Saturday, July 4, 2009

Happy 4th of July

For those of you who live in America, this is Independence Day. (For those of you that don't, feel free to email gwebbies@gmail.com with when and what happens on your Independence Day) It's a time to celebrate, to see your family, eat greasy food and watch fireworks. Now I'm sure most of you know what the average old timey celebration is, but maybe you haven't realized how huge the 4th of July is to tiny New England towns. We still have old cars, rafts of children, the fire men's barbecue, and a talent show, but there are a few things that are slightly unique.

An old time tradition in many places is to have a group of women twirling guns. People in my town thought that this was ridiculous, and one year emerged The Lawn Chair Ladies. They dress up as crazily as they possibly can, and the brigade does a routine with lawn chairs. When guns would normally fire, the lawn chairs clack. This has been happening for so long in my town, but it seems that a few other places do it too.

Now I don't know about your towns, but we don't have a marching band. Instead this group of people dress up in kilts with kazoos. They hum patriotic songs. There's a Drum Major leading, and kids marching holding flags with them.

We have frogs jumping contests and rubber duck races. There is a village versus village tug of war for the kids and an adult only baseball game. (In my town there is the Upper Village and the Lower Village. They are normally one town, but one the 4th people get so competitive it's funny.)

What are your Independence Day traditions?

(Ps. I just remembered how at this camp I used to go to, it celebrated Interdependence Day instead and all the different branches of the camp got together. I think that we really should be celebrating Interdependence.)

2 comments:

hannah.r.freedman said...

Haha, that sounds so fun! My city is so big that there isnt a whole-city party, its up to each neighborhood to celebrate. Because my neighborhood is superlame, we have a wimpy parade, traditional bike races, and watery popsicles. Nothing cool like your town.

Snowflake said...

We have a parade, you know, with all the different town groups and such, which is pretty fun. It would be very cool to go to a totally different part of the country and see how they celebrate there!