Christmas In July!

This past weekend America celebrated it’s independence! July 4th is one of my favorites holidays, it has always brought me joy wondering what kind of fireworks my dad will find to set off this year. A lot of people in our hometown go to different fairs to sit and watch everybody let off the “big boys” as I’ve called them throughout the years. We’ve sat out in our little neighborhood that we’ve nicknamed the “holler” and we let off a huge set of different fireworks. For the past two years, we’ve sat out over by the barn, aiming the Roman candles at the street light that is placed at a very bad place! Right in the corner of the road, whereas in a pitch black night it would good for anybody drunk enough walking around to see the road turn to the right, but we’ve never liked this thing on the fourth of July. So my friend and neighbor Sammy took two Roman Candles last year and just aimed it right at the light, by the time it got dark we had both her dad and my dad trying to take out this sucker! Nobody get to it unfortunately! We also got the cops called on us because of this old lady that lived across the street, she swore up and down we were aiming at her house! We never did, but it became like a yearly ritual we had, if the cops weren’t called on us we hadn’t done our job!

Before I tell you how my night went, we have to start at the beginning of the day!

Saturday morning, well afternoon considering I couldn’t sleep worth a shit that night before. I didn’t know what we were going to do this year, nobody had talked about it and I didn’t want to make anybody mad so I kept my mouth somewhat shut. I basically drove my mom insane, asking what we were going to do and she kept answering my question with “well I don’t know what you’re doing, but I know I’m going to be sitting in the house with ChiChi hiding from the damn things!” Mom doesn’t like fireworks, technically never has! She’s been strong for the past two years because she cuddled Chevy on her lap the whole time. I have never been afraid of fireworks, I do have little nightmares the night before to keep my prepared of what could happen if things went array. Thankfully, things have never went wrong, we’ve lost our hearing and burned a few fingers (and toes!) but nothing major has happened! Around 2pm, I got off my bed and onto the floor after making my dad another CD. I sat out in the living room playing fetch with the dog and then my dad came home with both of his hands full of fireworks. I could not contain myself! It was like Christmas in July, especially after my dad dumped out all of the ones in this tube like thing. The lady that helped him pick out the fireworks saw him walking in and told him, “follow me..” People can get pretty mischievous in this time of the year and I like it!

The ones in the tube (that I cam remember) were three boxes of popits, three rounds of firecrackers, one medium size round of smoke bombs, one Roman Candle, and a few others that I couldn’t tell you what they were if I wanted to! And then he got this massive one called the “Black Widow” and the lady that sold it to him told him straight out that “this will make Otwell look like shit!” Sounds good to me!! A couple of hours later while I was in my room. my door swings wide open and my dad “look what Russell got!” There stood the biggest box of fireworks I have ever seen in my life! I knew this was going to be the best one yet! I was pumped! I went over to the garage with Sammy about eight ish, my mom dressed me in pants, socks, a thin shirt so I wouldn’t get too hot but I had to wear one of my dad’s button up shirts to protect me from the wicked mosquitos. Even though dad dosed me with bugs spray twice! I ended up only getting bit in the only spot he had missed. When he tells me to close my eyes, he puts his hand above them just in case and his hand covered up my forehead from the mist of spray and I ended up having two little horns on each side of my head according to my mother!

I sat out in the garage with everybody, watching the guys play pool and talking my head off with Teresa, JuJu, Sammy, and Ragtop. It was nice! My dad brought over my popits when he went to the house to grab the fireworks he got earlier and put them in a plastic bag for me and I asked JuJu for permission to set them off and she let me! I kept them in a corner by her table away of her feet. Apparently my dad thought once they went to the ground they were spraying her with the hay stuff they package them inside the box. They weren’t and we were all pretty vocal about that! I am the type of person that I can be both good and evil; I know how to turn it off! The ones that didn’t go off when I threw them on the ground, Ragtop picked them back up and since I told them about what I used to do when I was a kid, if some didn’t go off I’d just run over them in my wheelchair. Worked pretty well that way and still does! That was my evil side coming out loud and clear! As for my good side, I gave some to Chey and later on Chevy and some of our neighbor kids. I want everybody to have some fun with one another! And this was innocent fun for these kids and definitely brought me a lot of joy to share with these kids and see the happiness on their faces too! I still have some there in the garage! Plus a whole bag full that I’ve had for a couple of years now! They’re being saved for a special occasion!

As it started getting darker, our show was about to start! Our little neighborhood came out to watch and it was so cute that these little kids wanted to watch, the youngest was a year old I think! They just loved these bigger fireworks going up high in the air and exploding! Everybody spread out in the yard, as my dad and Russell set up little tubes in the ground to release these suckers and around 9:30pm they started shooting them off! Usually we have quite a few foundations and this time we only had three and the rest where these bigger ones that literally took up most of the sky! We had a couple intermissions and while those happened, we could see the surrounding areas releasing theirs above the houses and in between the trees. I was having all sorts of fun, but we didn’t get to do any sparklers this year and I think the kids would have really enjoyed that! Sparklers were always a fun activity for my sister and I when we were kids, even though that’s how we were burned! Before the fireworks went off, I asked Sammy if she could take some pictures for me for my blog post because I usually do one every year and not only did Sammy take some but so did Ragtop too! Sammy and I were having fun trying to figure out which each one looked like after she took its picture. One looked like a skull and the other was strange; it looked like a damn goat! Literally had the horns and front hoofs!

On Sunday, I basically laid around in bed. I had apparently used up a lot of energy and I had to push myself up to do anything productive otherwise I’d feel like I wasted the whole weekend, even though I knew I didn’t! What did do you over the weekend?