h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You can’t make a story like this up. I have come to grips with being a hillbilly living in Palookaville. I can cope with stupid politicians, idiot architects, recalcitrant contractors, smellfungus attacks, insane library patrons, illness, death, plague and famine. But why, dear god, can’t my relatives spend the evening together, just once, without it turning into sheer bedlam?

My family usually celebrates Independence Day with a get together that
includes a cookout and fireworks. When I was a kid they were always held at our house because we had a very large yard and lived in a town that didn't restrict fireworks. We always set up a volleyball net in the front yard, horseshoes in the side yard, and croquet in the back. Plus, there was a community swimming pool two blocks away and the river was less than a mile. It was a perfect place for a family gathering.

Once my grandparents and some of my older aunts and uncles began to die, the custom fizzled out. The younger generation, tired of hearing the combat stories from these events, decided that we needed to reinstate the family tradition. So a few years ago we started meeting again on July Fourth. We have been taking turns hosting the affairs. Last year it was at my house. Yesterday it was at my Cousin Randy's.

We were all supposed to gather at 5:00 pm. I baked a hugh blackberry
cobbler, bought some 'night works' to add to the fireworks display,
packed up an assortment of homemade wine - cranberry, pineapple and pear - and drove over to collect my mother.

When we arrived, the grills were in the process of being lighted and
Cousin Jim was inside making up the mix for the ice cream freezers. It
was a wonderfully cool evening for July, so we decided to set up outside in the shade of two large maples and a cottonwood.

Mother is now the oldest living family member. Uncle Harvey died at age
96 during my trip to England and was buried the day we attended the
Chelsea Flower Show. Anyway, Mother uses her position as family
matriarch to get special treatment at family gatherings. When she thinks someone is watching she leans a little more heavily on her cane and sighs deeply and pitifully as she struggles to either sit or rise from her chair. She would have had a good career on the stage.

Randy, good host that he is, rushed to help Mom to her chair, patting
her arm and steadying her along while the rest of us rolled our eyes and Aunt Vi whistled a chorus of God Save the Queen under her breath.

The collection of lawn chairs grew as people continued to arrive. Jim
poured the ice cream mix in the freezers and added ice and salt and
plugged them in. Randy's brother Dick was the designated chef and
started checking the coals. Dick's mate Loretta busied herself setting
out plates and cutlery, buns and fixings for the burgers and franks,
salads and chips, baked beans and Cousin Pam's macaroni and cheese. Pam always brings macaroni and cheese. It is dry and tough and just disgusting.

Loretta walked over to Mother. "Aunt Jessie, would you like something
cold to drink?"

"Do I know you?" Mother replied.

I jumped in to keep the peace. "Mom, you remember Loretta. She's the one
who made that fruit salad you liked so much last year."

"I'm an old woman. I can't be expected to remember everything," she
complained, giving us a pathetic, brave little smile.

"That's real nice of you, Loretta. Mom, would you like a glass of punch?"

I saw Aunt Vi waving at me and shaking her head vigorously. "Or how
about a glass of Dr. Pepper? That's your favorite."

Loretta brought the cold drink and Mother had only taken one sip when
the guys decided it was time to start digging into the fireworks stash.
Out came the firecrackers, bottle rockets, smoke bombs and howlers.

At this point I should probably mention that the youngest persons
present were my cousin Trish's 16 year old daughter Sandy and her friend Pam. The family is in a bit of a slump at the moment small children wise. My great nephews are the only young children in the family and they live 235 miles away. So, it was adults playing with the fireworks - behaving like children.

For some reason Jim has always loved smoke bombs. He couldn't wait to
get to them. He set off a white one, a green one, and a yellow one. Mother remarked that the smoke might keep the mosquitoes away. You have to understand that this was the closest thing to validation Jim had ever received from Mother. He was genuinely touched.

“Aunt Jessie, what’s your favorite color?”

“Purple.”

Jim dug a purple smoke bomb out of his bag and held it aloft. ‘I’m gonna set off this purty purple smoke bomb for Aunt Jessie.” Both of them were beaming.

He touched his cigarette to the fuse and reared back to toss it onto the lawn when it slipped out of his hand and fell behind him, rolling directly under Mother’s chair.

She sat, stiff as a board, as she was completely engulfed in purple smoke. We were all laughing so loud we couldn’t hear what she was saying, but it sounded like she called Jim a little piss ant.

Just as the smoke was clearing, Jim’s brother Jake arrived on the scene and exclaimed, “Aunt Jessie, I didn’t know you could fart purple.” This caused everyone to whoop with laughter again.

