When Mom was young she always went to the ball park by Grandma and Grandpa Martin’s house to watch the fireworks. Later they (being who ever shoots off the fireworks) started shooting the fireworks off from the ball park, which meant that mom could no longer go to the ball park to watch them because she might start on fire, go deaf from the loud kabooms or worse yet BLOW UP! So when she grew up and had kids of her own she started going to her mother (Grandma Martin)’s house to watch the fireworks. Her front yard was the perfect place to sit and watch the fireworks in the ball park. Grandma’s house was so close that all sorts of people would park in front of her house and in the alley to walk to the park to watch the fireworks. We would have to block off all the parking in the back of Grandma’s house so that our aunts and uncles would have a place to park, because, this was a time when all the Martin cousins, aunts and uncles gathered together. Everyone would bring their ice cream freezers and we would have home made lemon ice cream and home made peach ice cream! I remember the anticipation and the constant low grumble of the ice cream machines as they mixed the ice cream to freeze it. It was always so exciting when the ice cream had frozen enough to make the machine suddenly turn off because the ice cream was so stiff! It doesn’t get much better than that.
One Independence Day I was hanging around out front and a man came up and asked if I would make sure his car stayed safe and no one broke into it, he then gave me ten dollars! It was GREAT! When car alarms first became popular the fireworks were so loud and so close that there were a bunch of car alarms that went off at the BANG of the fire works. That was the first time I remember car alarms.
After Grandma died and Grandpa moved in with his kids, this tradition came to an end. Now for The Fourth of July our immediate family gathers together junk food and everlasting bubbles. We grab our blankets and we head to the hill at Jordan High and there we sit and wait for the Sandy City Independence Day Fireworks. Brother B, one year, sat and blew everlasting bubbles. They floated all the way down the hill and the kids chased the bubbles. Where ever Brother B and the Bubbles went there the kids went also. It was almost as if he was the pied piper. He got some nasty glares from parents and some of the parents told their kids they couldn’t play with the bubbles. It was pretty funny. Since then we have made sure we brought bubbles every time. In the past couple of years parents come up and thank us for entertaining their kids during the long wait for the fire works. We love to watch the kids with the bubbles.
The Fourth of July was the first time the Family “MET” Sister-in-law S! Brother C and Brother D now comment all of the time that Brother J and Sister-in-law S saw their own fireworks. This was the first time Sister-in-law S got to participate with our family in our traditions.
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