TheBanyanTree: Indepencence Day from California

[Dale M. Parish]

July 4th in Crescent City, California seems to bring the whole town down to the docks for fireworks.  We arrived just before sundown, got checked into our room and hurried out to cross the street and see if we could get a shot of the sun setting on the Pacific, but it was not to be.  Lacking a detailed map of the locale, we weren't sure that the sun set over the water here, and the further we walked out on the levee that surrounded the docks, the more sure I was that the peninsula to the north jutted out past the levee.   The sun sank below the trees to the north of us.  

But the levee, built of basalt riprap, was covered with people, and as we walked further, we got to the beach and found dozens of bon fires, tents, and hundreds and hundreds of people awaiting the fireworks show we had been told would start later.  The wind was cold coming off the water.  I've never been this far north for July 4th, and didn't expect it to be this cold-- I'd only had on the long-sleeved shirt I'd worn all day, and was regretting it. Cindy wanted me to carry Wolfie so she could take pictures.  I'd left my camera in the truck, so was relegated to being the doll carrier.  Wolfie is her response to her friend's sock monkey, whose travels are photodocumented on the friend's website.  I guess if a monkey can do it, a wolf can, too.  

The crescent moon was only a few degrees behind the sun, assuring a neap tide, and there was nearly 200 meters of black sand where the tide had gone out.  It looked like mud at first, but I watched people walk out on it to set their fireworks and saw that it held them up easily.  The wind was brisk, so I climbed down the levee to the leeward side and took respite from the chill.  As I sat down on a large block of basalt, I could see bon fires stretching the length of the shore, wrapping a click or two north and west.  The wind coming off the Pacific kept the sound of the bursts across the bay from reaching us, but there were audble bursts coming form north and east of us, and as the sky darkened, the fireworks became more and more visible. 

It started becoming noticible that the larger bursts would be set off further out on the tidal flats by adults, while the smaller fireworks seemed to be mostly set off by teens-- and younger, in some instances-- closer to the crowds. Youthful disregard for safety.  And ignorance.  

Some of the natives had said that the fireworks started at nine, but as it approached nine twenty, and the restaurant across the road closed at ten, we started the long walk back to supper.  We had just been seated when the *real* fireworks started-- we could feel them as well as hear them from within the restaurant.  It was a pretty picture.  Inside the restaurant, the speakers played a medely of Sousa, the marches of the four primary branches of the armed services and a collection of country-western American patriotic songs.  I got my fill of prawns.  Can't tell them from Gulf Coast shrimp.  Who would know?

Happy July 4th.
--
Dale M. Parish
628 Parish RD
Orange TX 77632