Celebrating the 4th

Celebrating The 4th of July

Living in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, we have several choices on how we want to celebrate our nation's birthday. There are Fourth of July celebrations in many suburbs and at night, you can go about anywhere to see fireworks. Growing up in Chaffee, we didn't have choices, but we didn't need them. We had one place to go on Independence Day, but it was a good one, the Jaycees 4th of July Picnic.

One thing I liked about southeast Missouri was that there were times when people from many towns converged on another city to help a celebration. The SEMO district fair and the University High Christmas Tournament brought us all to Cape. Neighbor day meant you drive over for a day, two days if your parents were spoiling you, to Benton. Sikeston brought in visitors for their rodeo. The 4th of July meant at least some out of towners were going to be coming to Chaffee, because we had it going on, and if you lived in Perkins or Diehlstadt, you wanted to be in Chaffee that day.

The celebration was at Harmon field. This was a good strategic move because you had the baseball announcers booth, where someone could hype up the activities and direct attention where it was needed. They also played music over the loud speakers to keep things festive. If you needed to find someone to help you, you just ask one of the Jaycees. If memory serves me, you knew who they were because they all had on vests, maybe red, white and blue but I am fuzzy there. All I knew was that there were a lot of Jaycees.

There were temporary food stands put up that sold BBQ and hot dogs. The concession stand was also open. There was plenty of food to take in if you could work a few bucks from the parents, or if you looked hard enough between the sofa cushions. I think they even sold beer, but since I was a Baptist kid, we couldn't confirm or deny that. There were snowcones, pickles and candy, the usual stuff as well.

For entertainment, there were some games that were set up by the Parks and Rec department, tetherball, wiffle ball, maybe jarts. Then there were the Jaycee organized games. The games varied each year, balloon toss was one of them. My favorite was the egg toss, where you had a partner and you tossed an egg underhanded to each other, backing up a step with each toss. By the time you were 30 feet apart, even if you made an accurate toss, the speed of the egg meant it breaking was just a matter of time. The last team with an unbroken egg won.

You also had 2 games that involved grease, not the movie but the by product of animal fat, the Greased Pig Contest and the Greased Pole Climb. The Greased Pig was always fun. You take a small pig, cover it with I am guessing, the oily remnants of his pig cousin, and let him run wild inside a fenced in pen area. Then you take 15 kids and let them run through and attempt to tackle and capture the pig. The grease made the hanging on part a challenge. I never participated but it seemed the kids who grew up on farms did best. I guess that is because they got to practice at home in the weeks prior to the Picnic. It seems that somewhere in this, the little pig had to have sprained his pig ankle. Animal rights people probably have fought stop this contest. I don't know what the prize was if you caught the pig. Maybe you got to keep him, which would be a real joy for those living in the city limits. The Greased Pole was different. You put a 20 foot pole in the ground, stick a $20 bill on the top, cover the pole in grease, and let kids try to climb up it and get the money. I couldn't climb a 20 foot pole if it was covered in glue so again, I passed but the fun of this was watching others. I doubt this game is around much because of the obvious hazards of falling from 20 feet up. As well, probably none of kids, except Scott Wachter would remember to include their prize money on their tax return so the IRS probably wanted that pole to come down as well.

Some of us would go to the city pool next door, then back to the picnic, then back to the pool to keep cool. But you didn't need to go to the pool to cool off. We had a 100 foot slip and slide in the ball field. It was just black tarp with I think the Fire Dept. spraying it down. This is another thing the fear of lawsuits probably made go away.

As dusk came upon Harmon field, everyone crowded into the stands to watch fireworks. For a small town, it was quite a big show. People walked over from all over town to be in view of the display. As tradition would have it, before the fireworks on the field, first, we all got the equivalent of the warm up band with the mini-fireworks show at the Capshaw residence. They were always really good and it got us ready for the big show. The Jaycee fireworks were big and very loud. We were so close that the ones that exploded without all the visual were deafening. The show was similar to the ones I see in the big city these days. When the grand finale was finished, you were worn out from the full day at the picnic. As a kid, that meant sleeping late the next day. For those in from out of town, they had to be impressed. Surely they went home and marked their next year's calendar. When it came to celebrating the 4th, all roads (there were about 6) led to Chaffee.