Independence Days of old

Today as I celebrate our independence by watching bad TV that I normally miss on a workday, I remember the 4th of Julys of the past. In the early 80's, we would all head over to my mother's cousin's for a family reunion of sorts. There, my grandmother would be reunited with her 3 remaining siblings. It wasn't unusual for her to see her sisters who all lived in the area but her brother and his wife lived in Arizona for as long as I can remember so having him come in for this every year was a big deal for her. For me, the bigger deal was being at Aunt Nancy's house and getting to see their kids who were right around the same ages as me and my brothers. At these get togethers, I got my hair french braided for the first and last time and got the shoestrings on my cool deck shoes (this was the era of the cool deck shoe) redone in the fashionable way which was similar to having two nooses on either side of the tongue and just slipping your foot in and out. Tying deck shoes was so out.

Once darkness set in, we would climb into the car of a licensed driver and head into town to Polly's supermarket to watch the fireworks from their parking lot, leaving the adults behind to jabber on and clean up. Then, in amongst all the traffic, we would slowly head the 2 miles back to the house. The most memorable time was when Kirsten, my mother's cousin's daughter, had her license. We all climbed into her father's very special convertible. She had to turn 90 degrees to get out of the garage and down to the road. She ended up hitting the other parked car in the driveway as she was doing so. Instead of the Polly supermarket fireworks, we saw some different ones up close from her father.

As I look at the group photo from our 1983 get together, it's rather sad to see all that are now longer alive and those who we are actually related to but who we have lost contact with. On a brighter note, I'm glad that I have hair no longer french braidable and boys aren't wearing their socks pulled up to their knees.