verbminx

I'm talking again.
I should be in bed. Or in the other room watching AbFab reruns (are they on tonight?) and packing books. Oh, it's really funny to accumulate a collection of several thousand books when you have to move. All of those "I'll read that someday"s come back to HAUNT.

Anyway, I don't really do anything about the 4th of July, although some people have been making some noise about a "small picnic" this year (the only thing worse than a "small picnic" is a "large picnic" or a "family reunion" or... anything else that requires trying to keep flies and bees off of bad food). Fireworks are boring; I see them frequently; I loathe crowds and mosquitos; the only thing lamer than fighting the mad rush to see fireworks is watching fireworks on tv.

But I do have a purpose here, and that is to record my favorite Independence Day story. I believe this happened in 1986, because I think it was the year that the Statue of Liberty had its centennial and restoration, and I also recall Halley's Comet being around. The momster and I lived on a college campus, where she worked, in a house owned by the college. Just beyond our backyard, which was a negligible tangle of trees (we had a huge yard beside the house), there was a large softball/baseball field, with a row of trees between my driveway and the outfield, and a gap that you could just walk through. Overall, the neighborhood was very charming and old; most of the houses dated from between 1870 and 1930.

So, this year, celebrations were located at my house, and numerous relatives were around. My youngest uncle was the age that I am now, and I was 10. He and his buddies had brought over some fireworks, which were illegal and difficult to acquire in the state of Ohio at the time. The bottle rockets and spinning flowers that you could get at the store were all well and good, but the prize of the day was a couple of large firecrackers, serious firecrackers the size of a man's thumb, from Pennsylvania or Indiana or some other foolhardy firework-selling state.

We spent a fairly normal family holiday until sometime in the mid-afternoon... tossing a football around, lighting bottle rockets, drinking Pepsi and eating Cheetos. Eventually, though, my uncle and his friends plotted their big show: setting off the firecrackers. There was much ado as we gathered around and waited for it to be lit. Once the fuse was lit, my uncle threw it as hard as he could, expecting it to explode in the air.

The resounding BOOM was no surprise, but the fact that the ground shook a little, and that we hadn't seen the explosion, certainly was. We crowded through the gap in the trees and stared saucer-eyed at the firecracker's remnants: a hole in the field about the size of a manhole cover, six inches or so deep, blackened and smoking, with little flames around the edges.

Eventually Campus Security showed up and we kids did our best at looking innocent as my uncle lied through his teeth about the origins of the crater. No, sir. We heard the noise but we have no idea where it came from. Fireworks? Well, we have these spinning flowers, and the magic worms, but nothing serious! I mean, we have kids here. Have to protect them. My cousins and I kept our mouths shut and bit the insides of our cheeks to keep from laughing.

The second of the two large firecrackers was never exploded.

I've lived by a man's code designed to fit a man's world, yet at the same time I never forget that a woman's first job is to choose the right shade of lipstick.