I admit to having a complicated relationship with fireworks.
I like pretty lights in the sky but I’m not fond of loud noises and am unnerved by exploding things. Fire is O.K. in a hearth or a pit, but not so attractive at the end of a fuse. While the other boys were trying to shred tin cans with M-80s, I was getting plenty of adrenaline just igniting a sparkler and holding it at arms length with my eyes closed.
As a teenager I had the misfortune to live alongside a country club golf course overlooking the exact spot where the annual Independence Day fireworks were launched. The display was set up at a low spot alongside a creek between the 16th fairway and the 18th green. People filled the slope on either side of the valley. My house was on the side across from the country club’s main building, so the rockets were angled a little bit in our direction. My father celebrated the holiday every year by standing in the side yard with a water hose directed at our roof – just in case. And we did get flaming debris every now and then. I believe he enjoyed grumbling about it and fantasized about suing the rich people some day over the smoking ruin that was once our home. It never came to that, but there were close calls.
One year a wayward charge misfired and landed in the middle of all the other explosives that were waiting to be loaded and lit. It took about 30 seconds for absolutely everything to go off all at once. The valley was illuminated during the shortest and most violent display Decatur ever saw. The crowd turned and ran, and crew dove for cover, and miraculously no one was hurt. I remember grabbing the blanket I was sitting on and heading for the house, although afterwards I wondered why in the world I thought I had to grab the blanket. The smoke seemed to hang in the air for days. The grass alongside the creek didn’t grow back for a couple of years. It was an expensive and dramatic way to scar the land and foul the air, but I’ll never forget it.
The lesson? Fireworks are dangerous. And yet I will go out to see a sky show on the 4th of July. How can I skip it? It’s a birthday party!
How do you feel about fireworks?
Where do you like to go to see them?
Trail Baboon 
Good morning, Dale and ‘booners
i’m in your camp, Dale but even more so. we don’t go see the fireworks anymore but now it’s the crowds even more than the noise that keep us away.
Duluth had one of those mass explosion ignitions some years back. we were up at the Copper Top church watching. saw a huge glow and lots of noise and then nothing. we didn’t know what had happened until the next day, but were glad we weren’t down in Canal Park in that huge crowd.
our favorite fireworks were in Blacksburg at Va Tech. we’d ride our bikes to see them – a nice, short, gentle display – and then ride home with nature’s more beautiful fireflies lighting the way.
Happy Independence say the goats (and there are no more independent than they).
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We were by the Pickwick that night, barb. In a way it was the best show ever.
So do I with fibromyalgia like things that stink, make very loud noises and very bright lights? Errr, nope. The worst are the neighborhood ones, unexpected. They light up my nervous system quite successfully. Used to be able to see the official Mankato ones from our house, but not as close as you, Dale. But they re-sodded the football field at MSUM and they are this year down by the river. Mankato build a new park with an outdoor music pavilion park thing, down next to the sewage plant and with no parking anywhere near it. I’m with you barb. The crowds keep me away from lots of things.
Good weekend booners, all.
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Greetings! I, too, enjoy watching fireworks, but wince at the loudness and the crowds. Here in Big Lake, they have fireworks I can watch from my dining room window during SpudFest, which was last weekend. Except they were postponed because of the big rain and thunderstorm. Elk River (8-10 miles down hiway 10) has a July 4th fireworks display and folks come from all over and park on hiway 10 or party at Lake Orono Park all day to watch them.
Alas, I have to work all weekend, so I may or may not go watch them. My 2 older boys are gone for weekend with friends, so it’s just the youngest home (13 yr-old). He loves fireworks. My husband (the pyro) will probably buy some fireworks they can set off together. Have a wonderful day everyone!
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My Irish Setter is terrified of thunderstorms and fireworks, which makes the 4th of July a little more stressful than usual. She gets medicated for the evening and I don’t like to leave her alone so no going off to big displays for us for awhile, although living in the city, we can sometimes see fireworks from the house.
