I celebrated the 4th of July w/ relatives in our big, but country rivertown and it was like the wild wild west, fireworks, shooting, the days, nights

Surreal. Roofs were threatening to catch. A few of us were sitting out on the huge covered front porch, listening to what sounded like a war zone and watching the fireworks flaring all over the place. I had the thought that the police were being called out all over town, but there would not have been enough of them to make a dent regarding complaints of roof hitting, car dinging, hair scorching rogue fireworks. So then I wondered if this was just the way it was now there and if very many people even bothered to call when amateur firework ordnance flew about the rooflines and all over the place. Everyone thought it was probably more commotion than usual in part because of the holiday falling on the weekend. It wasn't quite like that as a kid, for one, not that many could afford THAT many fireworks outside a few organized sponsored ones.

A few times, several of the family pooled together and put on a show up at one of the farms (usually my Aunt's), but they stayed clear of structures.

Oh, those were fun times as long as you got out alive and not too banged up.

Growing up, the black people at the place next door would hold Roman candles in their hands and shoot them at one another in the middle of the road. Momma wouldn't let us kids join in on that when invited. Something about putting out an eye. Now it is many Hispanic families in the area and many were having Roman candle fights that lasted a lot longer. They didn't seem to care that they were shooting them at houses.

Back then (and still today) some of the boys around there would use pop bottles to shoot off bottle rockets or just light them and throw them up in the air. It didn't have to be no 4th of July. It wasn't unusual to hear of eyes being put out. The only thing I knew about directly was a white boy who hung around some relatives on the mountain knocked a big chunk of bone and flesh off his elbow and back side of his arm one summer that involved fireworks and pop bottles. It was not something the weak of stomach would have appreciated seeing. (There was a cigar puffing man with a glass eye who walked around town giving nickles out to little girls, but I don't know how he came by losing it, his eye. There was also a one armed man, but that was from electrocution, his missing arm, up to the shoulder. I might tell later about him and the time he came to our house. He was a nice and very productive person).

I hear a few firecracker pops in Richardson during and surrounding the holiday, but other than the organized displays, not much, until you hit down south and east of Buckingham.

We went to the organized display and sat right by the river listening to the band. Stuff like Mustang Sally and Chicago's 25 or 6 to 4 . It was all very impressive and romantic and made us happy to be in the USA. It wasn't very crowded because it had sprinkled and wasn't, isn't a metroplex, and apparently it was more fun to just about everyone to do their own displays.

Since the whole world there was banging, into the night the whole weekend, we decided later to dig into our sparkler stash that we had put together.

These sparklers with the woodstick handles blew. Does anyone remember the pretty ones, the ones on little somewhat floppy metal sticks that would burn your fingers as they progressed? You had to be old enough (have long enough arms to keep it away from your face) and brave (and tough) enough to handle a chemical coated spark spitting glowing, getting hotter by the second, metal stick. You would have to be careful not to get too many spark bites on your arms or legs and not step on the hot spent sticks after you let go of them. One of the thousand rites of passage. Oh safety, sometimes you are a damper. I still haven't come up with an equally exciting passage for the wee ones as that. You had to make sure at the stand that you didn't get charged full price for the ones that had half the spark caked off the metal stick.

We had some small fountain fireworks that were very nice that we set off in the back. Muggy night, one dud, but the mosquitos had turned in for the night which was good.

We all helped a relative on a home project.

It was a fun, disconcerting at times, interesting, family oriented, patriotic, romantic and productive couple of days before scrambling back home to Rland and the salt mines.

Here is a Franz Ferdinand song. I like their Take Me Out one better, but this below video reminds me of this post regarding fireworks, and a previous post about S.O.B.'s, about neccesary and unnecessary beaurocrats, about people meeting behind closed doors manipulating a city or others, about the envelope that all the Richardson, Texas, city council candidates last time reported getting in the U.S. mail with no return address (more about what I heard about that later), and a creepy post on another blog about burning things down (hopefully that was someone's warped and sick sense of humor and not for real, but there are some super sicko people in the world and they actually do want to poke your eye out, so listen to your Momma).

The bling (diamond, used for hypnosis) at the beginning of the video reminds me of that mailer from a councilman candidate last time in Richardson, Texas, that had all the bling on the front of it. It was filled with scare and bling bling promises, but it is one of those things you can't help but think was a joke or trick when you got it, it was ridiculous, but something like that needs to be taken seriously because so many people believed it.

25 or 6 to 4 by Chicago.