7/4/99 Declaration of Independance.

The All-American Holiday-
My neighborhood is kinda unique. I live on a short cul-de-sac: my house guards the entrance to the dead-end street...next come "Alan the gunweilding White Supremacist", and across the street from him is Scott "the jerk that kicked his family out of the house so his girlfriend could move in", next to Scott is Pat and Judy; arguably the most normal family on the block. and lastly there is my in-laws Ted & Patty.

On past "Days of Independance", we have had what could be described as a block party. This year was no different. My family congregates at my in-laws place the barbeque gets cranking everybody brings a salad....Norman Rockwell would be proud.

As in past years, Pat and Judy had a bunch of relatives visiting from Tacoma for the weekend...they started drinking shortly after breakfast. Now, I'm not a prude...but I outgrew the drinking thing when I left college... others it seems haven't.

Things were pretty quiet until sundown...fattened on potato-salad, I sat in the front row with Monica and the kids, while the drunken morons of the neighborhood demonstrated why hard alcohol and illegal fireworks from the Indian Reservation are a poor combination.

What was originally billed as a show for the kids quickly escalated to a demonstration on how to get the big mortars to explode at head level rather than hundeds of feet in the air. The audiance, comprised mostly of children, were showered on six different occasions with white-hot sparks and embers. A couple of minor injuries later, and I was ushering my children into the safety of the local fallout shelter.

leave it to the drunk to transform the 4th into something our founding fathers wouldn't even recognize.

...stop,drop and roll.