When the teenager was younger, we used to go to ValleyFair every year. We’d go after dinner to get the twilight price and she’d go on rides for a couple of hours (she used to love the Frog Hopper) while I people-watched. After dark, everyone would gather in the open areas and the fireworks were spectacular, because they were right above you. I normally detest ValleyFair in its ilk, but somehow it didn’t bother me as much on the 4th.
On a side note… teenager and I are off on an adventure next week, sans internet. I figure I need to leave myself a couple of hours to read all the blogs that I will miss while we’re gone!
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“AND its ilk”
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Make that about 4 hours, total.
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Rise and Shine Babooners:
When I was a kid I would have done anything to see fireworks. Growing up in a small, Iowa town with little budget for stuff like fireworks, the fireworks were a pretty big deal. My parents usual drove the Chevy to a ditch near the golf course where everyone in town went to watch them. While waiting for the excitement to start, we got out of the car and played in the long grass while swatting at giant mosquitos that hunted us down. The display itself was underwhelming. The fire department must have had only one launcher, because there was no sense of drama or timing–it seemed like 10 minutes between each blast. The next morning we awoke with bites all over our arms and legs. Those swellings were far more spectacular than the fireworks themselves!
Now I go if I feel like it and if it is comfortable. I’m such a wuss. We drive or ride bikes to the SW station parking ramp in Eden Prairie to the top story where we can see the EP display up close and the Valley Fair, Bloomington, Edina, Chaska, and Minnetonka shows at a distance.
Our dog has a thunderstorm/vacuum cleaner/fireworks phobia. I spend the day of the 4th sedating the poor thing and holding her paw while she shakes in fear of firecrackers and big rumbly booms.
OT–The recipes are impressive!
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who gave me the hot fudge recipe ? i wanted to submit it to the blog with the right name on it? sorry i didn’t file it in my by the contributing blogger but dale will if we can figure out where it came from.
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never mind i see renee is already posted as the hot fudge source. thanks renee and thanks to dale. anyone have the banana bread recipe from heaven?
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Steve just made me want to go to Cornucopia…. I love it there!
Here’s a recipe for banana bread. It may not be the heavenly one you asked for, but it’s simple and, I think, very good. It freezes well.
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 medium – large over-ripe bananas, mashed
1 3/4 cup unbleached, all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon (unaluminated) baking soda
Optional:
chopped nuts
dried cranberries, prunes, figs or dates
chocolate chips
unsweetened crushed pineapple or shredded coconut
1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour one 9″ x 5″ loaf pan or three 5 1/2″ x 3″ pans. I like to use the little ones.
2. In a medium bowl, combine the oil, sugar and eggs. Beat hard with a whisk or electric mixer until light-colored and creamy, about 2 minutes. Add the vanilla and mashed bananas and beat again until well combined.
3. In another medium bowl, combine the flour and baking soda. Add to the banana mixture and stir to combine. Beat well to make a batter that is evenly combined and creamy in consistency.
4. Spoon the batter into the pan(s). Place in the center of the preheated oven and bake 50 minutes for the large pan and 40 minutes for the small pans, or until the tops are brown and firm to touch, the loaves pull away from the sides of the pans and a toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely on wire racks. Refrigerate overnight before serving.
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thnaks krista i will report back in
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I love fireworks and have been able to watch them from my deck, so no crowds to contend with. My mother, on the other hand, can’t abide the loud noise that goes with them and never sees them. It’s “Heritage Days” in Starbuck this weekend so I’m off to butter and sugar a few hundred lefse for the masses. BTW, Starbuck is the home of the world’s largest lefse. Rommegrot, anyone?
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Barb,
I need to drive to Morris today to collect more of my son’s junk. Maybe I should stop in Starbuck for some lefse to add some festivity to the expedition.
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Wish I could have responded sooner, you should have come over or maybe you did. The place was packed with people and things to do. Plus, I could have met you.
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Dale, I share your fireworks feelings.20+ years working in a trauma hospital amplified my objections to the smaller ones that you hold in your hands and point into other people’s eyes.
Still, there is nothing like an orchestra ending the 1812 Overture with fireworks and The Stars and Stripes forever. I guess Arthur Fiedler balances the equation for me!
