Monday, July 04, 2011

I’M TWO DAYS LATE!


According to Mom, I was due to be born on July 4th! The good Lord knew that would not wash, that that is all this fat head would need. Not to mention the suggestion that the fireworks were all in my honor!

Some of the best July 4th’s I can recall go way back to my youth. The beaches, parades and bar-b-q’s made the day real and I enjoyed them. However…

I went to college, and one of my courses of study was photography. Learning to shoot a picture, develop it, use a light meter, study light and composition. That meant that I needed an expensive 35 mm camera with a bayonet lens. (I used to stab people with my pictures. I’d stick them with one and say: “Here, look at this!)

Around that time, my two baby sisters were in an elementary school band, one played the clarinet, and one was a baton twirler. They would both be in the parades, preceding the long and never ending line of fire trucks that would bore me to tears. After the band went by, and I got all the pictures of #’s 3 and 4 sisters, there was nothing left but the fire trucks! Looking through the lens of a camera, I missed the whole parade!

“Ma, I missed the whole parade!”

“Did you get the pictures????”

“Ma, because I was taking the pictures, I missed the whole parade!”

“And?”

“So Ma, did YOU enjoy the parade?”

“Don’t get so smart, you’re not too big to use the wooden spoon on your head.”

And that folks is how the fireworks usually started on that day.

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