The Fourth Of July

I suppose I was about ten years old and it was the Fourth of July and my family and I were going to have a picnic. That’s all. I wasn’t disappointed, that’s what we usually did on the Fourth. Dad took the day off from the fields and we had the brand new spring fryers that mom raised, and potato salad and lots of good things that she made.
On this particular Fourth of July mom started talking about the Fourth of July’s that she had spent when she was a child.
She had two older brothers, LaVerne, the oldest, Nathan, second oldest, then my mother, the last child was Leslie.
The oldest boys were big and strong, both over six feet tall. They were much older than she and had seen the country and sowed their wild oats, she called it and then came home to help Grandpa with the farm.
Completely out of character for a stern old man, my grandpa loved fireworks. Every 4th of July he would buy twenty five dollars worth of fireworks and let the boys light them while he and the rest of the family enjoyed them. You have to understand that in 1917 that twenty five dollars was a whole lot of money.
I had never seen fireworks at that time but mom described them to me.
When I grew older, I married and my husband and I bought an acreage outside of Canton, South Dakota. I invited my mom and dad to join us for the holiday and my husband’s brothers and their wives and children were there too. I fried chicken til I was blue in the face. We had the traditional potato salad my mom had taught me to prepare and real lemonade. When it started to get dusk, Wally and his brothers all got out their fireworks. Mother started telling us all about her dad and the money he would spend on fireworks. Then she started to sneeze. She sneezed and sneezed until she could hardly catch her breath. I had her go in the house until she was better. The gunpowder and smoke had made her sneeze. But she laughed and said she had really enjoyed the fireworks.
Fireworks played another part in my life, just last year. I had been to lots of fireworks displays in my life but nothing like last year’s. My husband Fran, and I got married on the 5th of July outside. Fran made a plan with Mike, my youngest son to have fireworks go off just when the minister pronounced us man and wife. Well it went according to plan and I screamed and the audience laughed, but I think the one that was the most startled was our minister. She choked and laughed and jumped back ; Fran had not let her in on the surprise! We have wonderful pictures of all the smoke that displayed itself on our wedding day. My mother would have loved it.