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A firework’s beauty is always in inverse proportion to its decibel level. They could improve a display by simply leaving out those loud ones that are just a flash of white light. They don’t achieve any height or look pretty; they just hurt the eyes and ears, and frighten the animals. The pretty fireworks, the chrysanthemums and plumes and things, usually just make a soft crack when they are launched.
I walk over one block to the bluff to watch the Taste of Minnesota fireworks. I was so happy that they cut back to one night this year. If you’re going to have fireworks, it should just be on the 4th. One of my neighbors has a dog like Jacque’s and sherrilee’s – and this will make it quite a bit easier for her.
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My father called those “salutes.” By which I mean every time one went off, he’d say “salute!” as if this were the first time he’d said it. The first time anyone ever had said it, in fact. And we kids would roll our eyes.
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Lisa, I love how you sometimes have instructive blog signatures – I’d never heard this one, and have been wondering about the hyphen…
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Of course there are nearly as many exceptions to this rule as instances following it, but thanks, B from R, for noticing!
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i grew up spending the 4th with the fargo cousins at the detroit lakes summer extravaganza in the land of cottages where the munchkins of the 60s would all leave at 7 am and go until 9 pm blowing up ant hills, mailboxes, campbell soup cans, tree stumps, the collective brain trust coming up with one idea after another all day to outdo the last variation on a boom. night time would bring together a meeting of the uncles who would make the night sky sparkle, spin whistle pop whir and explode with such fulfilling climax that it was maybe the perfect day of fun, comradarie, anticipation and climax all coming together in the proper order and the proper proportion in one of those rare life experiences where the expectations for the perfect day were high and they were met and exceeded every time. the cousins ranging from 7 or 8 years older to 8 or 10 years younger all had their groups figured out. who would be the keeper of the punks, the returning to the master stash for another packet of black cats (ladyfingers for the wee ones) a cigar or two because the punks burn out too fast. ah life was tom sawyerish those days. a peanut butter and jelly on wonder bread and a glass of kool aid is all that was needed to get from 7 am to 9 pm on the 4th. (that and about 1000 packets of black cats) i remember the dads complaining that we needed to slow down or we would run out of firecrackers but we never did and the supply never ran dry. what a great memory.
as life goes on the primary consideration is to get parked by the nearest escape route for those same eden prairie fireworks mentioned above. (top of the parking ramp is a great idea jacque but i’m in rapid city this year. i bet i will join you in 2011.) my kids are not as wowed as i was but i think the big screen world of the millennium has tainted the youth of the world and screwed up the simple pleasures. i don’t think it ranks in my kids top ten favorite events during the year and it certainly did mine. the boys have grown and the girls don’t care to blow things up or to make a great deal of effort to view them so with me out of town with the 17 year old this year (boy playing ball) the first ever family division on the 4th will take place. the girls and mom in eden prairie are looking at rain and making excuses to stay home. the son will hang with the teammates and hang in groups as teens do that move as one in all events form breakfast to busloading to xbox360 playing to going to the pool. no one alone always groups of 4, 5, 10. aren’t boys great? we are kicking butt in the rapid city firecracker baseball classic and my son pitched his way to his first win in the big leagues yesterday
and went on to beat the undefeated hometown favorites and secure a place in the championship round tomorrow. that is how we will celebrate the 4th this year. the game will end about 9:30 and the fireworks in the townball stadium will go off and the night will be complete. fireworks done right offer a finale and an exclamation point to commemorate the day. life could use this as an example. i do enjoy the 4th. hope you all have a great one too.
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Thanks for supporting the guys who like explosions, tim. Your childhood scene does sound wonderful, and I had never thought about the difference in the entertainment value of a firecracker then as compared to now.
And congratulations to your son and his team for their win yesterday. Sports guys making a ruckus in a big tournament – that’s a great way to celebrate the fourth!
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thanks for the note and the congradulations. the boys are having a blast of their own i hadn’t thought of it in the 4th sense before.
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Congratulations to you and the boys Tim!