Mother turned to me and demanded to know if I was laughing at her. As soon as I could catch my breath and wipe the tears from my eyes, I denied it. She started to get teary, so we decided we’d better try to calm her down. Jim apologized and assured her it was an accident and Randy patted her on the arm again and kissed her on the forehead. She was the center of attention, so it turned out ok.

Dick quickly fixed Mother a plate of food and brought it to her. And Aunt Vi poured her a glass of punch. She ate more than I’ve seen her eat for ages, so I was feeling good about that .

“That was good. Pete, go get me a bowl of your blackberry cobbler and put a scoop of ice cream on it. And I’ll take another glass of punch.”

I headed off to do her bidding when I realized that the ice cream freezers were still whirring away. The ice cream should have been ready long before then.

“What’s wrong with the ice cream? It should be ready by now.”

Jim added more ice and salt to the freezers and Randy took Mother’s pie inside to put some ice cream from the store on in. I found Aunt Vi lurking around the punch bowl and quietly asked her what the hell was in the punch. She pointed to the empty gallon bottle of cranberry wine I had brought then broke into a gale of laughter.

There was a bottle of Sprite nearby, so I filled Mother’s glass half full of Sprite and added enough punch to give it some color. She was taking it from my hand just as Randy arrived with her pie.

“What on earth is this?” she demanded.

“It’s the pie you wanted, Mother.” I looked at it more closely. Randy had topped Mother’s blackberry pie with lime sherbet.

“This looks like slop. If I wanted to eat slop, I’d have had some of Pam’s macaroni and cheese.”

My cousin Gayle and her husband Bert emerged from the house carrying three oddly shaped objects made out of pvc pipe and a bag of miniature marshmallows. It seemed that Randy had made himself some marshmallow blow guns and hadn’t told any of us. When I challenged him about this, he said that he used them to shoot marshmallows at rabbits.

For the next 40 minutes we totally reverted to childhood. We ran around whooping and hollering, shooting each other with marshmallows. Everyone took a hit or several, including Mother. At half past 7 she had had enough and demanded to be taken home.

“You’ll miss the fireworks. It will be dark soon.”

“Not soon enough. I’m an old lady. I’m tired..”

I agreed to take her home and threatened my cousins with dire consequences if they started the fireworks before I got back. I’m not sure but I thought I heard applause as I drove away.

“What was that noise?’

“What noise, Mother? I didn’t hear anything.”

“That Jim’s a piss ant. But your Aunt Vi finally made a decent bowl of punch.”

I have never had to work so hard at not laughing in my life.

I deposited Mother at her house and was back at Randy’s by 8:10. “Is the ice cream ready?” The freezers had been whirring away for three hours already. “Not yet” Dick went over and added more ice and salt.

We all rearranged our lawn chairs to face a large open area where the fireworks were going to be set off. Each one of us had brought things so there was an enormous table full of them. The designated fireworks masters were Randy, Jim and Bert. It wasn’t really dark enough yet so they started with some of the little chasers, cacklers, bottle rockets, the rest of Jim’s smoke bombs and a lot of firecrackers.

At some point Sandy and Pam noticed that people at a house south of us and at a slightly higher elevation were also shooting off fireworks. This particular house is new and is a sore point with Randy. The owner bought a wooded area and cleared it for a building site. The trouble is that the best blackberry patch in the county used to be located where the house is now standing. Neither property has a fence. With the help of binoculars, we could see them clearly.

Just at dusk the neighbors shot of a hugh canon that went extremely high and burst into a ball of blue sparks. Randy, who is normally pleasant to everyone yelled at the top of his lungs, “Is that the best you can do, blackberry killer?” He set up a cannon and retaliated. They shot another one. Randy and Jim each shot one. They put off a fountain. A hugh fountain. When everything got quiet we could hear someone shouting, “Eat that, shitface!”

War was declared.

“Do we have a fountain that big?” Sandy screamed. “Find something really big.”

“Quick,” I shouted. “We need a higher launch pad.” We all ran out to the shed and carried concrete blocks and plywood to build a platform about four feet high. We put it where it was clearly visible from the other house. The great fireworks duel of ’05 had begun.

We shot off a “psycho” as an opening salvo and called them something I would be moderated here for repeating. They retaliated with what looked like a “King Tutankamun” and an equally rude remark. This went on for about a half hour until they ran out of fireworks. The man walked out into clear view of us and flipped us a bird.

We had only used about a third of our fireworks. Randy lit something that made a death’s head face in the sky. It was an absolutely priceless moment. I enjoyed it so much that I am ashamed of myself.

