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The town where we live really goes all out for the Fourth of July. Every year they have a four-day extravaganza of events: pancake breakfasts and chicken barbecues, "Family Fun Day", a carnival and not one but two fireworks displays. The year that we moved into The (Real) Big Red House we went and checked it out, but Charlotte was still just a baby and much too little to get much out of it. We skipped it the next couple of years for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that the last couple of July 4ths have been hotter than hell, and who wants to spend all day broiling in the sun just to watch some fireworks.
Well, the weather was far more cooperative this year, and Charlotte is old enough to go on some carnival rides, so we went and did "Family Fun Day" last Saturday afternoon and then went back again for the big fireworks show on Monday night. Not unlike the Esplanade on the 4th, or on-street parking spaces in Southie during the winter, the citizenry of Our Fair City stake out their real estate for fireworks viewing early in the morning of that day. In fact, the even organizers have had to go so far as to tell people that they can't start putting out blankets until 9:00 a.m -- in Boston it was a bit of a tradition to start lining up for Esplanade spots in the wee hours of the morning of the Fourth, until 9/11 turned everything into a security risk.
As a rule, we are generally not well-organized enough to do things like stake out a picnic spot twelve hours before an event, but this year Bridget actually happened to be driving by the town green just as the die-hards were doing their Christopher Columbus act, and she had a couple of beach chairs in the back of her car. So she stopped and plunked them down on our own little corner of heaven.
To our general surprise, the chairs were still there when we finally showed up for the evening, sometime around 6:30. Our immediate claim-stakers had even left us enough turf to spread a small blanket. If we'd had a mule, we could have started dirt farming right then and there, but we settled for munching on Double-Stuff Oreos and other picnic-type snacks.
Given that we had several hours to kill before the Main Event, we took another pass through the carnival rides. On "Family Fun Day", the ride operators were ready to be a little lax about the height requirements for most of the rides -- Charlotte got to ride on the bumper cars, which she was too short for, and a kiddie ride she was too tall for -- but on Monday night the place was crawling with teenagers and cops, and so there was no leeway on the rides. She got to go on ONE ride and then spent the rest of her ride tickets playing in a bouncy house and some other climbing contraption.
Personally, I was a bit sick and tired of the carnival, so I was glad to hoof it back to our strategically-placed chairs, and stayed put when Bridget and Charlotte went for one more try at sneaking on to some rides. Somewhere along the way, everybody in America seems to have given up on the traditional aluminum beach chairs with the woven plastic seats and bought themselves a folding "camp chair". The camp chairs don't recline, but you sit at normal chair height, and, most importantly, they have cup holders in the arms. All of our American ingenuity can be boiled down to this one innovation: more cup holders.
As we were walking around in the crowd, we ran across a guy who had one of those camp chairs with a canopy that you see in the picture. I had instant canopy camp chair envy! Not only did this guy have cupholders, he had his own personal roof! Well, I gotta have one of those, lemmetellya. As it turns out, the next day I even read this Slate article that rated various camp chairs and rated this chair (made by a company called Rennetto) the best. They're not cheap, but you pay a price for luxury.
As the summer sky slowly began to darken, hundreds of townspeople began showing up for the fireworks. We even got to feel extra super special every time we overheard a group complaining about not being able to find a good spot. Silly fools, they should have staked their claim in the morning like us! Once it got dark and the fireworks actually began, it turned out that we could have chosen our spot a little better -- there was a tree directly across the street blocking our view. Charlotte, who had been very excited about the fireworks up until the moment they began, suddenly announced that she was terrified of them and spent most of the time of the show curled up in Bridget's lap, hands over her ears, shrieking and crying. She finally calmed down in time for the big finale, but she really did not like the show.
We had taken a shuttle bus from Charlotte's school over to the town green so as not to have to deal with parking, but the traffic leaving the green was bad enough that it took us nearly an hour to get back to the school (ordinarily a 30-second ride). It's just a little bit farther than we would want to walk, especially in the dark with a child exhausted from 45 minutes of non-stop terror, so we put up with the long ride home.
I don't know if we'll go back again next year. A couple of years ago we went to the Museum of Science's big do on the top of their parking garage and I liked that a lot more. Wherever we end up, though, I *will* have a camp chair with a canopy. And cupholders.
As soon as my girlfriend Kathi moved into your town she heard all about the 4th extravaganza. She lives literally across from the green that intersects Middlesex Ave and the rte number that escapes me. She bought a cool farmhouse with a barn next to the church and the local T.V. station building.
I'll have to check in with her and see what she thought of her first year.
Posted by Anonymous Coward [URL] at 07/ 7/07
I know exactly which house you're talking about. Talk about perfect location! Although, I'll bet she got pretty sick and tired of the four days' worth of crowds walking all over her lawn and making a ruckus.
Posted by Brian [URL] at 07/ 8/07
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