I know not everyone is from America on these here pages, but I was wondering what everyone was planning on doing? It seems that these days the summer holidays are made just to have barbecue and beer.

Does anyone do anything particularly patriotic?

-- Anonymous, July 01, 1999

Answers

Well, what we would LIKE to do is go up the levee a few blocks away, with the rest of the folks in downtown Sacramento, and sit on the railroad tracks and watch the fireworks show from the state fairgrounds. (It's more fun than it sounds, sort of like a big block party only with explosives.) What I will be doing instead is sitting on the porch with the puppy, trying to get a glimpse of the fireworks through the trees. My boyfriend will be at his parents' house keeping their dogs from losing their minds during the fireworks down there, since his folks are on vacation. This will be a very doggy Fourth.

But next year, we'll be back on the levee.

-- Anonymous, July 01, 1999

I don't know what I'm doing. The only thing that happens on holidays is we (me and my Signifigant Other) just get in arguments over what to do and who to do it with. I hate his family, which is no big secret to him, and they think I'm Satan, so we never do anything together like that. I want to go up to Grass Valley and see my friends and little brother and hang out at the fairgrounds and watch fireworks. It's a ball. He wants to go camping in (get this) a place with FEW people and a good 4x4 spot. Ha. Good luck honey. What we're probably going to do is sit around all day Saturday, trying to figure out what we're going to do (because he never likes my suggestions, but he won't make a suggestion of his own), and then just go to CalExpo (whoo-hoo. yay. shoot me.) on the eve of the 4th.

Why do I let this happen, when i know it will? I'm stading firm this time...I know what I want to do, and if he doesn't have any ideas, then we're doing MINE.

I love my honey, but holidays are frustrating with him. Wow, I didn't mean to bitch here..sorry.

I like the levee idea though, I didn't know that that went on out here.

MellieBee, aka Fluffy Fenimore - my porn name. (to get your porn name, take the name of your childhood pet and the street you lived on...simple)

-- Anonymous, July 01, 1999

I'm going to Boston for a journallers' 4th of July! My roommate and I are going to wander the city with Patrick of "Inside" and Columbine of "Scherzi e Sospiri" at some point and then spend Sunday at Patrick's family 4th barbecue.

Since I never do anything for the 4th except the typical white trash South Jersey habit of parking on the highway to watch the Philadelphia fireworks without actually going into the city, I'm more than a little excited.

-- Anonymous, July 01, 1999

So far the best 4th's I've had were back in highschool. A bunch of friends and I used to ditch the family scene and have a barbeque of our own. None of us knew how to grill, so we'd have these great charcoal hamburgers and hot dogs. Then all twenty of us would walk to a local golf course to see the fireworks. Once we walked by this sad little kid trying to sell lemonade. You should have seen his face light up when all twenty of us stopped and bought a glass. His parents ran out with their cameras and made all of of us pose for them. I like to think of all of us being in some family's photo album. After the fireworks we'd walk to our highschool's atheletic field and play games like murder or freeze tag until the wee hours. Once I lost my keys and we played "lets all crawl on our hands and knees across an enormous field until we find Christina's damn keys." Those were great days.

This year my sweetie and I are living in a new place where we don't know very many people. We're inviting another couple over for a barbeque in our back yard... only we don't have a grill so it'll be more like colds salads in the back yard. maybe I can convince them to go looking for a lemonade stand.

Oh. I'd love to have a doggie 4th of July, though. Maybe next year.

-- Anonymous, July 01, 1999

I'll be visiting relatives I haven't seen in years. Also, I would like to mention that contrary to what pamie said in her entry, it IS legal to use fireworks in Texas. Just not everywhere. It is left up to cities to decide, and most cities in Texas ban fireworks in their city limits, but it is legal in rural areas. At least, this has historically been the case. pamie may have access to legal resources that I do not. ... ... ... ... .

