For most Americans, except for a very vocal minority of
Americans, the Fourth of July is the biggest holiday surpassed only by Christmas.
There were always the three “F”s – Family, Food, and Fireworks, but in my
family there seemed to be a 4th… Fighting. Now don’t get me wrong
here, we loved each other. But sometimes all it takes is a spark, of course,
impaired judgement through alcohol helps the blaze too.
The kids, like myself at the time, loved it. All the cousins
would get together and play baseball, talk about the newest video games, and
try to stay out of the adult’s hair. We’d get to pig out on hamburgers and hot
dogs while trying to avoid having to taste one of the aunt’s salad creations,
they were vegan before vegan was a thing. You get the whole ‘Try it, come on,
just a spoonful.’ Until you couldn’t resist the pressure and had to wash it
down with whatever pop was in the fridge and hope that your ‘economically
efficient’ relative wasn’t in charge of procuring drinks this year.
But for the adults, the bickering started already in the
planning. Who was going to bring what, what time we were going to eat, where
were we going to have the party, and so on. Getting the five families, plus
grandma, to agree on a plan was no doubt a challenge. This was one of the
reasons we actually didn’t do this every year. Like I said, we loved each
other, but sometimes I joked that we were like those funny Japanese fighting
fish. They are beautiful and graceful when left alone in their bowl, but if you
put a second one in, chances are only one is getting out alive. Now, I am
exaggerating a bit, nobody really got hurt of maimed but fists had been known
to fly.
It was just such an occasion that I recall escalating into a
brawl between my relatives over a hamburger of all things. Apparently over the
years the procurement plan wasn’t quite working out for everyone. The drink
person bought his favorite beer which nobody else liked, but as there were no
other options, everybody would drink it. The person who brought the burger didn’t
bring ground beef, it was 50% pork and 50% venison. So this year, somebody
brought their own ground beef so they wouldn’t have to eat the deer meat
burgers. Long story short, somebody who I’m guessing wasn’t informed about the ‘special’
burgers ate them all, leaving the deer meat burgers. Accusations flew, and then
drunken fists, and when the dust settled everyone was crying hugging and apologizing.
Gotta love the Irish ;)
Finally night was upon us and it was time to light off some
fireworks. My uncle passed out the bottle rockets and fire crackers to the
older kids, smoke grenades and sparklers to the younger kids, and kept the M80’s
and the heavier artillery for the adults. My cousin, Luke and I took off down
the yard with our fire crackers and bottle rockets. Luke twisted the wicks of
his fire crackers together and lit them all at once. I used mine more
sparingly, lighting them one at a time and throwing them at my defenseless
cousin without fear of retaliation. By the time I was finished, I couldn’t tell
if the smoke was coming from the exploded firecrackers or his ears. I turned
back to the party to retrieve a beer bottle for the bottle rockets when all of
the sudden, a rocket flew between my legs missing my crotch by what seemed to
me to be only inches. I turned and ran to tackle my cousin for this ‘crotch
rocket’ attack, but he was faster and I got pummeled for my trouble.
Although our Fourth of July celebrations got rough at times,
I have greatly missed them, being abroad for so long. When I have gotten back to visit Luke, we still get a good laugh out of it as well as watching my
son’s eyes when he realized that a couple inches higher and he might not have been born.
I hope you've enjoyed this episode of "Tales from the Dorkside".
Be sure to recommend, if you did.
Thank you
