I checked with my brother to make sure that my memories of the Fourth of July, growing up in Minnesota, were true ~ not some made-up Norman Rockwell picture in my mind. While I had some of the basic facts straight, Bob’s memory for details was razor sharp, as usual.
The Fourth of July was an all-town celebration in North St. Paul, a town of 2000 people that covered one square mile when I lived there. Early in the morning, while my parents were drinking multiple cups of coffee and smoking cigarettes, we kids washed our bikes and decorated them with crepe paper. We wove crepe paper through the spokes and tied streamers onto the handle bars. The boys put playing cards on clothespins and pinned them to their wheels. Riding up and down the block, the noise from the playing cards sounded like motorcycles. Or at least the boys thought they did. We didn’t organize an actual parade. We just rode up and down the street, until our parents were moving and something more exciting happened.
One year there was an actual parade down main street, that included the North St. Paul High School marching band, a group of men from the VFW and the American Legion, and a float made by the Silver Lake Store. Because Leo Fortier’s uncle owned the store, Leo got to ride on the back of the float. He wore a straw hat and dangled a paper fish from the end of stick. My brother and other neighborhood boys walked beside the float, along the two-block parade route that stretched from the VFW club to Sandberg’s Mortuary. Bob remembers being exhausted by the time the parade was finished.
The family picnic began at lunch time. Before Highway 36 cut the town in half, the picnic was held in a large, beautiful park next to the railroad tracks. Later, the picnic moved to Silver Lake where, if you went early in the day, you could snag a picnic table. My mother packed a lunch of potato salad, coleslaw, jello, potato chips and brownies. Men from the American Legion grilled hamburgers for sale in the parking lot. Our cooler was filled with bottles of soda “pop” for the kids and lots of beer for the adults.
Sometimes my grandmother joined us at the picnic table. Adults visited with one another while we swam, chased each other in the sand, and fought over trivial matters. So much for Norman Rockwell.
VFW members sold raffle tickets as they walked through the crowd of families. Hal Norgard stood in the back of a truck and, in his booming basketball-coach voice, announced the winners of the hourly drawings.
At 3:00 the Bald Eagle Water Ski Club put on a spectacular show of beautiful girls in modest bathing suits, performing all sorts of amazing tricks on water skis. Since we didn’t know anyone with a boat, I never learned to water ski. Given my athletic ability, it’s probably just as well.
As the sun went down, we pulled out a bucket of worms and tried fishing off one of the docks until it was time for fireworks. Huge, loud, booming, once-a-year fireworks! Maybe they pale by comparison to today’s pyrotechnics, but to us they were absolutely magical.
Later, sometime in the 1960s, the Fourth of July picnic became an Ice Cream Social in August. My Dad’s Dixieland band, the Polar Bearcats, played for the crowd from a platform on the side of a truck, as the Ladies Auxiliary sold ice cream cones. By August the lake had turned green from algae and “dog days” had arrived. Gone was the smell of hamburgers on the grill. . Like most things, the Fourth of July would never be as much fun again.
Sounds like the whole day of the 4th of July was magical back in the day in North St. Paul. Growing up in Dallas, our big event was to go to the fireworks show at the Cotton Bowl. It was sponsored by Tom Thumb Grocers, and I think you got some sort of discount on the ticket prices through the store. It was a long drive from where we lived in north Dallas, but I remember the fireworks being so dramatic and beautiful and definitely worth the drive. One year my friend Ruth went with us, and a real gully-washer downpour started during the fireworks. We got drenched scrambling out of the stadium seats and into the tunnels, which had standing water already, to escape the rain. We were all soaked, and I remember getting laryngitis afterwards.
Loved your blog. And it brought back so many memories of childhood Fourth of July‘s. I spent my summers growing up in Gunnison Colorado with my aunt and uncle. Gunnison was big on community events. The Fourth of July was one of the biggest, with a parade and often a traveling carnival and the coup de grace was the fireworks display in the Western State College bowl, sponsored by and managed by The Rotary club. It was an expensive and very big deal with ground displays and aerial displays and an announcer who narrated the program. The whole town turned out along with many for miles around and tourists/campers. We would get there early to get bleacher seats and many would bring picnics and blankets and sit on the slope of the stadium, Later lying back to watch the aerial displays. I can still remember the oohs and aahs. And a sore neck in the morning. We ate hotdogs and popcorn and snocones and saw all our friends and neighbors.
After I grew up and married, I took my husband and our three kids back to Gunnison more than once for the Fourth of July. It was a tradition that lasted a very long time. Only recently have they moved the fireworks to the town park. I’m sure it’s not the same!
Yes, but the memories are instructive and often fun to play with. We recognize that there is always change, but not always for the best. This prepares us to meet each moment of each day with the recognition that it is special.