July 4 - Independence Day Part I

For starters, it's 95 degrees outside. An annual tradition of the hottest day of the year-so far. The bombs have been bursting for a few hours now. All that accomplished was I couldn't take my nap and the cat got scared early and came in the house.

The children decided that $240+ wasn't enough to spend on blowing shit up, so they made another run to the farworks stand. I decided that 2:30pm was late enough-I'd better make the potato salad.

The new neighbors on the next street I mentioned earlier (post) only shot off one "Big One"last night. So, that $2K of goods is still intact (until tonight).

I'm logging off now. We're cooking chicken and brats. I've never cooked "brats" before, but I heard someone say something about boiling them first. I'm must research on the mighty web.

BOOM! Let the fun begin!

For over 2 weeks now the sparkling & crashing booms have bombarded the evening sky in suburban Kansas City. Some might say the folks are just "testing their wares". I know better, they're really just warming up!

Around 9pm (Sunday- July 1) we (Dennis & I) went out on the deck to watch the fireflies and the 3 or 4 neighbors warming up. We were NOT disappointed. I have no idea what most of the 'far crackers' are called other than:Roman Candles, bottle rockets, sparklers, Black Cats, those wicked little Lady Fingers. That's it I think--nope! I remember "snakes" those nasty black ashy things you light on the ground AND (my favorite) - SMOKE BOMBS! As I was saying...we were watching the neighbors burn up some of their hard earned $$ when somebody on the street behind our house let off this AMAZING wonderment of sound and lights. It spit out 3 big bursts of rat ta tat tats- sounded JUST like a machine gun! Accompanying the machine gun were these wonderful syncronized bursts of white and red light action. This was KICK ASS!

Never seen one of these before-I had to get the name of this new sparkly, so that WE could get one- natch! So I jump into my flip-flops and make my way around the block to find out what this thing is called. To my surprise, there are no kids outside, no teenage boys, just a man & woman. I announced myself as I approached and compliment them on their far crackerz. I learn they are new in the 'hood, they have 5 kids between them, none of which were home, AND they have approximately $2000 ---I said TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS worth of FIRE WORKS! AND we are SO INVITED to come over and (thank you Jesus) watch!

Now-let me clarify one thing folks, we are NOT loaded. I mean, our neighborhood is nice, but not that nice. As it turns out, this woman's brother owns several fireworks stands. I wish I had useful relative. BTW - the cracker was called One Heck of a Firework, and that's exactly what it was.

Stay tuned