A Different Kind Of Fourth

It's the middle of the pandemic. The world is busy ending itself, and we are not allowed to even go outside to watch it anymore it seems. The Fourth of July has come, and this is the first year that we will be spending it in Texas since the very month that we moved here. In 2018, we were in California, and last year I was visiting Rish Outfield. Texas is supposed to be one of the most patriotic places in the country, so it might be neat to see just what they get up to on the most patriotic day of the year, but it was not to be.

There has been a spike in coronavirus cases here in Texas recently, and the government has decided to eliminate human interaction in response. So, this Fourth of July we were going to be sitting in our house crying softly to ourselves. They didn't cancel the fireworks (probably because at this late date, they were already contracted to pay for them and couldn't weasel out of it), instead they just closed all the places you could go to watch them. If you lived right downtown where the fireworks were launched, you could watch the show. If you didn't, however, they were providing a complimentary livestream that you could watch on your phone or laptop. That would be just as good as going to a real fireworks show. It's not like fireworks are something you have to see in person or anything.

So, stay home by ourselves while weeping quietly in a corner looked like our plans after all. At least, when the day began, it seemed like that would be the case. Instead, though, we got a call from some friends of ours. They were new to Texas, and they'd heard that all the fireworks that were illegal everywhere else were legal here in the Lone Star State. They went out and bought more fireworks than I had ever seen assembled in one place outside of an actual fireworks selling stand, and they invited us over for a barbecue and a fireworks show.

There were the usual things in there, like sparklers, and the kids enjoyed those. Mixed in with the average things, there were bigger things, like the fireworks that launched out of a mortar tube. And then there were the cake fireworks, where they pack a whole bunch of fireworks into a box that fire off sequentially after lighting just the single fuse. They had purchased a cake firework called "Say What?" I found a picture of it online:

This thing cost $60 all on its own, and it was going to be the big event of the night. We set off a few smaller cake fireworks before it, and they were so impressive that I made sure that my camera was rolling when we got around to lighting up the "Say What?" I thought it was pretty impressive, check it out:

The most interesting thing of the night, however was when a family drove up and rolled down their window. At first, I didn't understand what he was saying. I couldn't hear well from where I was. The guy said, "blah blah blah, kids, blah blah," and I thought he was asking us to put an end to the show because it was getting late, and his kids needed to get to sleep or something.

Turns out I couldn't have been more wrong. When I got closer, and was able to hear better, I found that he was actually asking if it was okay if he and his family could sit and watch our fireworks too. He had some kids, and he wanted them to have a fun Fourth of July.

We were happy to have them join us. They sat down, and we even ran inside to bring out some more slices of the pie everyone was eating for dessert to share with them. Their kids played with sparklers...well, at least the older one did. The little one was a little scared of them. We had fun, and made our way through all of the fireworks.

A particularly fun one that we enjoyed at the end were the snakes. If you don't know what I'm talking about, they are little black disks, and you light them, and they grow out in a black tubular shape that kind of looks like a snake (but really looks more like poop).

They had so many of these snakes, that we just piled them up, and lit them all at once. I thought they looked gross on their own, but when you have a whole mound of them, the growths that they made were absolutely frightening. Think Cthulhu's beard or something.

We had a great time before everyone went home, and the whole thing kind of restored my faith in America again. You see, the country has been tearing itself apart over the last month with protests and race riots. It seems like black and white people just can't get along anymore, and every day is worse than the last.

But we didn't have any problems like that. The family that came to join us was a black family, and they were good people and I'm pretty sure they thought we were good people too. We were all just people, having a good time together. They didn't judge us by our race, and we didn't judge them by their race either.

Maybe there is a future for us after all, if we just turn off the TV that is constantly encouraging us to hate each other, and just talk with our neighbors, friends, and co-workers instead. There could be something to this whole America thing after all, if we'd only open our eyes and see it.