It will soon be time for the firemen's fairs, street fairs, and Independence Day celebrations. Almost all have at least one common denominator: a fireworks display. This incident happened one year at the end of the Indian Head fire department's street fair.

Looking For Fireworks

My mom and dad’s house is situated nearly halfway between two small towns, Normalville and Indian Head, Pennsylvania. Both towns have volunteer fire departments because they were in different townships. It was necessary for them to  give each other back up for fires, accidents, or rescues. But both had street fairs where they sold foods and had games to earn money for the day to day operations of the departments and to buy new trucks, equipment, and for the upkeep of equipment and the buildings.

Each fire company held their street fairs on different weeks so they would not compete for customers. Every night there was some type of entertainment provided as well as offerings of food, beverages, and games of chance where players could win prizes or money. All of it was designed to entice people to come and to spend their money.

The foods offered were pizza, French fries, hot dogs, hamburgers, and funnel cakes. All sorts of sodas and strong coffee were sold as drinks. A small carnival company would be there to offer rides for the children. Miniature cars and trucks that ran in a circle, a Ferris wheel, and a swing ride were the usual offerings. They also had booths that sold caramel apples, popcorn, and cotton candy and booths of ball toss, ring toss, and darts.

We had gone earlier in the week and Dad said that we weren’t going the last night of the fair and the last night was the night that the fire department set off the fireworks display.

When we heard the first few dull booms of the explosions from the rockets, Dad couldn’t resist and went upstairs into the bedrooms to look, hoping that he might glimpse some of the display over the tops of the trees. The fireworks were only two miles away, he could hear the explosions, and surely he should be able to see something.

It wasn’t very long until we heard a “Thump. Thump. Thump.”

Mom said, “Kids, your dad is stomping on the floor. He must want us to come up and see the fireworks. Let’s go before he gets upset with us.”

We left the family room and went into the living room. There at the bottom of the wooden stairs, Dad lay in a crumpled heap, on his back and his butt. Dad had slipped and fallen.

What caused Dad to fall happened earlier in the day. My mom told my sister, Kathy to dust the steps and the living room furniture. Instead of doing the steps first with a clean dry cloth, she dusted the furniture with Pledge, and then wiped down the stairs. The Pledge had coated the steps with wax and had made the stairs slippery.

When Dad ran up the stairs, he was wearing only socks on his feet. As he came down, the socks lost traction and his feet flew out from under him, and he skidded to a stop at the bottom of the stairs. He wasn’t hurt.

Once we knew he was okay, we hurried out of the room to laugh. If he would have seen us even snicker the real fireworks would have started and we would have been in so much trouble.

 

The storm today had some fireworks of its own, lightning, but I was able to finish planting my garden and let the rain soak the ground for me. It's not a large garden, but it's planted full with tomatoes, three kinds of beans, beets green and hot peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, several salad greens and spinach. I am praying that it grows well.