Happy Fourth of July to all American friends!

When I was a kid, this was my favorite holiday, next to Halloween.  Because we lived outside of town, we could shoot off as many fireworks as we liked.  For days before the holiday, my siblings and I scraped bits of our allowances together and visited fireworks stands, thoughtfully shopping so as to make our meager money stretch as far as we could.

A large variety of crackers ensured we’d be active throughout the day.  In the morning there were snakes.  We carefully lit the black tablet and watched black, ashy coils unfurl in a welter of poisonous-looking greenish smoke.  We also bought snakes that glowed a fiery red for use after dark.

You could use a punk to light the fireworks, which the vendors gave free with a purchase, or matches.  I preferred the matches.  Punks often went out.  They looked like incense sticks only with no scent.  I would use them until I got disgusted with them and then switch to matches.

Snappers, tiny sacks of powder that exploded when flung hard onto the concrete patio, left a mess of tissue and not much excitement.  Better were champagne poppers.  You held the plastic bottle with the end pointed away from you or anyone else and pulled the string, releasing a loud bang and a cascade of tiny colored streamers.  I liked these because I could take the streamers and decorate my Barbie house with them.  We made so many things for our dolls it was only natural.

Smoke bombs were a great favorite.  They hissed and spit, their colors wafting over the lawn.   It was fun to put two or three different ones together and watch the colors combine in the breeze.  Sometimes one would fizzle and sit inert on the gravel driveway; after careful observation, it was concluded that it was a dud.  We consigned the poor bomb to the depths of a metal washtub full of water.  All dud crackers, the spent remains of sparklers and burnt-out matches and punks went into this washtub, no exceptions.

I don’t remember our parents being out there much with us but the rules were absolute.  Always have the tub of water handy.  Never EVER hold a cracker in your hand; light it on the ground and get away.  Don’t point anything at anyone, especially bottle rockets.  If we violated these rules, the fun was over until next year.

Nowadays, kids aren’t allowed to touch anything.  We probably courted death every year, but none of us ever got hurt save a burn or two from a hot sparkler, which we quickly learned not to touch.  The bottle rockets were usually shot from a soda bottle angled against a pile of gravel.  Occasionally we held the stick when Mom wasn’t looking, but I didn’t like that because it was too scary and sometimes left a pink splinter when it zoomed out of my hand.

Thunder Bombs or Black Cats made a deafening noise.  I always loved to light a string of them and let them all go off at once, so I got a packet just for that.  We liked better to light them one at a time.

We did demolition: little piles of gravel in a cone shape with a cracker in the top like a stick of dynamite.  Crouch over it, excitement fluttering in the chest, and touch the flaming match to the fuse.  It sparks, hissing and crackling.  Scramble up and away, always with the terrible fear that one might slip and fall and remain in dangerous proximity to the impending explosion or running, miss it.  When far enough away, the breath held while the little fuse burns itself out.  Finally, the crack and boom of the tiny blast, gravel scattering everywhere, up and out.  A dance of laughter and elation, and back to the driveway to start again.

As the day wore on, lunchtime came.  We retreated to the cool house to eat.  There was always a lull in the afternoon.  Sometimes we had guests who usually arrived close to evening.  In the summer it usually didn’t get dark until nine o’clock.  My parents’ friends would bring their kids and we would run around outside, stuffing ourselves with hot dogs, potato salad and other goodies.  Homemade ice cream followed.  Someone would have to turn the crank, and another sit on the top of the freezer because the ice cream container liked to migrate up as the crank turned.    A folded pad of newspaper served to shield shorts-clad bottoms from the ice packed around the container.

My mother often made a juice and ginger ale punch.  It tasted orangey and fizzy and delicious.  One time someone brought beer, and my dad let me taste a tiny sip.  It was terribly bitter and the grownups laughed at the face I made.  I’m still not a fan of beer, although I like a good dark ale now and then.

