Independence Day the Small Town Georgia Way

I complain a lot about living in the South. It's too hot. It's muggy. There are more mosquitoes than people. Racism abounds here. And on and on. And these things are true. But, there are also things I love about where I live. Let's start with sweet tea. That is reason enough alone to dig my roots deep here. We're a friendly bunch and we have wide front porches and dogwoods and crepe myrtles and magnolias. You can say "fixin' to" here and people know just what you mean. Something about Independence Day just demands to take place here in this setting.

As part of our holiday festivities we set up the hundred-foot slip and slide again, but somehow this time things went awry. The hill grew, the water was slicker, the earth had rotated to a steeper degree on its axis, or all of the above, but there was an element of danger and adventure for which we weren't prepared. Juliana and her friend, Alexandra went down first with no apparent trouble. Holt's turn. All systems go. Then comes John whose new nickname is Greased Lightning. He flew off the sheeting, across the grass, through the concrete bottom of the creek and straight into the fence. I, sadly, don't have any pictures of that as I was mentally preparing the fastest way to get him to the hospital. Unbelievably, he was only really cut up and even more unbelievably, he went down at least two other times I can recall.

We finally decided the weight limit on the sheeting was 60 pounds, which excluded almost all of us. We have no idea what caused such a drastic change, but next time we will try it on a gentler hill on the other side of the house.

Later that evening we were reminiscing about the other time John almost met with extreme catastrophe at our house. One of the dozen times he's helped us move he stepped off the back end of the moving truck while carrying the treadmill. In both of these stories, he comes out with nothing but flesh wounds (to quote Monty Python. I'm so sad I know that). John is apparently living right.

So we had a marvelous time with my mom and dad, John and Lora, Juliana's friend and the Abbotts. We later fought (okay, joined) the (light) traffic to go see the fireworks in the school lawn. Mom stayed home (not a fireworks kind of gal) and Walter, who had ignored all her advances since Thursday, decided that all those loud noises justified them becoming friends. He managed to fit his body between her and the couch cushions. He's not looking forward to Labor Day. Turns out my mom had a great view of the fireworks from the deck in our backyard. Guess where we'll be next year?

Nothing like some fireworks, tea, homemade peach ice cream, good friends, and skinned up backs to remind us how incredibly lucky we are to be free. And how truly grateful we are to be granted ultimate freedom. Thank you God for Your grace.

And now I'm fixin' to get another glass of that tea.