I remember being young and knew it was summer when the corn was knee-high by the 4th of July. I did not grow up in the country (my cousins did) so our July 4th was always spent in the county (we were known as the city slickers). But I didn’t care. I loved (and still do) the country smell and the farm animals.
When July came around, I always loved picking out my red, white and blue outfit and practiced beating out my cousins during the parade when the candy was tossed from each of the hundreds boys baseball team truck. In addition, there was always mounds of delicious food and my grandma’s pickled eggs. (While I really didn’t care for the pickled eggs, I knew that when a batch was ready, it was July).
And every year, I always promised myself this year I am going to stay awake for the fireworks.
But never do I remember the temperatures being in the one-hundreds. So hot, you had fifteen seconds to swallow the popsicle or else your outfit was ruined, or so hot that all you wanted to do was sit in front of the fan in the house with a cool wet towel around your neck. Or so hot that the fireworks were canceled because of heat.
This year the crazy storm with gushing winds took out our town’s power the week before the holiday and with little to do other than count your lucky stars, most of the 4th of July was spend keeping cool and hoping the temperature would not be 95 degrees at 10 o’clock at night for the fireworks.