-- Anonymous, July 01, 1999

I will be standing on the roof of my building in Brooklyn with the rest of the tenants watching the fireworks over the East River and be just as amazed as I was last year and the year before. I can't remember the name of the family that does them in NY but they are very famous and very good. Then I will spend the next six months saying that I want to work for them and then forget about it just like I did last year and the year before that.

-- Anonymous, July 01, 1999

Oh, Jon.

You're probably right.

See, when you have parents that don't let you use fireworks because your father had a bad cherry bomb incident when he was a kid, you tend to believe when they tell you that fireworks are completely illegal.

I forgot that we've got a lot of rural areas.

-- Anonymous, July 01, 1999

I'll be home for 4th of July!

I'm in London right now (business trip... and don't get me wrong, I love London, but...) I'm flying home on Saturday because on Sunday morning my daughter (17 yrs old) and I will be running in the annual 4th of July four mile race (for our fourth consecutive year) and then that night the town's annual fireworks display. (Yea! Fireworks!)

-- Anonymous, July 01, 1999

Yep pamie, you're right. No patriotism here....just beer and fireworks. And a whole lotta' both I might add! This year I'll be hanging out in the woods (I just lOVE the woods) on the abandoned train bridge, watching the local park fireworks (from that spot you can catch 3 different towns) and pounding beers until it's time for my honey to carry me home. This year's depressing for me so I have a reason. Nuthin but beer and fireworks, yep.....beer and fireworks and beer....

-- Anonymous, July 01, 1999

i'm doing the ultimate in patriotic, i'm going to Vegas!

We all know that American patriotism is just about the money anyway, right? Well, i'm betting they'll have some pretty killer fireworks there too...Las Vegas is nothing if not flashy.

-- Anonymous, July 01, 1999

Do something patriotic? Well, I could drive across the Bay to my childhood hometown and watch their 4th of July Parade, but the rest of my family isn't willing to get up early enough. ...My current hometown banned fireworks 10 years ago and stopped their arial display 2 years ago. ...The county fair won't have an arial display this year.

I could just stay home and watch Washington DC fireworks on TV --- NOT! ...I'll probably just BBQ with friends at the pool.

-- Anonymous, July 01, 1999

My hubby and I go to his family reunion in Osgood Indiana each year over the Fourth of July weekend... I guess the patriotic thing we do for the holiday would be the annual 5K in Greendale IN... but the rest of it is beer, barbeque, and fishing and swimming in the lake. Oh and there's the "fireworks" that some of the cousins set off each year... definately not like the DC fireworks that we saw last year for the holiday, but still pretty fun!

-- Anonymous, July 01, 1999

This fourth my hubby and I got tickets to go see Chris Issak at the Mandalay Bay (in Vegas where we live.) Usually I like to go watch the fireworks, but who can complain about Chris Issak? Especially when we get to go swimming in the wave pool at the same time. It's an outdoor show and he's playing on the stage above it. We are BBQing before and lighting some fireworks after. Sounds like a good 4th to me!

Nicole

-- Anonymous, July 01, 1999

I live in Canada, and yesterday was our version of the July 4th weekend. . .yeah, Canada day.

Every Canada Day, I take my kids to see a movie. . this year it was Tarzan, and I was quite surprised that I actually enjoyed it. We made it home just in time to see the parade my city puts on (a bit more lame than it has been in previous years, I was sad to note.)

For the first year ever, I took my kids to the fireworks (only because in the past they haven't been able to stay up that late). And I had my friend's daughter, my brother, and the two dogs, and neither of the dogs have ever been to the fireworks either.

Keith, Meredyth and Jade loved the fireworks. Em screamed and cried through the entire thing. Mouine, the 12 week old puppy, cowered between my legs, and Cherokee, the 3.5 year old shepherd/lab, had to be taken home.

What a zoo. Hopefully, everyone, child and canine alike will be older, wiser and less excitable.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 1999

LOVE the porn name, MellieBee. (I heard that's also how you pick your drag name.) Mine would be Schwartzie Bois d'Arc. (My poor hubby didn't have any pets as a kid! How does he get a porn name?) Or I could use the first pet I had on my own and be Roxanne North. Roxanne Hickory. Roxanne Melody... Yeah, I moved a lot!

