Red, White, and Boom!

It was the Fourth of July and time for a parade and a shindig with my extended family.

The day started just after noon as I picked up my 97 year old uncle.  We headed to meet my cousins and go to the annual small town parade.  I'm getting used to these celebrations.  The flying candy, tractors of every color (This year there was a pink International tractor!), and local fire departments hosing down the parched children make for a homey parade.  I felt cheated this year.  There were no squeaky clean manure spreaders proudly rolling down main street.

The next stop was my cousin Pat's house out in the county.  This is the hub of activity for the Fourth of July.  A freshly washed John Deere mower with an American flag waving in the wind greeted us at the end of the driveway.  The day was cloudless with a hint of warmth.  It was perfect for sitting outside munching on grilled hamburgers.

"Hey!" I exclaimed.  "This hamburger is great.  Maybe the best I've had."

Everyone peered at me and rolled their eyes.  "It's not a hamburger.  It's a pork burger.  This is Iowa."

O.K.  I've been here only three short years.  I'm still learning.  Besides I've never cooked a hamburger much less a pork burger in my life.

Pat's son and grandson were there with tons of fireworks.  Fireworks are illegal to buy in Iowa.  But we are so close to Nebraska and Missouri where one can purchase them every rural Iowan sets off some kind of boom and sparkle in celebration.  I'm not sure, however, that everyone has a trunk full with enough celebration to last all day.

Pat's ten year old grandson spent the day setting off everything from poppers to magnificent light displays in the sky.  The loud boomers were a favorite during the day.  They could be heard for miles echoing in the hills.  He then pulled out poppers.  This was a new experience for me.  I soon learned my uncle kept a large stash in his pockets.  He handed me a pack and provided guidance on the correct way to pop poppers.

It is all in the wrist.  Pull one off.  Flick it with your wrist to the ground.  You will be rewarded with a cap-gun like pop and a tiny bit of gunpowder smell.  While the grandson set fireworks off all day, the uncle popped poppers.  None of his were duds.  His technique was picture perfect.  I guess I need about forty more years to improve my technique.  I had lots of duds lying on the ground.

A hot-air balloon-like firework was lit.  Fire burned at the bottom lifting it up in the air and over the corn fields.  We were having a Forth of July celebration.  This balloon had jumped out of line.  It was a giant jack-o-lantern laughing all the way to...I really don't know where it ended up.  It didn't take but a few minutes for it to soar out of our vision.

There was something else quite peculiar going on.  Most people I know ignite their fireworks with a strike of a match.  Pat's grandson had larger ideas.  He used a blow torch.  A blow torch!  My face turned a pretty shade of blue many times that day waiting for him to stop, drop, and roll.  As that never happened, I'm guessing he was properly instructed in the safety of the fiery torch.  Next year perhaps I should be properly instructed on how not to watch the lighting of the pretty things in the sky.

As odd as a blow torch was, it was not the oddest thing that summer day.  Pat's daughter pulled in the driveway in a clown car.  Actually it was a clown van.  The vehicle was stuffed with her daughter and friends and all the things they thought they needed for an evening of sitting and watching fireworks.  The clown van's back hatch wouldn't even close.  She had driven ten miles down a pot-holed road with the back hatch fully open.  Amazingly nothing bumped out of the van and into following traffic.  We soon noticed the hood was properly secured either.  This had to be a clown van.  They came not only with unlatched car parts but loads of laughter.

Dusk arrived.  We pushed our chairs together as the grandson set the stage at the end of the driveway for the big finally of the evening.  We were not disappointed.  There were glittery fireworks, multicolored ones, heart shaped ones.  Our ears were treated to sizzles and booms.  Fifteen minutes of wonderful sensory overload.

The food was consumed, the trunk of the car was void of fireworks, it was time to head home.  Everyone and everything was crammed back in the clown van.  The back hatched was tied shut and the hood monkeyed with and slammed.  The uncle and I cruised past the town's fireworks display.  It did not compete with the show we had just witnessed.  And I know the company we were in was the finest around.  Thus ending another spectacular Fourth of July in the Iowa countryside. 


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Aliens on Our Road!

Doug and I moved to Iowa and our children thought we had lost our minds.  "What are you going to do for excitement in the middle of nowhere?" they inquired.  There are fun things to keep one entertained here in the country.  But yesterday there was excitement right down our road.

