I’m going back to my roots for July 4^th, 2019. The 70s stick in my mind best about celebrating America’s birthday. I want to commemorate the date by eating simple burgers with Heinz ketchup and French’s mustard and a side of chips, no fuss. I want to relive a happy time that represents the America we all loved, the way I remembered it as a kid.

Classic!

My huge family of nine and my cousins’ less-huge family of six, gathered in our small backyard for a good old-fashioned party.  We didn’t really call it a party though; if we had, my mom would have bowed out—too stressful. That was sort of a fancy term. We were just marking an important holiday like Easter or Thanksgiving. We played tag or team hide-and-seek, girls vs. boys, spanning across three gigantic connecting backyards. At least that’s how I remember the three yards whose lawns touched and were only bordered by trees not fences, vast!

“Are the coals ready?”

We were getting hungry and it seemed to take forever for the grill to be hot enough. My dad, the master griller had a faded-black, boxy grill from the fifties that cooked our burgers and hot dogs (tube steaks my Uncle Bob used to call them.) The burgers were plain and really thick, never covering the bun. I preferred the hotdog, mustard only. We ate homemade potato salad, BBQ potato chips, and a veggie crudité of carrots, celery, radish (that nobody ate) and black olives to put on our fingers.  Dessert: root beer floats and slices of watermelon cut into half-moons with black seeds to spit out, no seedless.

Ate a bunch while taking this picture. Sacrifice for the sake of art.

While we waited for the skies to grow dark, the kids pulled out an old piece of plywood to light up the “snakes,” the black pellets that grew into wormy ashes and left behind a black, permanent mark. Hence, the wood platform and not a concrete patio. I vaguely recall my older brothers lighting firecrackers inside of tin cans to watch them fly into the air. All their fingers remained intact.

“Is it time for fireworks yet?”

We had lined up the sparklers and fountains in silver and gold or red, white and blue. Back then, fireworks stands were everywhere, usually a grocery store parking lot, cash only. Once the “audience” was comfortable in their floral cushioned chairs and chaise lounges, a cold Olympia beer resting in their hands, the show began. We started with sparklers lit with wooden matches. We danced around the backyard like fireflies and doused the charred metal sticks in a bucket of water with a sizzle. Over and over we lit, danced and doused. I bet it was a pretty sight from the audience’s perspective, but to a ten-year-old, swirling around the sparkler to spell out my name was the best.

My dad or maybe my uncle would place the coned-shaped fountains just far enough away from the patio to be safe but close enough to enjoy. We’d wait in anticipation for the small spray of sparkles to shoot up a few feet into the air and rain down on the moist green grass. Sometimes the fountain would smolder, bringing sighs and cries of “that’s a dud.”  The grand finale, the biggest fountain in the bag, shooting multiple colors into the air: red, white and blue.

Happy Birthday America!