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thanks we won again so are in the final championship game
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As a kid, my grandparents lived across the street from Powderhorn Park. We’d go in the afternoon, spend the part of the day at the park, and retreat to their screened-in porch for the fireworks. (Fewer mosquitos, less crowded…)
This year I think we will go to the Southdale parking lot and watch the Edina fireworks. Close enough to see them, but far enough away that they are not too noisy (Darling Daughter doesn’t like the noise – just the sparkly parts.)
OT – Polls await those who wish to vote for first book, meeting, etc., for Blevins’ Book Club.
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thanks anna for the blevens initiative. looking forward to it. don’t forget the vote is a good idea but you are the supreme ruler and dictator of the blog.
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Today’s Vignette
Rode over to Panera for hot tea and that lump of bread Panera so deceitfully calls a bagel. Across from me a ways sitting side by side were a 75-year-old man and a14-year-old boy, who later, when the rest of the family arrived, did prove to be grandfather and grandson as genetics would indicate. The old man had the blotchy red and white skin of old Germans. He wore the set expression of all of us grumpy old Germans. The boy had the soft African skin of mixed race and wore the practiced look of boredom/indifference/superiority of all adolescents except Jessie Gugig. Their attitudes combined with their genetics resulted in exactly the same look on their faces. The old grump was reading the paper and reacting disgustedly to the news. The young grump was playing a computer game and reacting disgustedly to the progress of the game in exactly the same manner.
From this I conclude 1) genetics will out and 2) we all men do not so much enter a second childhood as a second adolescence.
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Interesting observation Clyde.
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great vignette clyde
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Most of the fireworks displays of my youth were (as someone said) “underwhelming,” and more notable for mosquitoes and crowds than visual splendor. And yet to my surprise, fireworks took on a pleasant “family” quality when my parents bought a queer cottage on Crystal Bay of Lake Minnetonka, across the bay from the Lafayette Club. The club put on an annual fireworks show that appealed to the kid in my father. He loved to have the family gather on the shore in lounge chairs to watch the display.
Long before that, the bay would fill with boats until you could almost walk across the bay boat-to-boat. Their red, green and white running lights became part of the spectacle. It was funny to watch the folks in the boats get drunker while waiting for the display to begin. After the show it wasn’t uncommon to see a few boats get into shooting contests with rockets fired across the water at each other, but nobody got hurt. I came to like these evenings because they became a family tradition.
On the fourth this year I will stand with other folks on the shores of Siskiwit Bay of Lake Superior in front of the village of Cornucopia. We will have a pleasant wait, with various families burning bonfires, and the air will smell of seared brats and toasted marshmallows. We will be awed, waiting for the fireworks, by the magnificent sweep of sky over the lake. And in that pure air, the black of infinity and the brilliance of stars will form such a contrast that you will feel you could mount the Milky Way and walk its celestial stairway to heaven.
This is an entirely different experience of fireworks, up close and personal, and the rockets and showy works will be fired almost directly over my head. The air will fill with the punky smell of burned gunpowder. And instead of drunks honking boat horns when a firework is spectacular, the better ones in front of Cornucopia will draw “ohs” and “awwws” from awestruck families.
Happy Birthday, America. Happy Fourth, Babooners.
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very nice steve
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So beautiful there. Love Bayfield–one of my favorite vacation spots. Lucky You.
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The summer after my graduation from high school I attended a fireworks display on a local lake with my high school boyfriend. I was in love, it was summer, the air vibrated with anticipation, but not wind. No breeze at all. I remember it being warm, humid, clear and breathlessly still; the lake reflected the orange and purple shades of a summer sunset.
The display was launched from a pontoon boat. It seemed to take forever for the men in the boat to get set up but finally it was twilight and the first rocket was launched. It went straight up into the still summer air – and came straight back down into the gun powder barrels. The whole thing exploded.
In the brilliant flashing I saw two things. The men (one of whom was our next door neighbor and father to my friend) diving from the exploding pontoon into the water, and my boyfriend running toward the cars, hand-in-hand with a girl from Colorado.
I’m with you, Dale. No fireworks for me.
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Chuckle!
