July 5th 1997 in anticlimatic

Whenever I think of the 4th, I’m always drawn into a very particular and fairly unlikely memory. I’ve had my share of parades, and fireworks, and BBQs, and traumatic events (an apartment complex I worked at burned to the ground one year while I was “on call”), but for whatever reason anytime I think of it I only ever revisit my 15 year old living room, at 1:10 am, July 5th 1997. I know it was that time because my parents had this tall octagonal clock hanging from the living room wall throughout my entire childhood, and I remember looking at it after I came in. I remember hearing the old screen door slam shut behind me, and that even indoors I could still hear the crickets. In the house the lights were off, except for the light above the stove in the kitchen, and the glow of the TV. My dad was up late, winding down from a hard day of social drinking, and he was watching The Godfather and taking his socks off.

I think I had rode my bicycle around and mingled with friends all about town earlier that day, though I don’t recall exactly. Too many youthful 4th of July’s blend together…like the last year I remember seeing Clyde, my own Godfather. We got into his car, which was parked on 3rd street a few blocks down from the party-at-our-house (4th of July in my hometown is a pretty big to-do. Parking- including any and all space to put a vehicle, regardless of official “parking space” status, disappears for multiple square miles on that particular day. Anyway-) In his car, we located his cigarettes, and put small charges into them that supposedly would burst the cigarette shortly after lighting. Never found out if they worked, and I don’t have any other memories of seeing my Godfather after that particular 4th. Alcohol got him, I think.

I remember making out with a girl in the back of her van, learning that fish net stockings might get the eyes going, but do nothing for the skin. A cop put out the fires of that tryst shortly thereafter.

I remember watching my dad light off at-the-time illegal fireworks with a blow torch in the street in front of our house, with his buddy our neighbor, who supplied them from out of state. Cops broke up that tryst as well.

Many more. But always, primarily, the smell of my 15 year old house in the summer evening with the windows open and a box fan roaring in the living room. I had a feeling that night that I’ll never forget; that I knew I’d never forget, at the time. That feeling of reaching into the future from the warm cradle of everything you’ve ever loved and been blessed with.

Last updated July 04, 2020