I would break out the parachutes, cardboard tubes with a plastic bottom that shot a wadded-up missile into the air.  It unfurled as it fell into a tiny pink or yellow parachute with a little ball of sawdust as a weight.  Though they made sparks, I shot them during the day so I could find the parachute after they were spent and play with it later, prolonging the holiday.

When evening fell, fireflies made their own fireworks around the yard. They flashed greenish-white in the deep shadows over the rose beds close to the house.  Out came the sparklers, long metal sticks coated with combustible solids.  They looked like long gray punks.  A match flame held to the tip and they burst into a shower of light.  The sparks hurt like hell if they fell on skin, so we were careful to keep them at arms’ length as we waved them around in the dusk.

Flowers spun on the ground with a buzzing hum and changed from pink to yellow to green.  They were so energetic!  We lit Catherine wheels.  We hung mysterious flat packets on the branch of a tree that whirled madly and dropped a paper lantern that could be kept (unless it caught on fire).  Cone fountains sparkled orange and white on the driveway.

Dark came and time for the Roman candles.  This was the only firework I held in my hand.  I would light the fuse and point it up into the sky, angled slightly.  I could feel the thumping burst in my palm as the ball moved up through the tube.  It arced up into the sky but I scarcely saw it, absorbed as I was in the sense of power pulsing in the flimsy tube.  If I had kids now, there’s no way I would let them do that.  Thinking about what might have happened if the candle blew up makes me shudder.  It never did, though.

The night wore on and finally it was time for the big guns, the large rockets.  Again the soda bottle came out, this time jammed into a shallow hole in the ground some distance from the house.  My father and I usually lit these.  The guests would sit on lawn chairs with their littlest kids drowsing on their laps, oohing and ahhing over the chrysanthemum bursts and chasers and waterfalls.  After the last one had gone, they cheerfully packed up their chairs and leftovers and drove away in a flurry of thanks and good nights.   Time for bed for us.

The next day we always had to pick up our trash, bottle rocket sticks, torn paper, stray parachutes and dud firecrackers.  We played Fourth of July for days afterwards with rocks and the stems of weeds standing in for actual fireworks.  For some reason it usually rained the day after the Fourth.  My mother told us the fireworks shook up the clouds.  We liked that.  We controlled the weather!

The significance of the holiday was lost on us.  We never really thought about the fact that we were celebrating our freedom from British rule, that without a posse of brave and ragtag soldiers we still would have been oppressed and controlled by another country.  Our history is far removed from most of us and we feel entitled to the freedoms that were paid for with blood and pain, frostbite and starvation.  A fitting legacy to this would not be fireworks, but a continued search for peace among all men, regardless of race or creed.  We don’t need any more wars.

Start in your community.  Promote tolerance and understanding.  Get to know your neighbor, your enemy.  Stand in his shoes and see what he sees.  You might be surprised to find you’re not so different after all.

Update – After a couple of weeks with the pool cover on (mostly), the birds have vacated the tree.  Seems they really only wanted a toilet after all.

tears up*

Naahhh… WOO FREAKING HOO!

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blogging to bring you a ranty message from Disgruntled Pool Owners of Missouri vs. The European Starling!

Normally, I like birds.  Flamingos, roseate spoonbills, eagles, doves, even pelicans have their charm.  Well, maybe not; if you’re sitting on the beach when a flock of pelicans flies over, you might want to have an umbrella.  But not starlings.

Spoonbill at the Tucson, AZ zoo. Lovely bird. Yes you are. (Photo by Elizabeth West)

In 1890, in New York City, someone who wanted to have all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays released a bunch of starlings, among other birds, in Central Park.  I hate him and want to desecrate his grave.

Remember the government stimulus checks everyone got a few years ago?  I called them Dubya checks.  With mine, I purchased several DVD sets of Looney Tunes and a 12×3-foot backyard pool.  I don’t regret the DVDs in the least, but the pool is starting to get on my nerves.

