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| Dexter, Sylvia and Boyd enjoy some food off the grill. |
I know it's late August as I write this, but I wanted to make note of the awesome 4th of July we had here at the Casa de Jones.
Eudora does it up big for the 4th of July. There are multiple fireworks shows on each block. It's a fun spectacle that I've learned to embrace.
As a kid, I was taught to hate fireworks. Jess remembers it that Dad had a friend who hurt himself with a firework... I don't remember that story specifically, but I know that Mom and Dad hated the noise and the mess that it brought the neighborhood. And since I was on my own with my parents a lot, I took on their opinions on most everything. So to me, the 4th of July was of course about patriotism, but it also was about going to the late night movies with Mom and Dad so we didn't have to be at the house when the "war zone" started.
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Our set-up. People walk by and are like, "Wow, you're ready!" They probably
think I've moved all the house furniture out to the driveway, but no....
this is just the garage furniture. The boys are playing air hockey. |
You know what it took to turn me on to fireworks? People. If it's an excuse to get people together, I'm in. And that's what the 4th of July has become at our house: an excuse to get the family together.
The fireworks themselves still make me nervous, especially with a 6-year-old. Evey doesn't seem too interested in lighting fireworks, but Boyd and his cousin Dexter are, and that makes me nervous as hell. I try my best to be careful and tell the kids to be careful, and we limit what they can set off.
We have been in Eudora for nine years now. I think it was four or five years ago that we first started throwing our own 4th of July party. Previously our family would watch the show and go to bed. But now, we're one of the big parties on our block.
Turns out Rod and his son Ben are big into fireworks, and that lures them out, bringing Lupe along for the show. Judy will bring Virginia. This year the Vignery-Romeros came, Brent and Rosalina, bringing their three kids (including my Goddaughter Lydia.) And this year my pal Sean Lipford also came out. So this year we had about 15 people here at the house, including my family.
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| Rod tries his best with one of the ill-fated lanterns. |
It was a scorcher this year! SO FREAKIN HOT. I was all excited to get the garage ready for the crew... but the heat was intense. As our guests arrived this year, a group stayed in the house to watch baby Lydia... and then after a while I declared that we should all go inside to enjoy some A/C. But no one budged, most folks just toughed it out to hang in the garage/driveway.
I had fans going and the A/C vent in the garage, it didn't do much. The shade was about all that helped (Adrianne has since bought for me a deluxe rotating fan that does a great job moving the air.) A group of us were sitting back by the kegerator, and I remember looking over at my pal Lip and the sweat was just dripping off his head. It was ridiculously hot, but the beer was cold...
To start the evening we had a group of guys playing with our washers game that Rod built for us... Ben and Brent Vs. Lip and I. The we sparked up the grill and got that going. Cheeseburgers and dogs were on the menu. Baked beans in the crock pot. It was all pretty good but it was a lot of work in the heat. I think next year we might buy a 10-foot sub sandwich or something and avoid the grill.
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As the sun went down we started lighting stuff off. Small stuff to big stuff. Lots of sparklers. A few smoke bombs. No bottle rockets allowed in city limits, that's like the one rule (sorry, Rod!) A few of those giant lanterns. For some reason they didn't work for shit this year, maybe it was too hot or the wind wasn't strong enough? Hard to say, but Rod and I ended up having to stomp on the neighbor's lantern at one point, and one of ours almost crashed into our house and our tree before barely floating away (there are a few unused lanterns in the garage right now, based on their poor performance.)
Virginia was chilling on the couch soaking it all in. As the evening gets late and the beers are flowing, I like to play a little Vicente Fernandez for Virginia... after all, what's more American than diversity?
I've got a lot of tequila here in the garage thanks to my father-in-law. We did only a few shots that evening. The most memorable was with my neighbor Dan. I went over to his party and said hi and invited him over for a drink... he later came over with one of his party people and we did a toast to good neighbors and then kicked back a smooth Don Julio Blanco. Or was it Tres Genaraciones? As you can imagine, things were getting foggy at this point.
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I spent more money on fireworks this year than I've ever spent in my life.
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Lip took this photo of me and posted it on Facebook. Yes,
that's the Impala in the background. I pretty much parked it in
my yard to keep it from getting hit, as a lot of cars come by on
the 4th. I yell "fire in the hole!" whenever I light a firework,
then run. But the kids were mad at me that night, saying
I wasn't running but slowly walking away. Old age. |
Dad especially would laugh at people who dropped big bucks on fireworks. "Nothing like setting your money on fire," he would say. So as you can imagine, I thought of Dad as I handed over my credit card to the guys at the fireworks stand, $150 worth of hell in my hand basket, money waiting to explode.
One of the boxes was called "the Mother Load." Another was "Shark Attack!"
I hid these two boxes and as the table of fireworks dwindled, people saw the end of our party coming. Rod and Ben said goodbye. "Wait, give me five more minutes!" I said. The mother load was next.
I came trotting out of my office with these two boxes in tow and proudly told everyone that it was the grand finale. This moment was worth the $50 I spend on these two boxes alone. The actual fireworks were just extra. Everyone was pumped to see what these boxes had in them.
I considered setting off both of them at the same time but Lip convinced me to do one, then the other.
The show was pretty good! They went off for oh... I don't know... two minutes or so? The sky was on fire above our house. It was a fitting end to a good party.
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By then, moms were tucking in kids, moms were tucking in moms and Brent, Lip and I were chatting it up by the keg. Sylvia was asleep on the couch. All the burgers and dogs were long gone. It was a heck of a party.
As always, you're invited next year. We've got plenty of room, and I seem to be willing to buy more $hit to light on fire each year. (Sorry, Dad!)
