We’re coming up on the Fourth of July. The Fourth comes as just another day here in Northern California, so the Fourth has come as just another day for me for many years now, many more years than when the Fourth was a day of spectacles.
Milwaukee had an old-fashioned Fourth of July parade, downtown. Even when I had graduated college and was living on my own, I made sure to make it the parade along Wisconsin Avenue, the parade route lined with mostly families, little children holding flags, their eyes wide as they saw another float following the one they’d just seen, filled with loud music, animals, and waving strangers. I loved the Fourth of July parade, in particular the “20 horse hitch,” a team of horses whose driver held all twenty leather reins in his massive hands, his eyes on the team, who had arrived in the city for the day from the Circus World Museum in Baraboo.
One year, I was sick on the Fourth of July, and I watched the parade from my old black and white television set. I didn’t want to miss it.
A favorite memory is a relic of the Fourth of July: laying on a blanket in the grass on a in hill Washington Park, also home to the Milwaukee County Zoo – which has since moved, many years past. I was little. I lay with my Dad to my right, and as the night came on, and deep dusk surrounded us, we watched the fireworks flashing overhead. Dad “oooohed” and ahhhhed” at the sight, and from time to time, I looked over at him as he enjoyed the fireworks – apparently as much as I did. I had a safe feeling, then.
The Fourth of July passes like just another day here in the Bay Area. A few times, when we heard the booming begin in the distance, Jeff and I climbed to the top of a small hill on the strip of land we call The Panhandle, leading from our fence to the next street, and we looked at the fireworks flying across the San Francisco Bay, from cities up and down the Peninsula. I can’t replay the Fourth as I remember it from the Midwest, though, where summer is so precious, and when the Fourth means that in a month or so, it will be time to think about getting back to school.