First of all, whatever genius built this Fifties tract neighborhood made the backyards (mine, anyway) from fill, with a thin layer of topsoil over it.  And the entire yard slants toward the house.  The soil is disgustingly fertile and so far, everything I’ve planted grows like a maniac.  The weeds do too, unfortunately.

Where to put the pool?  I couldn’t put it on my patio, because it would be in the sun the entire day.  I’d tried that already with a smaller, inflatable pool and it just wasn’t an ideal location.  I don’t like hot pool water, or sunburns.

My neighbor to the west has a beautiful, tall linden tree in her yard, whose shadow cools the far south end of my yard during the afternoon.  A perfect spot.  A few leaves were no big deal.  I attempted to dig out a large flat circle and level the yard a bit, to put the pool down.  No dice.  With all the rocks, I just couldn’t do that effectively.  So the pool leans a bit.  No biggie.  I can deal.  The water stays level, after all.

I have no outside outlet, so I have to run the pump off an extension cord.  Also no biggie.  I would just do that once a week and clean it with the net the rest of the time.  Linden trees drop a ton of teeny tiny seed things in addition to leaves, but they aren’t difficult to scoop out before I settle into my floaty paradise.  Even bugs aren’t a problem.  They mostly stay on top and come right out with the leaves.

For two summers, I enjoyed floating in the shady coolness in my inflatable chair, a can of Arizona Green Tea stuck in the drink holder, or attempting to swim a little (the water only comes up to my thighs).  I anticipated just such a relaxing time this year, and as soon as the weather warmed, up went the pool.

And then, they came.  The starlings.

They like water.  I knew this, but I didn’t know why.  Now I do.  They use my sparkling watery paradise as a toilet.  They perch on the edge and blast their white, black and purple bombs right into my lovely, lovely pool.

Evil poop machine from the bowels of Hell.

Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I’ve swum in lakes, oceans, creeks and ponds.  You expect a bit of poo in there.  After all, living creatures use these bodies of water as their homes.  But pools should not have poo in them.   They should be pristine.  They aren’t natural.  They’re artificial constructs of chlorinated perfection, and bird poo is not welcome.

And if you have guests, it’s embarrassing.

These birds roost in the mulberry tree next to the pool.  Unfortunately, it’s not in my yard, and I can’t cut it down.  So I did the next best thing; I bought a cover.  That’ll help, right?

Wrong!

Missouri. Is. WINDY.   It starts in October and doesn’t let up until July, when the weather turns to hot, humid hell.  Gasping, sweaty people flock to the city pools and their backyard oases, praying for a breeze that never comes.  And the wind flutters the tree limbs, blows the linden flotsam across the grass and flips the pool cover right off.  So everything on it, linden seeds, leaves, bugs, bird poo, runs right off and into the water.

I give up.  Seriously.  There is no way I can work all day and come home and deal with this disgusting mess.  Stop using my pool as a toilet, birds.  I’m going to Walmart and buying a BB gun.  Gonna shoot into the tree and scare the little bastards away.  Gonna buy some shiny Fourth of July streamers and hang them in the tree and freak their little bird minds.   I don’t feel one bit sorry for them.  I’d hire a bird removal company, but I can only pay them in cookies right now.

If you have any suggestions or a bird story of your own, please feel free to share in the comments.  PLEASE.  I’m taking applications for bird hitmen.  I’m paying in chocolate chip and molasses drops this week.

Since severe weather season is upon us in the Ozarks, I thought I would share my scary story with you.  First, a little background.  When I’m not writing, I work for a manufacturer in my city’s industrial park.  We’re out east of the city, in a big bare spot carved out for the park.  Last year, on May 8^th, my workplace got hit with a tornado.

That morning, the TV weather warned that a derecho was on the way.  Meteorologists expected high winds, possible tornadic activity and heavy rains from this storm, sometimes known as an inland hurricane.

The sky was utterly black; the streetlights were still on.  As I drove, I felt a creepy unease.  For some reason I had worn my watch that day, which I usually don’t.  I glanced at it.  It was ten to eight; it could have been midnight.