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Let’s not forget about parades. We do two parades every year… first the Tangletown parade, which is everybody from the neighborhood. Kids with the bikes all festooned in red white & blue. Dogs w/ ribbons and decorations. Then the fire truck comes and we follow it around the tangled streets and end up at the park where we have kids games and music. FABULOUS. Then in the afternoon the Richfield parade, which is always fun to watch.
I think I love the parades more than the fireworks!
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Morning–
Interesting topic today… I took my Mother-in-law shopping yesterday and we were talking about the different ways people celebrate the Fourth. She grew up in a small town in SW MN (Ceylon anyone?) and I was curious as to if — or when towns started having these big firework displays? She doesn’t remember any as a kid but also her Dad didn’t get very excited about it.
Now when I was a kid, my Grandmother lived right behind Silver Lake, where the fireworks are still launched from in Rochester. So all the cousins would meet at her house early evening. Traffic was always a problem as she was on a main street too- and we ran around having squirt gun fights until the show started. Yes, I almost got my eye poked out with that thing once…
I don’t remember mosquitoes…. too much smoke perhaps?? And then when the show was over it was watermelon until the traffic cleared out.
I also had a brother in law who lived in South Dakota. He would bring home a huge collection of fireworks and the family would all come to the farm and we’d have our own private display. There wasn’t a lot of drinking… a little but not too much. Which didn’t stop them from improvising with my brothers model rocket engines, toy cars, model rockets but no fuses (so gas, toilet paper, shot gun shells, ect…) the source of many family stories years later. And no one got hurt.
I think it fostered in me some creativity and a tempered ‘Hey Guys- Watch this!’ mentality…
When I met the lady who would be my wife, she had a tradition of going with Aunt Ruth and Uncle Bill to another road on the side of Silver Lake for the display. But you had to time it just right; parking wasn’t allowed there normally and it wasn’t until a sudden mass movement where everyone suddenly pulled over and parked there that you could get away with it. An oil stained grocery bag of popcorn during the show and Bakes Square French Silk pie after kept us happy. After Ruth and Bill passed and we had kids we could never get the timing right…
And now, like so many of you, we hate fighting the crowds and traffic. And the kids aren’t so excited about the noise. We have a new tradition of meeting a friend and his family at a parking lot far enough away to dampen the noise a bit but allow a good view. We play catch until the show starts and then the sensitive ones sit in the cars with the windows up.
Not sure this year… extenuating circumstances so we may just have a quiet night home. And I will go to one of the tent sales on July 5th and pick up a bunch of stuff half price… just for fun– to carry on the tradition.
Be safe everyone!
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good memories ben, enjoy the quiet 4th and i hope the extenuating circumstances are not too taxing in other areas
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I see Blevins has turned his back on this conversation. I wonder how he feels about fireworks.
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I think that’s Blevins’s idea of a “red glare,” no?
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I think so too, the little stinker. Or, as they say in Maine, stinka.
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Glaringly obvious.
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Ceylon–sayLON, know it well.
Did Aaron not come over here with us? I miss him. I thought he was here at first.
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he was but has been missing since early on
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I am a fireworks maniac. They were a big part of my childhood, and we would always go to my uncles’ farms and shoot them off. The first time (and about the last time) I ever smoked was one 4th when we ran out of punks and my dad loaned me his cigar as a substitute. We made homemade cannons and set our youngest cousin in the yard with an army helmet on to see if we could hit him with the crab apples we launched. One we shot a bottle rocket into the hay mow, but nothing caught on fire. I try to be more sedate now and we like to go to Medora, ND for their fireworks display. Its really fun there since fireworks are allowed in town. There are kids and adults all over town shooting off fireworks in the streets. No fireworks this yea, since we are traveling.
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where are you traveling to an why would you not tote the crackers with you. love the creative firework memories. sounds like fun.
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Going to the Turtle Mountains in North Central North Dakota at the Manitoba border to the International Music Camp. I drive 5 hours, drop my daughter off at camp, and drive home. No time or energy for explosions.
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Summertime Grilled Chicken This is the simplest, quickest and one of the most delicious ways to serve chicken in the summer.
