Fireworks and July 4th

Jay has been trying to find our dutch ovens at the Mud Lake house and he came across 4 boxes of sparklers....from our "fireworks stand" days.  Then, when I read that this country is 234 years old this year, a lot of nostalgia set in.   I remember the big celebration the country had on the bicentennial year, 1976.  It struck me kind of weird that I could remember something that was 34 years ago so well.  That was way before we had anyone that could entertain thousands with a great fireworks show, but we each had our own little parties, and usually a baseball tournament, and it was great. 

With Jay being a Veteran, our family has always attended flag raisings and enjoyed this holiday.  Then he had the great idea that we should sell fireworks from our front yard in 1980.  That first year, we had our 4th child that spring and I was thinking,  "What in the world am I going to do with $800.00 worth of fireworks?"  So, I painted a 8 X 10 piece of wood all white, and spray painted the word "fireworks" on it in red spray paint.  I drug that board out to the highway and propped it up with some firewood stumps and I immediately started getting calls from little boys....wanting to know if I had M-80's.  I wondered what in the world those kids wanted to blow up.  I never did sell M-80's, but we had lots of bottle rockets, firecrackers, roman candles, and all kinds of cool stuff.  We sold everything that we had that year.  So, the next year, when Cassie was 7 (and thought she could run the stand herself), we decided to get more.  The fireworks went on from there and the kids knew how every firework performed.  We loved them ourselves, and shot off our share.  We had a neighbor boy that we would have help us weed the garden, then he'd head right over to the fireworks and spend his money.  I think all of our kids and their friends and cousins have memories of selling fireworks in the summer.  The money we earned bought our playground equipment in the yard, our pink Cadillac, sometimes paid our church building assessment, and the kids school clothes.  When the kids lost interest in selling, and my fireworks guy had so many troubles that he kinda disappeared, we quit.  It made me sad to tell the little boys that called me for the next few years...."sorry...no firecrackers". 

I think the reason I especially love the 4th of July is because it's such a family day.  Everything that day is for the whole family and that's great.  Hope everybody had a great day and a great big THANKS to Mr. Melaleuca for the fireworks.  As always, they were awesome!