[Written with love and appreciation for my mother, father and sister, my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Thank you for all the good things.]
The Glorious Fourth
Fourth of July in St Louis back then, we woke up to the vegetal, earthy and moist dawning
of another day in the steamy Mississippi River valley. We ignored the weather. My family had a July 4 tradition that stood firm, and remains unchanged in my memory from the earliest I can conjure till my early 30s.
Midafternoon, we gathered at my mother's ancestral compound in South St Louis County (est.
1840), which we called "the country." And with good reason, at the time. At the nucleus sat a generations-old white clapboard farmhouse, summer kitchen, and tiny log smokehouse no longer in use ("there are SNAKES in there!!”). And just down the slope, a barn and other outbuildings. (“I’ll lock you in the old outhouse!") The farm acreage, usually in corn, lay to the south. A small tomato and strawberry patch grew in the portion closest to the house, and sometimes we cousins,seven in all, were allowed to pick the bounty.
I loved our holidays and I treasured our family compound. On July 4, mid afternoon or so,
everyone would gather at " the screened-in place," as someone generations back had dubbed it.
There the old, white and very long picnic table quickly filled with my mother’s, aunts’ and Grandmother Warmbrodt’s platters of deviled eggs and raw veggies, plus pastel plastic bowls of baked beans and potato salad. German potato salad, of course. Down at the end, covered cake plates promised mysterious pleasures for later.The uncles eventually fired up a barbecue grill, rounding out our feast with burgers and brats. This was after they returned from a trip across the Meramec River into Jefferson County for a load of contraband fireworks.. We ate and talked and ate and laughed and ate and then... time to gather our webbed chairs into a circle on the lawn and wait for nightfall.
About this time one of my restless younger cousins could be counted on to set off a bottle rocket waaay too close to the group. I still picture one of these mini missiles whizzing past Aunt Kathryn’s right ear. A good-natured soul, she just flapped her hand and chuckled. "You boys stop that now!" was as harsh as she ever got.
Twilight came, so did mosquitoes. The sticky evening air grew heavy with Off! and citronella. Would it ever be dark enough to start the show? But by 9:15 or so the moment came. Wow a Roman candle! Whee-- a fountain! What colors! Isn’t this fun, to have our own family fireworks? Oddly, what I remember more than the specific displays is the sight of my Uncle Rudy and Uncle John bending to light the fuses, then running backward out of the way. We kids were not allowed anywhere near the launching pad.
Fumes of gunpowder and punk rose to penetrate the miasma. Finally the last overhead shards of fireworks died away, in that slomo downward spray that makes you think you could race over and find a tapestry of glitter on the ground. But our show wasn't done! We still had the sparklers! I can picture the circle of faces illuminated by zapping magic wands, and particularly the sweet and homely face of one ancient great aunt, awestruck by the wonderment of that incredible thing that sizzled in her hand. On that night, all of us could be wizards.
Too soon, it was time to leave, toting encrusted casserole dishes and American flags. My cousins needed only to walk across the lawn or down the hill to reach their homes, but my family of four piled into the car and rode half an hour back to central St Louis County, humming and scratching chigger bites all the way. And one more time before we reached home, my dad could be counted on to intone: “The glorious Fourth... yes, the GLORIOUS Fourth.”
Years later, my visits to county parks taught me that our family fireworks were perhaps laughably humble. To me, though, our homespun Fourths remain the gold standard. Glorious indeed.
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