Driving through my memories

Yesterday, while I stood in my kitchen for more than 8 hours performing the (now-expected) ritual that IS July 4th jam making, my mind wandered to the July 4ths of my youth …

My folks have a lovely home in a lovely neighborhood that is now considered to be where the old-money Republicans live. My dad is what I'd call the unofficial "Mayor" of the neighborhood. (There's one on every block. Typically a geezer that's been living there the longest that knows where the water lines are, which home Old Miss Jaton kept her 40 cats in, that kind of thing.)

Growing up here was an experience I wouldn't trade for the world. We had oak trees to climb, snakes to play with, frogs to capture, a creek to cool off in during the one or two heat waves that seemed to happen each summer, poison oak to catch when we got careless, and a LARGE blackberry gulch that you could carry your bowl of morning cereal to and pick the ripest berries straight from the bush and head back up to the house for your cold milk. There were downsides, 'tho … we had wild critters that we DIDN'T want (skunks, coyotes, the occasional mountain cat, tarantulas), and we were on a septic system until I was in the 7th or 8th grade. It was only after the county allowed us to get onto a sewer system that building began. After that started, the dirt road was paved (not by the county, but by my folks and another couple of neighbors that wanted to control the dust) and, while the road doesn't have an actual sidewalk and still gets random potholes, it's no longer the same to me.

July 4th would start in the early morning hours. Assuming my dad wasn't working at the firehouse, he'd be up first and would sometimes make pancakes or bacon and eggs or, if he REALLY wanted my sister and I to wake up, liver and onions. We had an eccentric neighbor that lived several blocks across the valley that would blast the Star Spangled Banner through speakers aimed to echo throughout the various homes, so come 8:00am, we were up and moving about. We stopped going to the city parade when I was young because I showed very little interest in watching other folks being watched (it's only interesting if YOU get to be in it, too). We could spend the day with any kind of animal - our dogs, Daisy and Buster; Puff, our cat; any of our 26 or so chickens that were always fun; Copper, my sister's horse; Comet, the horse we leased property to; Charlie our pony; or Cookie and Chuck, our goats.

Around Noon, Dad would take Fred, his Chevy pickup truck, and drive it to the school parking lot, just around the corner at the end of the street. He'd back it into a prime space, the idea being that the family would get chairs and watch the fireworks from the back of the truck. WHY he felt he needed to block off space was a mystery to me. My sister and I were the only kids for blocks and no one really would be up there with us later on. We'd eventually have dinner, and then my Great-Aunt Ynez would walk over from her house and she and my mom would spend an hour or so popping corn and melting butter and filling a grocery bag with it.

We'd trek up to Fred in our bare feet (in the summertime, I can't ever remember wearing shoes as a kid), and complain about how the dirt road hurt to walk on, and "are we there yet" and the other various annoying things that children do. But when we finally settled in and the fireworks began, that's when it really felt like a holiday. Because of the lack of surrounding homes, the view was clear and you could easily imagine that all this was just for you.

After the finale, my sister and I (newly energized from knocking in an entire bag of popcorn), would race each other down the street and to home. Because of the lack of streetlamps and ANY surrounding homes, more often than not one of us … ok, ME … would stub a toe in the process and the other sister would stop, turn, and with utter concern in her eyes and sincerity in her voice, she'd yell out a big "HA-HA. Ya' klutz!" and continue on her way.

In time, the road would be paved, my Great Aunt Ynez would join her beloved husband in Heaven, the crazy neighbor with the speaker system would cease and desist, Charlie would be given to a family with a young child and lots of land to roam on (a lie I'd uncover ONLY as an adult) and the properties would suddenly bloom in oversized houses filled with children to make their own memories.

After running errands this morning, I drove to these various locations, to visit the ghosts of my memory. My sister now has two young girls of her own and lives on a dirt road (only one dog so far). My folks are still in the home of our youth, and the school and Ynez's place remain intact and in use, if not extensively remodeled.

I'm fortunate that I can return here at any time. While it is VERY comforting for me to see these places, it also serves as a reminder to me that I'll be returning to Biloxi, MS a little over a month from now to help in the process of hurricane recovery so that new buildings can be created – not to replace any memories for those that remain, but to be filled with new stories and new families and new traditions.

I guess I celebrate my independence by being dependent upon touchstones because they're available to me. And that those things are there at all is something I am thankful for.