Thunderous booms and blinding light have always filled the sky on this special day. Even with all this patriotic-excitement, every Fourth of July seemed very uneventful and a massive waste of time. I wasn’t the only person who shared this view either. A close friend of mine, Kyle, believed this as well. “No matter what,” I told myself, “this Fourth of July is not going to be any better.”

Man was I wrong.

Kyle and I packed up in his grandma’s maroon Toyota. Sitting down, I had no idea what I was getting into. I asked where his family lived, hoping I could get some sort of idea of how they may be. After about ten minutes of driving, I found myself placed onto a cement driveway. I looked over to Kyle hoping he had some idea on where to go from here but he looked just as lost as I was. Luckily for us, Kyle’s grandma seemed to know what she was doing so we stuck with her.

The house was big; the yard was bigger. Behind the house was a considerably sized pond with a fountain in the middle. To the right of the house was a cornfield from the neighboring farm and to the left was a hill full of tall-dry grass. The patio had a fireplace on it which seemed like a social hotspot for this house with many families gathering around there. In the distance, I saw a quad-bike holding crates full of fireworks. Next to the quad were two men shooting off roman candles at a poster in the distance. After witnessing that, I prepared myself for some redneck fun.

After some introductory formalities, we were pointed down the hill towards the quad-bike. At the foot of the hill were the two older gentleman getting roman candles ready from the quad-bike. The first person was tall and round while the second was tall and thin. The skinnier of the two pointed at a poster adjacent to us that displayed a very infamous terrorist. He went on saying the goal of the game and giving us a warning: “Hit his head. Don't shoot yourself. It’s harder than it looks.”. They gave us roman candles and told us to point and wait for it to shoot. Hitting the poster itself was hard, let alone the smallest part of the poster. At first, I was a little nervous to shoot the fireworks due to my pre-determined thought that they had a greater kickback than what they had. As we shot more, I became more comfortable with shooting them and was able to hit the head more times than not. Even with the slight difficulty of inconsistency I had a fun time. As time went by more people came down the hill and joined in on the action. Kyle and I were tied for first on that game.

The roman candle game concluded and we went back up the hill. At the top was a blazing fire. Around the fire sat the rest of the adults, talking away about politics and past events. My lack of knowledge and interest in politics at the time made it difficult to understand what they were saying. Instead of listening to the adult conversations, I turned to Kyle and talked with him. Every so often we were interrupted by a question about us from one of the adults. These questions didn’t spark any meaningful conversation so we ended up going back to what we were talking about. Kyle and I planned out what we would do when we got home believing that playing video games was going to be so much better than this place.

Soon came the food. It was a classic Fourth of July dinner: hamburgers, hot dogs, and cheeseburgers; corn on the cob, baked beans, and baked potatoes; coke, root beer, and adult beverages. The food was great overall; however, the hot dogs were a little burnt for my liking. Everyone sat around the bonfire, laughing and enjoying the food. Like all get-togethers, after dinner came dessert. American themed cupcakes were brought out for everyone to enjoy. Dessert wasn’t just for eating at this house, however. A cupcake war broke out and people were throwing cupcakes at each other. Eventually, we all got a chance to sit down and enjoy the dessert the way it was intended for. With just enough cupcakes left, we all had the taste of sweet-Walmart brand cupcakes in our mouth. By the end of it, my tongue was embracing the colors that represent America.

Now it was time to start the main event: the mortars. The same people that showed me and Kyle the roman candle game, showed us how to light the fireworks. With our new found knowledge, we helped them launch multiple fireworks in coordination with each other. Kyle, our two mentors, and I would light the fireworks and run away as fast as we could while the rest of the families oohed and ahhed. Some of the fireworks Kyle grabbed seemed to not be the best, however. Two out of Five times, he would get a faulty firework and would get stuck in the mortar and explode inside of it. After a while, the air filled up with smoke and the stench of burnt gunpowder.

After a while, we ran out of the fireworks that we had such as shells, sparklers, and Roman candles. Due to the supply running out, it was time for the biggest firework there. It seemed like there were hundreds of mortars held together with the wrapping that the fireworks came in and a large fuse at the bottom. When they brought out what they were going to use for the table, I was convinced it was going to fall over. Two rickety sawhorses were set across from each other with some old OSB on top of them. We lit the firework and ran away from the table. For a minute, it seemed like everything was going to go well. Everyone was enjoying the show and the firework wasn’t failing its job. The table, however, did as good as you’d expect from the world’s worst improv firework stand.

The table tipped over towards the crowd and started shooting up the hill at the house. It didn’t only shoot the house though, it shot to towards the dry-grassy hill to the left of the house as well. The kids were screaming, the adults were moving kids, and I could hear Kyle in the distance saying “Get down, it’s the Viet Cong!”. Meanwhile, the two mentors and I were laughing but also trying to figure out what exactly was happening. Once the fireworks stopped and the panicking ceased, we realized that a small fire started on that grassy hill. The bigger mentor jumped on the quad that carried the fireworks to the hill and used the fire extinguisher to put out the fire.

We returned to the campfire and shared our perspectives of the event. More laughing and eating continued. Some of the older people there got a radio, went to the pond and swam in there for the rest of the night. Kyle and I stayed up at the hill and fell asleep, waiting to go home. When we got home, we didn’t stay up playing video games like we said we would, instead we fell asleep once we got to his room.

Life is good.