For ingredients, you need chicken breast halves and salad dressing. That’s all. I mainly use two salad dressings; you will have your favorites. Most of the time I cook with an Italian style olive oil vinaigrette from Paul Newman. Other times I’ll use a creamy garlic dressing that I jazz up by adding fresh garlic to it, running maybe four garlic cloves through a press and adding that to the dressing. The grilling quickly knocks the sting out of the garlic and leaves you something mighty mellow. This is the dish that brings neighbors over to check out what I’m cooking since it smells so good.
Prepare the chicken breast halves by butterflying them, in effect cutting them in half in a way that maximizes the surface area of the breasts. This is easy if you have a sharp knife, really hard if you don’t.
Douse the chicken in salad dressing. A more pretentious description would tell you to “marinate” the chicken. But really, we aren’t truly marinating. We are covering each chicken piece in a moist, flavorful grilling sauce. You don’t have to let the pieces sit and soak in the sauce. Get the chicken wet and get it on the grill.
Put the chicken on a hot grill, splashing or painting more sauce on the high side. Turn after maybe four minutes and paint the new high side with more sauce. Grill each piece until it is no longer so raw it is floppy but pull it out before it gets stiff as a board. The chicken is done when it is cooked just a bit too much to be floppy. With my grill and usual bed of coals, only a total of six minutes of grilling is right.
Serve with your choice of side dishes. You could do worse than a chilled Summit Pale Ale and some tabouli, but you know what you like.
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Now this sounds delicious. And simple; I think I can handle this… I even have a sharp knife!
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I’m sitting here listening to Wait, Wait… Our coverage of the spy story was much more entertaining than anything Peter Sagal did, much as I love him. Also, has anyone else noticed how much Blevin’s backside looks like fireworks?
Here is one of my favorite summer recipes. Make this with the kind of lettuce you grow in the garden, or the loose lettuce in a bag at the store.
Grandma Fern’s Wilted Lettuce
10-12 cups garden lettuce or spinach or mix of both
4-6 slices of chopped bacon
1 bunch chopped green onions
1/3 c. vinegar
1/3 c. water
1 T sugar
1/2 t salt
1/4 t. ground pepper
2 boiled eggs, peeled and chopped
Wash lettuce thoroughly and drain it in colander. Put lettuce in a large salad bowl. Add chopped green onions and toss. Fry bacon in skillet until crisp. Drain bacon on a paper towel. Pour off the bacon grease and then return 2 T of melted grease to the skillet. Mix water, vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper together and pour into the skillet with the grease. Heat mixture until boiling and pour hot mixture over salad greens. The hot liquid will wilt the lettuce a bit. (I don’t like mine very “wilty”. If you want yours more wilted drain of the liquid and reheat then re-pour). Toss the greens until coated with liquid. Garnish salad with bacon and chopped eggs. Serve immediately.
Too good for words. We learned to make this without a written recipe. Thanks to my sister for writing it down.
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I was driving into town and heard the Wait, Wait reference, was disappointed that it was mentioned in the earlier non-corrected context. But a part of me was pleased that Dale was the one who caught the edit and got the picture!
I will be spending the 4th with my dogs, who like other dogs mentioned above, do not have an appreciation of fireworks. But from my upstairs window, I can sometimes see some of the Waconia display; that’ll do for me, and is far enough away that the dogs won’t even know it is happening.
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Waconia! My favorite sister and her family lived there for awhile and I would visit. She was a nurse at the hospital there in Waconia.
One weekend I visited her for the annual ‘Farmer vs. Theater’ softball game…. the farmers won. Is anyone surprised by that?? (Technically, I suppose I could play on either side but I was there as part of the ‘Theater’ contingent…)
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While I can live without the noise, I must admit that GOING to the fireworks (as opposed to pretending you can see them from the backyard, despite twenty years’ tree growth) ranks right up there with Twinkies as the forbidden fruit of my childhood in which I am now free to indulge.
And there is nothing better than sitting in a crowd of supposedly-jaded sophisticates and listening to them utter syllables they utter just once a year: “ooooooh,” for instance. And “aaaaah.” Those fireworks sounds are pretty darn sweet.
