This page ©2001
Chip Brown.

Chip's 4th

Many of you recently wrote me and asked for a reprint of my 4th of July article. Shows how much you listen, I never wrote a 4th of July article. It was a Memorial Day story about drunken boating. However, to stop any further question of this, I hereby submit this 4th of July article.

You can always tell the Fourth of July in Union County. What with all the tents sprouting up selling explosives to children. I'll never understand a country that thinks it's okay to sell high explosives to kids one day out of the year. I mean what's next? Beer day? One day every year we sell beer to kids and let them get liquored up?

Union County folk have three ways they celebrate the Fourth of July. The first way is to have a huge family get together and consume vasts amounts of watermelon. Kids screaming, ants crawling and plenty of flies mark a successful event. I saw these northerners down at the park having a picnic one time, spraying some sort of spray everywhere. They told me it was to kill the flies. Communists! What's a picnic without flies? I once ate a whole jello dish while picking out the raisins. Later my Aunt told me she didn't put raisins in it.

I say we let the Northerners have their fancy schmancy sprays! We kill our flies by leaving the potato salad out in the sun for several hours. Potato salad is bad enough, but after several hours of non-refrigeration it is deadly to any living creature smaller than a dog.

This event ends when enough beer is drank to give one family member the courage to tell the rest what they REALLY think. Then they all go their separate ways until enough time or beer passes to allow them to forget.

The second way is to get liquored up and drive up and down the lake in boats. I mean to tell you, this is a huge day over on the lake. I have heard reports of some guy trying to commit suicide last Fourth by jumping off the HWY 33 Bridge. Tried it all day and finally gave up because he kept landing in boats.

Finally, there is the third way Union County folk celebrate the Fourth. These artists, (I call them that because if you ask them what they do for a living they say, "I draw") go down to Crazy Kester's Fireworks stand and buy enough explosives to blow fingers from their hands. Then, at home they begin their attempts to set their neighbors field on fire.

I guess now we can add a fourth way of celebrating the Fourth around here. These days they have this big fireworks show down in Knoxville. Many Union Countians drive down, I've never been to one of these shows but I understand they're fantastic! Fantastically undercooked corndogs, fantastically over priced beverages, and fantastic traffic jams trying to get there. A simply fantastic way to spend the Fourth. If I didn't mind spending an evening in 90 degree weather shoulder to shoulder in a crowd of sweaty unshirted hairy backed morons I might go.

But I satisfy myself with an evening running around my field like a crack addicted tap dancer, stomping out little fires. I've wanted to take my butane torch, go to my neighbor's house and set little fires all over his yard. This must be huge fun because every person in my neighborhood delight in doing it to me with their shrieking projectiles. Unfortunately my wife won't let me use matches.

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