Piccolo Pete

  Ooooh, Baby, It's the Fourth of July....well, almost.
  It's a love/hate relationship I maintain with this particular holiday.
  It's not the massive consumption of burnt farmyard animals, or the really unfortunate store front window decorations, it's not the over zealous patriotism... hell, we put up a flag every year... it's the noise. I love the big fireworks, but I really hate all the noise. It scares me. I'm afraid the windows will break, and glass shards will pierce my skin. The same reason I fear thunder. It's irrational thinking, I know. If only we could just have the big show of colors in the sky, sans the window shaking booms that follow. Sigh. Maybe someday.
  Back in the olden days, when I was but a babe, our family celebrated the 4th of July up at the Rose's house. All the gang would be there, loads of kids running amuck, jacked up on sugar. Loads of parents lettin' loose, jacked up on highballs. Big Fun. Everyone would arrive in the early evening, us kids taking straight off for the awesome treehouse in the back yard. If my memory is correct, it was like a club house, only up high. Maybe not in a tree, but way up on stilts of some sort. I do remember a ladder.....That's where we would be until the food came out. All the moms would bring pot luck dishes, the dads would be sucking down the highballs by the bbq, all putting in their 2 cents worth. There were a few picnic tables...paper plates, for sure, and soda. Dig in.
  After the major chow down, and before the big county fireworks display, out came the "Safe for Home Use" Big Box of Fireworks. Oh, yeah. Sweet. Always a crowd pleaser. The dads would get in there and start it all going, while the moms worried about how many ways a child could go up in flames with this stuff.
  In reality, and why I tend to go back to these memories of the 4th, is because it was all so tame. There were the matches that made "snakes" when they were lit, and the tiny, little cabin that would burn down to the ground, sparklers, and Piccolo Pete... the really high pitched whistle thingy. If the parents sprung for a deluxe box, we might get a few spinning, sparkling things, or the type that had sparks that shot about a foot in the sky. The biggest, baddest most dangerous thing you might have, and only in secret, and if you were a boy... would be firecrackers. Good old Black Cat firecrackers. If you really wanted to get your ass kicked right into trouble, you would light the whole pack. Whoa. BAD.
  I swear, now it seems like you can buy M-80's on any street corner, and colorful cardboard what-nots, that, when lit, will shoot 100 feet into the sky and explode like major artillery. Packs of firecrackers? How about entire boxes of them going off at one time? It's coo-coo, I tell you. Not to mention the sad sound of every dog in the neighborhood howling in pain, and every car with an alarm going off. This used to go on for weeks leading up to the big day. At least that has changed. The last couple of years it seems that it's just the week or so prior to the 4th that I need to wear earplugs at night.
  It's ok, you can call me a fuddy duddy. People need to celebrate. I get it. I just wish we could go back to when kids were held in total wonderment by a match that turned into a snake when it was lit.