The Sensible Families Let the Twelve Year-olds Drive Home

‘Fireworks illegal here, too,’ she said, chatting fondly about the old school Fourth of July days with a friend they couldn’t know would die within the week,

‘…which makes me nostalgic for those southern Fourth of Julys back in the day, in that humid Georgia heat where overloaded motorboats stuffed with family and friends piled-in putter over to join the crowd in the giant cove down the way and everyone drinks for hours and hours under boiling hot sun, half-feral kids swimming among boat engine slicks and playing tag around and underneath hulls with cousins and friends until sparklers, smoke bombs and fire crackers are finally allowed to be set off near all kinds of highly flammable liquids, everyone pouring rejuvenation a la Co’ Cola or Fresca, add Jack for adults, while waiting for full dark and then finally bursts of color and noise rain over bobbing multitudes of boats, reflecting new freckles on finally-settled-down faces until silence and dark return,

and then, in a sudden unified roar of engines a couple hundred and more motorboats usually steered by whiskey-and-beer-chaser-sodden dads — except the sensible families — take off in almost-unison creating mini-tsunamis, heading toward home and oncoming lightning storms while little kids in the back seasick-on-sugar puke off the stern...

‘Just not the same these days at all.’ she finished, lost in the rosy glow.

~ Happy Fourth ~

You are missed, Steve, thank you for bringing out the stories.