Feel Good Friday: Fireworks, BBQ, and Lemonade - Favorite Summertime Memories (Your Replies Wanted)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Hey there! Happy Independence Day to the USA folks - Happy July to the rest of y’all!

I was thinking today about Firework displays - it’s been a long time since I’ve seen them live and up close. But I remember in the summer of '76 when I was a wee thing and it seemed like we were seeing fireworks every weekend with all the local Bicentennial celebrations.

I remember sitting in a local ball field waiting for the fireworks to start. I had a bright red balloon tied to my wrist and my older brother kept trying to bat it with his hand. I ran, trying to keep it away from him, and giggled as he chased me around the bases. Then suddenly I realized that when I ran, the balloon dipped down and he could reach it, but when I stood still the balloon raised so high he couldn’t touch it. So I ran and then stood still, ran and stood still, laughing all the time.

Later that night the fireworks were just magical - they seemed to be right above us, and like lighted weeping willow boughs just seemed to reach down to us - it was amazing. I remember going home amazed.

So I was wondering - what are some of your favorite July memories? Whether the 4th celebrations, or just in general - let’s remember back when.

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We’d spend the day in the Washers’ back yard. The Washers were an elderly retired couple, and about as nice as can be. Every 4th they’d throw a party. Hamburgers, hot dogs, a giant bag of unshelled peanuts, weird-flavored sodas for the kids, and beer for the grownups.

I can still smell the green grass and shady trees, and can still feel the crunch of peanut shells under my feet.

After dark it was off to the local fireworks.

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I love those kinds of memories. Define weird flavored sodas!!

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I have a July birthday, so that’s my favorite July memory. :smiley: I got to be wild and free all day and then come home to presents, ice cream and cake! Of course now I have to act all grownup and work on my birthday except if I decide to take it off. How unfair! I say one should not have to work on one’s birthday.

The Fourth memories I am fondest of are the big family celebrations at my aunt’s and uncle’s house in the country. We’d go to a creek down the road. This creek was crystal clear and cold because it was fed from an underground spring. It was shallow so we waded or floated on inner tubes. AHHHHHHHH… Then we’d have burgers and dogs with all the fixin’s plus homemade ice cream and ice cold watermelon. In the evening we’d shoot off fireworks in a big field on the farm. Good Times!

Since this is Canada Day, here’s hopin’ all the Canadian Dopers are out makin’ some good memories today!

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swampbear - I could feel that mix of hot sun and ice cold creek water when you typed that - sounds like fun :slight_smile:

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We lived on a street that ended in a creek. Now I would complain about the mosquitos but when you’re six or seven you don’t care. By July or so the creek would be pretty low and we would go down there and wade in the water and pick up strange things I’d never touch now. Once we followed the creek down until it got up to our chests; we didn’t dare to go any further than that. The only reason I really remember it is I couldn’t tie my shoelaces yet, so I’d take off my sneakers and then come home with the laces trailing and get scolded for it. :slight_smile: Ah, good times.

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Strawberry, lime, blueberry… Stuff that only comes in store brands.

One year I went to the fireworks in a young adult’s convertable. Instead of being stuck with my lame family, it was just “us men.” I felt so grown up!

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I remember the way we would find everything in the water fascinating. As a kid, we’d go up to this hunter’s cabin in Maine - the neighbors had water access and would let us swim there. We’d spend hours tracking mussel trails - digging up the mussels and filling them in buckets filled with water only to have to dump them out again because mom wouldn’t cook them for dinner.

Ah yes - being grown up - so cool! I remember being able to ride around in my parent’s old wood-paneled station wagon. Felt so cool - and so didn’t look it!

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I’d stay over my best friend’s place on the weekends when we didn’t have school. We’d play Tomb Raider or Resident Evil until well after midnight, then once the world was silent and completely dark we’d lie on the grass in his back yard (so the fence-line obscured the worst of the streetlights around) and shoot the shit while staring up at the stars. We’d point out shooting stars and recognisable constellations, and on more than one occasion fell asleep on the grass, in the warm darkness.

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My uncle’s birthday is Independence Day, so we’d all gather up at his place for a big party and fireworks. You know, the dangerous kind that are just as likely to blow up as they are to go off properly? And sparklers… tons of sparklers. Don’t ever walk aroud barefoot with a lit sparkler, trust me. :smiley: Aunt and uncle live within walking distance of a small lake, so we’d spend the afternoon there swimming and fishing… and watching my sister do an unintentional belly-flop off the diving board. Ow…
For some reason I remember my uncle dropping an unopened can of Coke in the lake while we were fishing. He dove in to try to find it but couldn’t. The next year we were up there swimming and someone found the can! It was still sealed and everything. I can’t remember if anyone drank it tho.

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As a kid I would be at summer camp for the 4th.

On the 4th instead of regular dinner there would be a huge afternoon cookout. Burgers/dogs, potato salad, pasta salad, and watermelon.

They would gather us on a hill as the sun went down behind the Adirondacks, and have a fireworks display just for us (The local volunteer fire dep’t would even come to provide safety backup). There would be ice pops (always those Twin pops), or if we were really lucky, those frozen lemonade pops (well, at least I liked them more.)

