Continue to strive for greatness

The Fourth of July will be here before you know it.

Even after all the years I’ve lived here I am still surprised that local people are allowed to have fireworks. Granted, these aren’t the ones that cover half of the sky with twinkly lights and unexpected patterns. They are still dangerous.

The last few years people have discovered Chinese lanterns. These are rare enough to capture our attention as they rise through the night sky and eventually disappear. One of these years I intend to buy a package of them and have the package delivered to my daughter in time for Independence Day. As usual, it is too late to do it this year.

When I was a kid many, many years ago, we would go to my mom’s best friend’s house on the holiday. They lived close enough to the shopping center hosting the show that we could see the pyrotechnics from their backyard. I remember one year it was a little windy and sparks fell on their roof. They used the garden hose to put out the tiny flames.

After we moved to the farm we went back to their house for a year or two before giving it up forever. We still visited each other but as we got older, our parents got older too. They were uneasy making the hour-long drive from our house to theirs after dark.

For one or two years we were allowed to play with sparklers. I was scared to death of them. Mercifully the sparklers didn’t last long. If I wanted to play with something that made noise and sparks I much preferred caps to sparklers.

Caps are made to be used in cap guns. They came in a paper roll that fit nicely into a cap gun. As most of you know, I am not a fan of real guns but I did love cap guns. Inevitably, there were a few caps that didn’t go off. We would clear off a space on the concrete cover for the well, grab what we considered to be a perfect rock and pound the caps until they popped and let off a slight odor of sulfur and a tiny wisp of smoke.

The caps looked like a series of dots on a narrow coil of paper. The little grey bumps on the paper were made with a combination of phosphorus and a strong oxidizer, such as potassium chlorate and/or potassium perchlorate. Sulfur was used to substitute for some or all of the phosphorus to slightly decrease sensitivity and lower costs; calcium carbonate may also be present in small proportions. Each company had their own version of this recipe.

Eventually the Fourth of July became just one more holiday that we didn’t celebrate. After I got married and had a baby, we began to return to watching the fireworks. That first year when Beth was still little, we parked in the shopping center parking lot to watch the display. If I remember right, she would retreat to the inside of the car when the noise was too loud.

Subsequent years were hit or miss. Sometimes we watched the fireworks and sometimes we didn’t. Lately, we have gone up to the fairgrounds in town to see the show. It is almost as much fun to watch the people as it is to watch the show.

On Independence Day, the country celebrates itself. We fly our flags as a symbol of the love we have for our country. We shoot off rockets and sing the national anthem off key.

In our heart of hearts, we long for our country to be as great as we tell ourselves we are.