Small Town 4th of July

The 4th of July was an all-town celebration in North St. Paul, a town 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 out 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. As they rode 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, when I was about six years old, there was an actual parade down main street. The parade included the North St. Paul High School marching band, a group of men from the VFW and the American Legion, and a convertible from Thornton Motors with Miss North St. Paul waving from her perch in the back. Because my Uncle Bob Hunt worked for Thornton Motors, he arranged for me to ride next to Miss North St. Paul. I wore a white dress and a silk sash that dubbed me “Junior Miss North St. Paul.” The parade route was short, so my reign lasted only about ten minutes.

The parade also featured a float made by the Silver Lake Store. Because Leo Fortier’s uncle owned the store, Leo got to ride in the back of the float. He wore a straw hat and dangled a paper fish from the end of stick, pretending he was fishing. My brother Bob and other neighborhood boys, walked beside the float, along the parade route that stretched three blocks 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, jello, coleslaw, chips and brownies. Men from the American Legion grilled hamburgers for sale in the park. Our cooler was filled with soda for the kids and lots of beer for the adults.

Sometimes my Aunt Fran and my grandmother joined us at the picnic table. Adults visited with one another while we swam, chased each other in the sand, and probably argued over trivial matters.

VFW members sold raffle tickets, as they walked through the crowd of families. Hal Norgard stood up in the back of a truck, and in his booming basketball-coach voice, announced the winners of the hourly drawings. At about 3:00 the Bald Eagle Water-Ski club put on a spectacular show of beautiful girls in modest one-piece 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 4th 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 in the park, 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. I was in college and working at Camp Hitaga in Iowa, so I missed the party. I still love watching fireworks, and remembering the fun we had growing up. Like most things, the 4th of July will never be as much fun again.