The camp had a large number of British counselors. I remember once on the 4th there was a huge waterballoon fight, with the British and American counselors on either side. There was also a “My Country Tis’ of Thee” vs. “God Save the Queen” sing-down, lol.

I LOVED my summer camp, so all these memories are extremely misty and fond.

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There’s a point when you are doing that when you just know it’s special, being able to do that - and that just makes it even more special doesn’t it? Love the imagery - thanks for sharing!

Those are awesome memories - so cool about finding the cola!

That’s so cool! My mom was one of the cooks at a summer camp one year - and so I was the resident camp brat for 2 months. I got to be a camper the weeks it was my age group, and the other weeks I stayed in the staff house with mom.

One week of camp, the teens did a camp-wide, week long Capture the Flag event - it was so much fun. We learned a lot about strategy and tracking that week too. But there should have been more water balloons!

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When I was growing up in northern New Jersey, my folks had an annual 4th of July picnic at our home for years and years. We had roughly an acre and a half of ground, so there was plenty of room for a lot of people.

We had horseshoe pits back behind the garage on what dad used to call the ‘north forty,’ us kids had a great swing set, woods nearby to run around in, a big sandbox Dad built by hand, no less, and the pièce de résistance, a huge tree with more branches to climb than God has ideas. I miss that tree to this day. :slight_smile:

We had a long driveway that came up and spread out around the back of the house, providing a big flat surface where they’d set up long tables buffet style. I can still see those gingham-checked tablecloths waving in the breeze. Before the meal, everybody had brought lawn chairs to sit on and they’d settle in near the garden mom had and talk and gossip. The summertime beer of choice? Carling Black Label. I wonder if it’s still made…

The food was phenomenal. The ladies sure knew how to cook. Folks brought EVERYTHING you could possibly want to eat at a summer picnic. And it all got eaten, too.

I have mother’s huge antique ironstone bowl from those days. It’s big enough to feed a small army, and she used to make the most awesome cucumber salad in it.
Mom’s other specialty was baked beans. The recipe isn’t written down. It’s just in my head – straight from hers. I’ll be putting that together this afternoon in fact so it can marinate for a day or so before I slow-bake it, then take it to - you guessed it - a 4th of July picnic.

For a guy in the 1960s, Dad was no slouch either in the cooking department. He had a couple of bbq grills (charcoal-fired. No gas grills back then) he’d pull out to cook on. He always had plenty of help, too. The smell was mouthwatering: chicken, brats, hotdogs, you name it, it could have been on that grill.

After we were all done eating and it got dark, we’d load up in the family station wagon (a 1964 9-passenger Pontiac Bonneville. You could have knocked down a building with it) and a whole wagon train of us would head off to the local park to watch the fireworks.

We kids would run around chasing fireflies until the show started. Good times, indeed.

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When I was growing up as a kid, we were pretty poor, but my folks managed to get us passes to the local “swim club” every year. We also had swimming lessons there. This wasn’t a country club, just a private pool to which you needed to have a pass.

I remember getting up every morning and being slathered with sun screen. Then finding the raft and loading it into the car along with our towels, a lawn chair for mom and of course my goggles.

You had to go down a big grassy hill from the parking lot to get to the pool. Sometimes you had to set up your stuff on the hill if you didn’t get there early enough.

There are a lot of kids I knew from the pool that I didn’t know from school (they went to different local elementary schools). It was weird to run into them again in high school and be all “do I know you with clothes on?”

Sometimes mom would pack a lunch for us to take with us and sometimes we’d just come home by lunch time.

Lots of times we’d go to the pool even if it was cloudy or cold. After all, we did have to show up for swimming lessons if we wanted to pass!

The lifeguards were local teenagers who spent most of their time yelling at everyone to stop running by the pool.

I saved up my money to buy snacks at the concession stand. My favorite was Lik-em-Aid.

We stopped going when I became a teenager and it was first noted that I was fat. I had actually been fat all this time. Just no one picked on me! I think my brother got a little leery of being picked on too.

But we spent probably 10 summers going to the pool, from ages 2-12. Maybe even longer.

I get goosebumps at the smell of sunscreen, I loved it so much. I still swim, even though I am old and fat.

The pool is long gone. I think they closed it maybe 10 or 15 years ago and sold the land to what is now a private school.

Boy do I wish I could go hang out at the pool right now.

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That sounds straight out of a Hidden Ranch or Pepperidge Farms commercial - I definitely would have had a blast at an event like that!

I was thinking the same thing! We didn’t have a pool, it was a man-made lake. You got a pass for the summer and had to clip this little vinyl square to your bathing suit to show you had paid. Wild to think of people asking you to swim around with safety pins stuck on your kids . . .

And I want to go swimming too now!

Foul! I call Foul! You must share something now!!

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My favorite summer memories are sitting in the backyard, carefully mashing up Mr Freeze pops so I could squeeze the slushy goodness out of the tube instead of having to suck the flavor out of a frozen pop and leave a tasteless hunk of ice behind. Cream soda flavor was always my favorite, but the purple and red ones were good too. We’d sit on the big blanket out in the backyard - you had to move around a little sometimes because the ground underneath was lumpy and would get really uncomfortable after a while.

I also loved sloooooowly smooshing down the side of my inflatable kiddie pool until I got a rush of water all over the lawn in an awesome splooshy waterfall.