Independence Day

It's finally summer! This means that very soon there will be 4th of July celebrations in just about every little town and lake in the state of Kansas. I always loved the 4th of July, though I find it ironic that our great nation chooses to celebrate it's independence by distributing enough explosives to the civilians to blow it up. I don't know if kids today have as much fun as we did in the 70's, though, what with the bottle rocket and roman candle wars. Back then, even a dorky type kid with glasses and a pocket protector could fend off a sizable bully with just a coke bottle, lit punk, and a handful of bottle rockets. Roman candles were a favorite weaponry to those who had no access to an empty pop bottle. Almost all fireworks came with these sissy little warnings on them, such as "light fuse and get away", or "Do not hold in hand", but few of us ever adhered to these cautions, as it would have been hard to be taken as a serious warrior in the battles if one were just to light a fuse and run. Besides, you had to aim them at one of your friends that you cared little about. In those days, David Princ and I hung around each other quite frequently, probably because we were both really "cool". We obtained this cool status from our parents, meaning Dave's dad Pete, owned the local bar, my dad owned the gas station, and mom sold fireworks, and due to somewhat relaxed methods of book-keeping in the 70's, David and I always had plenty of gas, beer and fireworks, which automatically made us somewhat popular during these particular seasons. Despite our much practiced "innocent" look, many of the towns adults tended to look at us in a suspicious manner whenever some sort of minor vandalism occurred, especially if firework remnants and beer cans were found on the scene. I personally blame David for this, as he never really mastered the "innocent" look, and after seeing his picture on facebook, I believe he still looks somewhat guilty to this day. Fireworks gave countless hours of fun to all of us kids, and had many practical uses as well, such as blowing up nasty red ant hills with black cats, which would blow surviving red ants far enough away from their homes that they would have to start a whole new colony, on the basis that they would never live long enough to find the old one again, especially traveling on foot, as most ants had to do in those days. Some of our friends from rival "gangs", also found out that a 25 cent bottle rocket could harvest about a hundred acres of wheat in just a few minutes, especially on a windy day, making the farmer who owned the wheat-field blush with shame at the money he spent foolishly on his new combine. Now that we are parent's and grand-parent's, we have a whole new generation of kid's who will be learning to have fun with fireworks! I say let them have fun! I would like for my own grandkids to learn firework safety from "responsible" adults, so I have decided to sit this one out, and let their parents teach them.