Light Show

There aren’t many Americans who don’t have at least a couple of Fourth of July traditions. Usually they include things like grilling out, watching parades, and enjoying fireworks, whether it’s watching a professionally designed show or lighting them off with the kids.

When I was a kid, we would walk two blocks to main street to watch the parade. There were clowns, floats, and every piece of fire fighting equipment from every other town in the county; and every parade participant tossed candy or popsicles into the waiting hands of the children who came to watch.

At night, there were fireworks. One year we walked two blocks (in the other direction) to the school to watch the volunteer firemen set off some fancy fireworks. Usually, we went out to my grandparents’ farm and played with sparklers, bottle rockets, and set up tank wars. My uncle went to Missouri a couple of times for the good stuff, and he usually had some pretty good artillery shells. My mother likes the lights associated with a fireworks show, but not the sounds, so she used to sit inside to watch. Another year, my father had to work on the evening of the Fourth at his second job, and I sat with him on the hood of his truck and we watched people in the nearby neighborhood shoot off their own fireworks; it was like our own private light show.

This year was a bit different. My husband and I had just decided to take a new job, and so a day off in the middle of the week made a perfect moving day. (And with the fires in Colorado this year, it wasn’t like we were going to be able to light any fountains or Roman candles anyway.) I was a little disappointed not to be able to do the usual Fourth of July things, but since my family was coming to help us move and we had plans with my husband’s family, that was enough. The move went really fast, we had an awesome lunch, and we were on the road in the early afternoon.

I like driving. I like cool Nebraska nights. I like rain. I don’t necessarily like all of these things when they happen to occur at the same time. Any combination of two of these things at a time is fine, but usually adding the third makes me a bit nervous. Traveling back and forth to across Nebraska so many times means that I have been in a lot of night time rain storms. I’ve never had to pull over because the storm was so bad before, but this trip, we had to.

The rain was coming down hard. Visibility was poor. But the lightning was lighting up the sky so often that it was more light out than dark, flashing through the clouds like a strobe light.

In a couple of towns in the distance, we could see the results of some residents’ attempts to celebrate the birth of our country with fireworks. We didn’t pay any attention. Who needs manmade explosions when the sky is exploding?

Even though it was a little precarious, the weather made sure we had a traditional Fourth of July, with our very own light show.