One other fireworks memory comes from my years of living in Evanston, IL. I went to Grant Park in Chicago, to see the giant display there. It was a bit underwhelming. What was utterly THRILLING, on the other hand, was standing on a low retaining wall and watching a portion of the five hundred thousand people stream out of the park at the end of the display. Five hundred thousand people, all of whom seemed, for that moment, happy.
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Interesting introduction to the topic, Dale. I’ve always loved the fireworks and hated traffic. We have discovered that we can get a good bit of enjoyment just by watching what our neighbors decide to blow up. The added thrill is that you never know where they are going to go off next.
We must have some real enthusiasts in the neighborhood who keep them stockpiled. Fireworks go off on western New Year’s, Chinese New Year, and the instant the final results from the last presidential election were broadcast.
I’ve been to the great fireworks in Boston, and yes, have also done the Capitol Fourth on the mall in DC. Each year, the Smithsonian sponsers an event on the mall that features a different state and a different region in the country.
The year I went, Iowa happened to be the state. Pigs on the Washington Mall, a reenactment of a caucas, and much to my delight, I woman who had been a basketball star from Manilla (Iowa, when I was growing up, I had no idea there was another Manilla, other than that small-town sports powerhouse) discussing Iowa girl’s basketball, in the days when they still played half-court, 6-on-a-team, 2 dribbles and you have to pass. It was the game of my youth, and I never played (I am no one’s athlete), but loved to go to the games.
Right before fireworks time, we managed to find a great place to spread out the blanket and settle in. The Mall is solid people on the 4th, so we were glad to find an open space. It wasn’t until toward the end of the display we realized why that space had been open. Right in front of the guns they shoot off during the 1812 Overture.
Now that is noise.
Jacque, yes, that is the “other” garden lettuce salad. Steve, the chicken sounds really good-the garlic in the garden might be ready to pull too. Congrats to tim and the teenagers on a great win. Barb in Starbuck, I hope your fingers don’t get stuck together.
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Catherine – I remember playing half court in 9th grade church league at the Y. A dismal performance, and the only year I did anything remotely “athletic.” Thanks for the memory, tho!
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Like many here, we live near the city fireworks set-off field. We move lawn chairs to the driveway and settle in, beer in hand, to watch thousands walk or drive by, drivers looking for a place to park, walkers with blankets and kids. The kids young enough are skipping in anticipation. The fireworks are far enough away to boom without making one jump. After the grand finale, the best part is watching the scramble to get home; the area turns into one big traffic jam. We fold up our chairs and retire to the backyard.
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Heaven. We can see 2/3 of ours from our upstairs back porch, so guess where we’ll be…
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Hi, Susan.
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Last night I traveled across this little Maine peninsula to eat fried fish at a little outdoor stand with a big reputation. When we came to the peninsula’s spine, my dining companion commented, upon seeing a For Sale sign in a yard, “oh, she’s selling her house!”
“Who’s ‘she’?”
“Mary Grace Canfield.”
“And she would be…?”
“Do you remember ‘Green Acres?'”
[Yes, despite my fondest desires otherwise….]
“Do you remember Ralph the Carpenter?”
“Yes!”
“She was Ralph the Carpenter!”
I knew you’d all want to know.
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Snort.
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Also in Polyanna among many Disney movies.
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My Dad was a County Agent back in his day. He loved Green Acres and that cast of rural characters–especially the County Agent (Mr. Keeny?), but he loved the carpenter, too. Not my favorite show, though.
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Kmball.
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See? See how much of this we all remember? If only I could turn the significant details of my life now into a situation comedy with a catchy theme song! THen maybe I’d remember them at least until I got to the grocery store….