At work things were as usual, but people got up occasionally and went to the windows to check out the sky.  It had lightened enough so the streetlights were off, but still scary dark.  I had the radar up on my computer, as did several others.  Around 8:30, the National Weather Service put out a tornado warning for my city.  We stopped working altogether and gathered near the bathrooms, our safe place.  A vendor came in for his weekly visit and we invited him to shelter with us.

Suddenly the wind rose sharply, and the building began to shake.  Our safety manager yelled “GO! and we all broke and ran for the bathrooms.

Inside, we could hear the building creak and the wind howl.  The lights went off and the emergency lamps came on.  I was so scared I grabbed a coworker’s hand and held on tight, until gradually the winds began to subside and silence crept over us.  We could hear something creaking and flapping and I said, “Something’s loose.”

We came out and immediately went to the windows, which fortunately were still intact.  Our plant across the street had been hit.  An enormous section of the roof lay gnarled up on the ground east of the building like a giant, crumpled gum wrapper.

Weirdly, a plant worker’s pickup truck, which had been parked on the west end of the parking lot near the access road in front of the stricken building, was now out on the access road, pointed back at Plant 1, where the office was.  Although the Weather Service never confirmed it, that’s when I knew for sure it was a tornado; it had blown the roof off one way, and moved the truck the other.

Little chopped green bits of leaves had been plastered all over the windows and when I went out later, I found them all over the door.   A semi trailer that had been parked at Plant 2’s dock was blown over.  We were all afraid it had crushed our shipping manager’s car, but he’d parked on the other side and it was okay.   He later said he hated that car and he wished it had!

The wind picked up again, and the radio blared high wind warnings until 1 p.m.  No one could go outside for a while.  When it began to slack off, the vendor excused himself and left, and people ventured out and discovered that windows in several vehicles had been broken.

Mine was okay because it was parked between two of my coworkers.  A small tree we liked to park near in hot weather was completely uprooted.  The tornado had snapped the power pole behind us clean in half, and tried to suck the big company name letters off the building.  Several of them were broken and some were gone.

It a very scary and exhausting day, but it could have been much worse.  No employees in the office or the plants were injured.  This was a very bad storm that killed at least four people in other counties in my state and destroyed numerous homes, businesses and schools.  The governor had to declare a disaster area.  That seems to be something we are starting to get used to hearing in this area, unfortunately.   Between ice storms (that’s another story), flooding and tornadoes, I think I’m ready to move!

Here is a reminder of storm safety.

• Severe storm hazards include tornadoes, powerful straight-line winds, flooding and lightning.   In an electrical storm, stay indoors, away from windows and off the phone (landlines mostly).  Don’t take a bath or shower during a lightning storm either.  Yes, it can get you there; Mythbusters confirmed it.

If you’re caught outside in lightning, experts advise not lying on the ground.  Lightning travels through the ground and you don’t want to expose yourself to it.  Instead, crouch down and cover your  ears.  Be a basketball with feet.

• In a tornado, seek shelter in an interior room, away from windows.  A closet or bathroom is good if you don’t have a basement.  Sit next to the wall and cover your head.  DO NOT GO OUTSIDE TO LOOK AT THE TORNADO.  Flying debris can kill you!

Outside, get out of your car and into a ditch or low-lying area.  Lie flat and cover your head.

DO NOT seek shelter in an overpass; it acts as a wind tunnel.

• Straight-line winds can reach up to 80 miles an hour and cause as much damage as tornadoes.  Safety tips are the same as for tornadoes.  In a car, pull off the road.  High-profile vehicles are especially vulnerable.

• Floods kill the most people in storms.  NEVER drive your car into flood waters!  You can be swept away in less than two feet of water.   Remember, turn around, don’t drown!

The links contain more information about severe weather hazards.  You can read about the May 8^th, 2009 derecho on its Wikipedia page.