Hail to the flag
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
"Bells ring-a-ling-in', fire crackers poppin', lighting up the sky! Hail to the flag, it's the Fourth of July. It's a day to stand hat in hand, watching parades, singing along with the song the band plays."
For over 30 years we've sung that little ditty on the Fourth of July. My girls know it by heart, and we'd sing the song over and over at the top of our lungs as we bounced along the road on the way to the Fourth of July parade in Calistoga — the little town in California, just down the road from home where they had a parade every year.
Most of the time we were in costume of some kind or another with the car windows open and a trailer (our float) lumbering along behind us. We'd discovered the "Comedy" section of the local parade, where very few people were brave enough to enter the competition. It cleared the playing field, and we delighted in conjuring up some funny float that would land us in the prize winning category.
Well, we're still joining parades and doing floats — only it's in Ramona this time and my kids aren't in the back seat. We've been making cardboard cars, this week, with someone else's kids as we plan a replica of a drive-in movie theater for one of the entires that will be gracing the streets of Ramona come parade time on July Fourth.
Flags are appearing all over town to improve our festive mood and yesterday, Ramona's Three Musketeers — which means Tool Time Tim, Jessica P., and me — dressed up some trees. We got the idea in Salina at the Smoky Hill River Festival and just transplanted it to our town. "I can see the day," my sister rhapsodizes, "when ALL the trees on Main Street are dressed." Tim and I groan! We're quite content with what we've got! It takes a lot of material to dress even part of a tree!
Walking back to the house, last night, the fireflies were out in all their glory. They looked like tiny sparklers twinkling in the dark. If you go down by the creek in the middle of the night, it's a regular firefly fairyland — and to think we used to collect them in jars when we were children and use their phosphorescence for pretend diamond rings on our fingers. It was before we were ecologically enlightened, so to speak. I'm so thankful they are still around. I hesitate to spray my grass for chiggers, just in case it would also exterminate the lady bugs and the lightning bugs. So what's a little itching discomfort weighed against such night-time magic?
Fifty years ago, the Fourth of July magic began for me. I'd never seen fireworks until we came to western Kansas one summer to help in the harvest. After two weeks of excruciating, hot, tiring work, friends of my family called a celebration like no other on the Fourth of July. We had watermelon filling the stock tank until it ran over, plates heaped with fried chicken, and ice cold orange Nesbitt soda and Grape-ette pop (remember that?) in glass bottles that dripped with the pure pleasure of their contents.
When it got dark, there were sparklers for the kids. To add to the glory of the event, the guys started setting off rockets that zoomed into the black Kansas sky, releasing showers of rainbow colors and sending the fireflies scuttling for cover. Who could compete with these magnificent lights that festooned the sky? We lay on our backs, forgetting the threat of chiggers, and "oohed" and "aahed" until the show was too-soon over.
Every Fourth of July, I'm like a kid again. The theme for our parade in Ramona this year is "The Fifties and Sixties" which, quite frankly, doesn't seem all that long ago, but the children in my neighborhood see it as ancient history. I'm the guru of the '50s era explaining the intracies of duck tails and poodle skirts. During the fireworks, I'll be gasping at the splendor.
It's another day in the country and while my own children are off doing life on their own in the city, I'll call them tomorrow and start singing, "Bells ring-a-ling-in', fire crackers poppin' lighting up the sky," and they'll grin all over at the memories.