I had headed out early for my morning walk.  I could hear the whop-whopp of a helicopter in the distance.  As I came over the hill I spotted it.  The crop dusting helicopter was flying low over a soybean field.   He pulled up and soared towards the sky like an eagle only to quickly dip down again like a famished sea gull after a piece of bread.

I whipped out my cell phone to call my trusty helicopter flying husband knowing he would want to jump in the truck and take pictures.  I figured he could pick me up and I would ride along.  Some air conditioning sounded really good.

We followed the aircraft across the river.  Of course by then the helicopter decided to spray the other side of the river.  Doug turned the truck around and hit the gas.  By the time we were back where we started the helicopter was a spot in the horizon and the support truck was kicking up dust on the gravel road.

Defeated we headed for home.  That's when we found the real excitement.  There on our gravel road was the support truck and trailer in the ditch.  The truck was wedged flush against the ditch with the trailer sitting cock-eyed to the road.  Crawling out of the passenger side window was a young man.

Doug, the fireman, rushed to the accident.  After assessing the situation, Doug hollered to me, "You do not need to call 911.  There is no blood."  Which was code for the guy was OK and I could get out of the truck.

The young man was visibly shaken up, but unharmed.  He was more concerned about the brand new Ford duelly with only 4000 miles on it and the support trailer.  The trailer was duel purposed.  The landing pad for the helicopter was a small platform attached to the top of the trailer.  Under it held insecticide and gas and goodness knows what other kinds of toxic and flammable materials.  He was also worried about how the owner of the company would take the news.  Oh, the owner was his dad.

The young man was not bleeding but shaking like a dancing panda.  "Are you sure you're OK?" Doug asked.

The next words out of this man's mouth made me take two and half steps back.  I think he was an alien.  The young man replied, "Yes Sir."

The standard Iowa reply would be "Yup."  I tiptoed to the back of the truck to steal a look at the license plate.  It confirmed my suspicions.  This guy was an alien!  His license plate was from Texas.

We continued to assess his health as my cousin came by on his small tractor.  "Everyone OK?  Man he must have been going fast."

"Yup."  Doug and I answered.  (We have been Iowan's for three years now.  We knew the lingo.)

A few minutes later the mailman stopped by.  "Everyone OK?  He must have been going too fast."

Then a lady I had not meet yet came walking down from her house up the road.  I knew I would like this lady.  There were several kittens that scurried around her house.  She was smart enough not to mention the young man was obviously going too fast.

Soon the accident scene was a hubbub of farmers.  All of which said to this shaken up young man, "You were going too fast."

I think by this time he had probably figured that out.

Four farmers came and had the situation assessed in minutes.  They then sped off in their respective trucks and a John Deere gator only to return with massive chains, a large green tractor and a pay-loader.  (So I called the pay-loader a scoopie thing.  I was corrected.)

The tractor chained itself to the trailer while the pay-loader lifted.  Within minutes the trailer was loose.  It disappeared down the road to the neighbors farm.  The farmer was kind enough to get it off the road.

The pay-loader was not finished with his job.  Chains were secured to the truck and little by creaking little the truck was pulled from the ditch.  The young man was confident he would be able to drive this new dented up truck back to Texas.  I had my doubts when I saw black gold running out of his engine.  Then I heard something about a tire rod going clean through the engine.  I think "totaled" is the word everyone was whispering.

About that time the helicopter pilot showed up in his truck.  I spied his license plate.  It also said Texas.  However his truck was not a duelly.  When you cross the border into Texas I think it is the law all trucks must be duellies and you must have a Texas flag.  Duelly or no duelly he was an alien also.  I stayed four feet away.

We heard clank, clank, clank in the distance from the farm where the trailer was towed.  It sounded like dwarfs working in a Disney movie.  The clanking was actually the farmers working to try and repair the trailer.

And the guy with the scoopie thing, I mean pay-loader, must have a cape in his closet.  He rescued me last winter from being snowed in for half a year.

This is Iowa.  Things happen that we don't expect.  Iowan's step up to the plate and help where ever and whenever they can.  Even if they do not know you and will never see your alien face again.  Doug and I are proud to call ourselves Iowans.  Maybe one day we'll have a tractor and return some favors and rescue someone.