I don't really like the big cluster-f@#% associated with going to see fireworks, but I do LOVE to watch them. I think they are one of the best things humans beings have ever invented. Fortuntately, when my hubby and I bought a house a couple of years ago, we discovered the coolest place to watch fireworks, without all the traffic and redneck obnoxiousness. It's even close enough to walk to, although usually WAY too hot to make the 4-mile roundtrip trek without melting. There's a hill overlooking White Rock Lake here in East Dallas from which you can see almost every city's fireworks. Last year we saw something like six different displays. None of them were terribly close, mind you, but still VERY enjoyable. No one really seems to know about our little hill, even though it's right by the overpass at a fairly major intersection. Mostly just the neighborhood goes there. It's probably illegal, what with the "new" open-container law here, but we usually lug a cooler of beers down there. (No barbecue, though -- as I mentioned in the Pillbug Incident, I am a vegetarian after all!) People walk down from their houses with lawn chairs and blankets and stuff, and we all have a groovy, laid-back time.

One of the coolest things I ever did on or around the 4th was last year. The city of Addison, kind of an inside-the-city-limits suburb of Dallas, has a fireworks display every year that they call Kaboom Town. We used to always go to it, because they normally have it before the actual 4th, but the traffic has just gotten too bad to put up with it, plus you just can't find a place to park where you can see the fireworks well. But last year I was working with a woman whose husband works in Addison, on the 13th floor of a building which overlooks the place where they shoot off the fireworks. They invited us to join them for their traditional fireworks-watching party there. It was great fun -- all these people brought food and beverages and their 10 zillion kids, and we turned off all the lights and watched the fireworks from practically eye-level. Talk about beautiful!

Have a bang-up Fourth, everyone! (And please be careful on the roads -- there may be drunks carrying coolers walking down them!)

-- Anonymous, July 04, 1999

Well, mine's a little late, but I had a pretty good time. We (girlfriend and I, and yes- after a year we're comfortable saying "boyfriend" & "girlfriend") got up very early to meet her brother at the lake to go wake-boarding. After enough tries to make me feel very inadequate, we swithed to being jerked aroung in a tube (not like a regular innertube's donut shape, more like a danish), which was as much fun to watch as it was to ride. There were tons of other boats out- evidently the remnants of a boat parade earlier in the morning- and everyone had water balloons and these huge water cannons to blast other boats. We were unfortunately without munitions, so Courtney and I took to the tube to try and gather ammo. This only made us a more attractive target, so her brother would try to get us close to other boats and then make a speedy get away. The result- we slammed into a pontoon boat (I believe the "Mary Jane"). Luckily we weren't hurt; I got a rope burn on my armpit and Courtney got a whelp on her butt from some rednecks who really know how to throw water balloons. So now I'm sore and tired and at work all night. Whoo! But hey, I did get to watch the Macy's fireworks display on the TV we have here. Did anybody notice the weird melange of celebrities they had read these patriotic speeches? The blonde from Dawson's Creek, Brian Dennehy, Ray Romano (who looked like he was about to crack up the whole time), a very stoned or plastic surgery-ed Bernadette Peters, and Rudy Giulianni doing a commercial for next year's fireworks display. God bless America!

-- Anonymous, July 05, 1999

Y'know, I don't really consider myself a patriotic type, but I have a huge store of patriotic songs (and dances!) left over from my show choir days, and I just can't bear to let them go to waste. So every year, no matter where I am or who I'm with, I insist that everyone sing with me. I start with one of the rousing numbers - "Grand Old Flag" is a great one to get the crowd revved up - and then downshift into "America the Beautiful" or "God Bless America" before whipping everyone into a fever with "Battle Hymn of the Republic". We end, of course, with the National Anthem.

Everyone HATES me on the 4th of July. I never make it through all my songs before someone votes to attach me to one of the fireworks. But at least I can rest secure in the knowledge that I've done my patriotic duty.

-- Anonymous, July 07, 1999