Sparklers are the most amazing invention- although I remember them as burning endlessly years ago, where today, they seem to last just seconds. All day now, since reading your beautifully evocative post I've been thinking about different fourths of July ..
One of the saddest ones for me was the summer after my mother died. We had sold her house in the Shenandoah Valley and gone back to Virginia to finish cleaning it out. Dan rented a U-Haul and he and CW took off on the Fourth to drive back to Dallas, leaving Ammo and me in my eerily empty childhood home.
Down Route 11 about three miles east of Lexington (pop 10,000), on the way to Fairfield (pop.not enough to even make it to the map), there's one of those roadside shacks, the kind with Confederate flags hanging on a line, next to fluorescent paintings of Elvis on black velvet. THe gravel drive is packed with ornamental yard objects-- I swear the same ones that have been there since I was a kid--ugly cement toads and gnomes, pink flamingos, stone birdbaths. The inside is rickety and dusty with that old smell you find in historic places. The same old man is there behind the counter. Well, it couldn't be the same one I guess- we're talking 35 years, maybe it's a son. The little room is packed with shelves holding ashtrays with pictures of LExington, or VMI or Robert E. Lee's tomb. And then on the back wall are the firecrackers. My father and brother always did the buying of the important stuff- the things that were BEHIND the counter; that was a man's job. I was only allowed to buy the sparklers and the snakes.
Before Dan left, we drove out there- isn't it weird, all those years, and I can't put a name on that place.
"That place out 11 with the firecrackers."
And we bought some sparklers and snakes and divvied them up.
Mother's house was on a court and it had the most wonderful porch, not like the pretend porches you get on new homes nowadays that aren't big enough to hang a swing. Hers was deep, about ten feet I guess, with big old oak trees shading it, and comfortable chairs and chaise lounges. And that night my dear friend Lynn, who lived next door, came over with a bottle of wine, and we sat on the porch steps as Ammo and her daughter, Kate, went out in the street and lit snakes and a few bottle rockets with much ceremony, the same way my brother and I used to thirty years before. When it was dark enough, they got out the sparklers, and ran through the yards, giggling and hollering. It was such a timeless scene. I felt old and young at the same time, a part of some amazing continuity. I guess that's what I miss the most about the past, that feeling of connection to your world. Roots.
The phone rang, and it was Dan and CW, somewhere between Virginia and Texas, in a roadside motel. They'd been driving all day, and were whipped, but they wanted us to know that they were lighting their sparklers, and for us to light ours at the same time. So I hung up and called Ammo, and we all lit our sparklers together. |
