Happy 4th of July

(reprise edition... yes, you've read it before)

The sky is pure blue, "painted that way" as G'ma said every time she looked up.  The occasional fluffy white cloud drifts by, and I'm hearing G'ma remark on that, too.  The flag in front of the house is swaying, the pole attached to one of the front columns with thin, silver wire.  

It's an elegant solution to TBG's reluctance to put holes in his house;  I feel like Daddooooo every time I wrap another ring around the post. 

Daddooooo was big on flags and the 4th of July.  We always went to the beach.  We always stopped at Custom Bakers in Long Beach on the way home, where the bakers always let us go back and stick our fingers in the vats of frosting. 

We always went to the boardwalk as the sun was setting.  There were skeeball games and mechanical fortune tellers and the smell of the ocean, too black to be seen but too noisy to go unnoticed.   We practiced our ooohs and aahhhs all afternoon, and we were in fine form by the time the booms and the bangs began. 

Through it all, the flags were flying. 

There was a big one in the bracket beside the garage door, until the house was painted and further holes were frowned upon (is this some kind of male thing I just don't get?). A pole-holding-tube was sunk into the flower box, and while it was neither sturdy nor attractive, it did the job and as far as Daddooooo was concerned that was that. 

There was a plastic flag attached to the car's antenna, and all our bicycles had flags on the handlebars. 

I'm not letting the tradition fade away.  Happy Fourth of July,denizens!