So, there we were, cousins in our late 40’s and 50’s, behaving like children as usual and making asses of ourselves. We had enough fireworks left for nearly an hour. It was glorious.

We finished the evening by turning off the ice cream freezers and drinking the ice cream. It made darn good milkshakes. Aunt Vi had gone inside about 8 O’clock and had slept through the entire thing. I think she sampled a little too much of her punch. And it looks like Randy has inherited the Fourth of July picnics. Now we have a reputation to defend.

Superb! Can I come next year?

And me, too.

I am *so* coming to your house. I haven't had a 4th like that in years, let me tell you.

I remember one down on the Merrimac at the family cabin that involved my grandmother and a nest of baby cottonmouths and a paddle...oh, that was some 4th.

What is it about people in Missouri and the 4th of July? Dang.

What a fantastic story!!! I was laughing out loud all the way through it.

*At w**k and trying not to laugh too much*

This is why UK firework parties are rubbish... we have them in November and at new year when it's too cold and/or wet to barbeque. The usual procedure is that everyone will shuffle into the garden wrapped up warm, the master of the fireworks will light the Roman Candles (one of which won't work), a couple of rockets (one of which will narrowly miss the neighbours green house) and a Catherine Wheel which will have been nail far too securely to the fence post and instead of spinning madly will wobble for five minutes before going out.

The next morning there'll be reports on the news of some yahoo posting fireworks through somebody's door (which are ususally the only fireworks of the year that actually work properly) and somebody will call for a ban.

Hyp, if I find myself at a loose end next July can I come over?

I have just laughed so hard I had to do a daring last-minute coffee-cup keyboard rescue swoop. Luckily the coffee is all over my sweatshirt now and not on anything expensive. Gosh, but that sounds like a fun evening.

And I laughed so hard I had to blow my nose. I'm going to print this and show it to Cille so she can have an idea of the sort of people who will be coming here in October.

Oh lord, Lil. If you do that, she's likely to batten down the hatches!

Shall I bring some marshmallow blow guns?

YESSSS!!!

Bwahaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaa.

Hmm... Let's see... About a 4-hour drive southwest for a full day's worth of insanity and just plain cussed good fun...

I'm in!

B4idevote10%ofeachpaycheck2financeenoughfireworks

With all of you coming next year, it looks like we'll need a new ice cream freezer or two.

Come one, come all. Everyone is welcome.

I know where you live.



You had me when the purple smoke bomb rolled under you rmom's chair!
... wait a sec. ... MY mother's name is Jessie ... and Aunt Vi ...
...*pokes at Hpy with a stick..*
You on the Youngless or the Cerlan side?

... and when the neighbors shot off a really pretty fire work I yelled, "Oooo ... you all are gonna' give OUR men an infe-eeee-ority complex!" Then the fella' sREALLY let um have it! Ka-flipping-BOOM! ... after grandma laid down one of the fella' sbrought out a little herbal remedy ...
Hyp, we be related or we be an awful lot alike!

Pan, the names were changed to protect the guilty. My mom is actually a Josie, not a Jessie.

Can't think of anyone who would fit right in with my relatives better than you, luv.

It's a glorious story Hyp, *that's* how to celebrate.

I spent all last weekend cooped up in a hotel conference room, while my brother paid a surprise flying visit and took my parents out on a glorious boating trip.

Well it was a rubber dinghy on the river Dee. But they lost an oar which he dove in after, fully clothed, leaving my mother desperately hanging on to some branches to avoid being swept out to... erm, the Irish sea, I think. I haven't needed to know where the Dee goes until now. My father, responsible for the lost oar, sunned himself in the bottom of the boat.

The only excitement I got that weekend was the 3.00am fire alarm. Mind you, the range of oufits on display in the hotel carpark had its interest.
Waz

Good grief. Sounds like an adventure. I have never been in a rubber dinghy. Don't think I want to be. As to the fire alarm, hope you didn't get caught in pink bunny slippers or something.

Our picnic was fun. I desperately needed to spend some time with people I could just be silly with. We all need that sometimes. But when that purple smoke bomb went off under my mother's chair, I thought things had gone a bit far even for us.

The purple smoke bomb is priceless.

I know what you mean about people and time to just be silly with. That's why I'm peeved to miss the dinghy. Last time I was in one I was given the engine to operate as I was at the back.

I was handed an eggwhisk.

Pink bunny slippers? Oh no! I'm an old hand at hotel fire alarms, I always take a dressing gown and have it at the end of the bed with my shoes and the room key. One poor lady rushed out barefoot into the corridor in nothing but the tea shirt she'd been sleeping in. And her door shut behind her.