memorable Fourth of July was in 1988 when I was traveling with my parents through South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and on into Alberta, Canada. We were in Calgary and Banff on Canada Day (July 1), Canada’s Independence Day, then back into Idaho, Utah, and Colorado by July 4. As we drove through the mountains that night we could see periodic fireworks in the little communities we were passing.

The year DJ and I bought our house, our parents came up for the Fourth of July. It was a cool, rainy July 4 so we spent most of the day inside watching movies on TV. Another year not too long after we bought the house, we went to a Fourth of July party at the home of a friend from church. It was another cool day, and we spent a big part of the day sitting around a chiminea on the back patio enjoying the smell of the burning pinon wood.

We spent the Fourth of July in 2002 sitting in my dad’s room in his nursing home in Lampasas, watching the fireworks display in New York. My sister went to Sonic and brought daddy a strawberry sundae, and he ate every bite. That was about the last time he was alert and able to take part in any kind of family activity or conversation. He died about 10 days later, on the last day of the annual Spring Ho Festival in Lampasas.

And so what was our plan for this year’s Fourth? Nothing fancy. DJ and I went to a movie this afternoon and saw White House Down, then picked up drinks and hotdogs from Sonic on the way home. We’ll watch TV and probably do a little reading tonight. Fort Worth is supposed to have a great fireworks display, so I’ll try to catch part of that on television, too. Tomorrow we have plans to attend another movie matinee (Despicable Me 2) with friends from church, then go out to eat. Not as exciting as some previous years but still enjoyable and more fitting with my senior citizen-retiree status. Besides, my recliner is a lot more comfortable than a lot of those things I used to do. Remember, I’m more than a quarter the age of the entire country.