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Favorite fireworks display was several years ago when we, my folks, and my sister with her 7-year-old all met for a reunion at Storm Lake IA, where I spent the first half of my youth. We drove to the “far” side of the lake hoping to find fewer people, and had to walk a bit to get to the viewing beach, right through as it happened a grassy meadow FILLED with fireflies. We would watch the fireworks for a few minutes, then turn around and watch the fireflies. 7-year-old Evan was in heaven tryng to catch them, as there are none where he lives in Calif… At the end of the show, the was a huge clap of thunder followed by, you guessed it, the biggest flash of lightening I’d ever seen, and a downpour. Nature’s fireworks all around.
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Oh, yea. I forgot about the fireflies. We used to take jars to the fireworks and catch them between explosions! Thanks for that little tweak of memory. I still have rellies in SL
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Do you ever get there? We passed through a couple of weeks ago and had lunch at a park on the west side of the lake. Heaven.
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Last time was 13 or 14 years ago. We used to camp there, but everytime got stormed out. Thus the name I guess.
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getting out the bug spray to walk down to see the fireworks at Normandale Lk in a couple hours; in the 80’s they used to do it at the ski hill/ it’s the first time i’d heard Claudia Schmidt sing!
my icky memory is having a pc of sparkler land in my scalp when i was around 10 and the smell was awful and it hurt
i still like to watch but i don’t want them in my yard; Plus my dogs get really scared
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It isn’t humid enough for us to have fireflies in western North Dakota. We had thousands. I think, when we lived for a year in Columbus, Indiana. I never saw so many in my life as there. I made spanikopita from fresh garden spinach today. I also have a terrific Greek lamb pie recipe if anyone wants it. I subscribed to Gourmet Magazine from 1980 until it folded in 2009 and I have every issue and a wealth of recipes for just about everything you could imagine. They take up a lot of room and they are crumbling with age, some of them, but I love them dearly. My daughter practiced her violin for more than an hour today since she won’t have enough time to practice at Musical Theater camp, and has taken the initiative to clean and get ready without any nagging. She also has all the Suzuki pieces recorded in her Ipod and promises me she will listen every night at camp. She is determined to have a great Suzuki institute in southern Ontario in August. Development happens! We will be only 30 miles from the Stratford Festival when we are in Kitchener-Waterloo, and I got tickets to see Christopher Plummer as Prospero in “the Tempest”. Happy July 4 for everyone!
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Wow! You’re going to see Christopher Plummer in the “The Tempest” — I am so jealous. That sounds like an awesome production.
We just got home from seeing “The Last Airbender” that Lucas wanted to see. Very cool movie. The special effects were amazing, but the acting wasn’t that great — except that Dev Patel was in it.
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She’s gorgeous, if she is the Indian actress I am thinking of. My daughter-in-law was born in Calcutta and I think she is gorgeous, too!. I feel pretty spoiled about Stratford, but its so close to where we will be for the string institute. The tickets are very reasonable and kids under 18 go for a pittance. I hope Christopher is in fine form and we don’t see an understudy that night!
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Renee, you make me laugh. I guess Indian names are confusing — Dev Patel was the MALE lead actor in “Slum Dog Millionaire.” And yes — he’s very handsome, and his love interest in SDM was quite gorgeous as well.
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Enjoy your evening of Shakespeare, Renee. We want a full report when you return — pictures, autographed program, a lock of his hair and a piece of his costume. That’s not so hard …
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Tsk, tsk, tsk. I simply must speak out against the wanton destruction you are encouraging, Joanne. Let there be no whacking of a costume that some poor soul is then going to have to restore.
As one of my stitchers used to say, “Euripedes, Eumenides!”
Enjoy the show, Renee, just don’t take liberties (I doubt you would). Christopher Plummer will always be the Captain in Sound of Music to me.
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Euripides, Eumenides! Brilliant!
Some enterprising folklorist (or some related cultural-studies kind of person) should collect up these kinds of profession-specific wordplays.
I feel so clever now to know this one.
(Catherine, do you know that passage in David Sedaris’s very funny piece about being an elf? The passage in which the costumes manager comes to tell them how to care for their costumes?)
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Dale — just a note that you might want to correct the clock on the Kitchen Congress blog. I commented on a recipe and saw that it was dated in the future! Much as I love science fiction and time travel, having recipes in a time warp may not be helpful to me in the kitchen!
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