Fourth of July
Memories of old-time Fourth of July celebrations excerpted from interviews in Bittersweet magazine, available online at thelibrary.org.
FOURTH OF JULY by Kathy Long
Bittersweet, Summer 1981
…the Fourth of July was exclusively a day of excitement and light-hearted fun. The objective of the Fourth of July then, as it is now, was to have a good time, whether you celebrated at home, watched the annual parade in town or attended a community picnic at a scenic spot in the country. From the first bang of a firecracker early in the morning, till the last skyrocket burst from the sky in the late evening, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that it was a very special day.
"Fourth of July and Decoration Day were days of celebration," said Grace Johnson. "The first thing I heard every Fourth of July was the blowing of the anvils at the blacksmith shop here in town. They put dynamite in them and blasted them up. It'd make a big noise as they'd come up and down, 'pop.'" …
..."We usually stayed at home," said Lucy Caffey, "but Dad would try to get us some firecrackers and things to shoot. We couldn't hardly wait till it got dark to get to shoot the firecrackers. We didn't have a lot of them then, and I can remember the first time I ever saw one of them things that you throwed up in the air and then it bursted. Oh, I tell you, I thought the world was coming to an end when that went off up there. I remember I screamed when that done that. I didn't enjoy that at all." …
...Bill Amos said, "Granddad Amos and Uncle Noah and Uncle Dee were at home then and we had an old muzzle-loading gun. It was quite a treat to get down Grandfather's gun of July Fourth morning and load the old gun. If you put enough powder in, it'd make a lot more noise than an ordinary gun. We always shot that off early on the Fourth of July." …
...People who lived and worked in town usually had the day off and could attend fireworks displays and other public celebrations.
"On the Fourth of July, we always had a big town celebration," said Grace. "Everybody went out for that. We always had a big parade. The town band marched and led the parade, and we always had a big parade with a lot of floats--patriotic floats, and all the organizations. We'd have the Statue of Liberty on one, and one year we had Uncle Sam riding a big white horse. He was the marshal of the parade, I guess you could say. And one year forty-eight of us little girls marched. We wore skirts of red and white bunting and a white blouse and then a scarf across it--blue, with the white stars, the red, white bunting draped across the shoulder of one side and the name of our state in the blue. We were supposed to represent the forty-eight states, and I was one of them. Which one was I? Rhode Island, the smallest state, 'cause I was the smallest girl in there. We had all kinds of patriotic floats, and especially after World War I, we'd have the soldiers and the sailors on there and the old Civil War soldiers used to march, until they were too old. I know my grandfather was one of the last Civil War soldiers to march in any of these parades."
"On one Fourth of July," remembered Roy Amos, "the corn got its last plowing just about that time, and I do remember once, we were able to get away. We worked hard to get away in mid-afternoon to go to a picnic somewhere, but we were then up in our early teens."
"In some places--not in our immediate neighborhood--they would have all day picnics," said Lois Hough. "Of course, the visiting meant a lot to the young folks. Some of them would catch a new beau."
Vohn Waterman said, "They used to have picnics here at Eldridge on the Fourth of July. Picnics would last two days generally. Usually on a Friday and Saturday and wound up on Sunday morning after midnight. Everybody would go and see each other. Lots of times they would see each other only once a year, going to those gatherings. It would be four or five or six miles to go in the wagon. Sometimes they had hacks. If it was nice, sometimes, we would ride the horses. There was wagons tied all over the place.
"I remember a neighbor and his sister lived back the other side of Prospering, and they was going to have this Eldridge picnic up here. He said, 'My dad told me and my sister if we'd go down there and cut sprouts all week, he'd give us a dollar apiece so we could all go to the picnic on Saturday. Me and my sister went down there and cut sprouts for a whole week and we talked about the picnic all the time.'
"The neighbor would always save his money back. He'd buy that lemonade when they'd put it on sale and was trying to get rid of it. He said he'd really get tanked up on it. Lemonade was the cheapest drink they had. My mother used to have a big old jar, twelve gallon, and there'd kind of be a running race to see who'd get to borrow that jar to make the lemonade in.
"Of course, that morning real early, Mother would have that chicken all fried up in a big basket lunch, and we'd take off for the picnic. They had a hamburger stand there, but most of the people didn't have enough money to buy. They were buying a hamburger for a nickel. Think of that now, for a nickel! They had firecrackers and always fireworks of some kind.
"But now they did have a lot of fun. They'd always dance. Most of it was just for eating fun, but that usually wound up when you'd get a bunch of them together. They got to ganging up there at the old picnic grounds and got troublesome. Finally the picnics was run out. They've been out now for thirty years or longer.
"If there wasn't any picnic, they'd go to the river. There'd be four or five families meet down at the river and stay two or three days."
Flora agreed, "Lots of times we would go to the picnic at Lynchburg on the Fourth of July. They would have that every year. This would be through the week or on the weekends sometimes, but usually on the Fourth of July. Sometimes we would go to the river, take our dinner and they would fish and build a fire to fry the fish on the river."
"One of the greatest things that I remember in the country is that the whole community would band together and go to the river or to a cave or some pretty spot," said Lois Beard. "One of the places where we used to go so much was to the Howell Cave, and there'd be maybe a dozen wagons, all on the road to Howell Cave early in the morning. It's a lovely place and there's a big spring." …
...Lois Beard said, "There'd be a bunch of young kids turning ice cream freezers, while part of the men would go fishing. There was usually always a seine in the crowd somewhere. A seine is made out of twine and it's about as deep as I am tall, and maybe it would be sixty feet long. Several men would drag through an old slough where water stood, and there'd be fish go in there when the water got up, and they would go seine that thing out, and come out with a whole bunch of fish. When they got back, they'd go to cleaning those fish. Another bunch of women would get the fire going, and they'd go to frying the fish." …
..."By the time they got all of that stuff ready to eat, and then ate all of that, they'd be ready to go rest in the shade somewhere," said Lois Beard. "There'd be a good place cleaned off out there, and they'd lay down the quilts or blankets from out of the wagon. Everybody'd just lay down and rest and relax and enjoy that food, maybe get up and go back and eat some more fish or some more chicken and dressing or something."
After relaxing, enjoying a picnic dinner and visiting with each other, they might also go for walks, explore caves, swim or engage in some other physical activities. Then in late afternoon, families would pack up the left-over food, gather the children, load into the wagons and hacks and head for home in time to do the evening chores. Lois Hough said, "The Fourth of July was wonderful.'' "It was a big day," added Lois Beard. "We just had it once a year, but that's the way it was celebrated. That's the way it was taken care of.
Read the full article: Happy Holidays: Decoration Day and the Fourth of July, by Kathy Long.
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