July 4

Thirty years ago, the only place you needed to be on the fourth of July was Wenona, IL. Had you asked any of the other children in my extended family what Independence Day was all about and where to go to celebrate, we would have all looked you straight in the eye and told you that the only place that mattered on that day was the itty bitty town in Central Illinois where our grandparents lived. As for what it was all about? Well, firemen, leprechauns, candy, crafts, and sparklers, of course.

Back in the day, this town of 1,000 held a spectacular weekend-long celebration of the fourth. The city park - a mere block from Grandma and Grandpa's front door - was the hub of all the activity. They had baseball games in the diamond, a 5k run, a craft sale in the park, and at dusk in the pavilion they would screen for our viewing pleasure Darby O'Gill and the Little People...

... in which a wiry old man named Darby O'Gill searches for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, only to come up against Brian, King of the leprechauns. I'm not sure if Sean Connery considers this one of his best flicks, but man did I love it. I still do. There are scenes where death comes riding in from the sky in a carriage pulled by horses, and thirty years later I can still recall it with ease and clarity. What this all had to do with celebrating our country's Freedom is ir-re-le-vant. It was completely awesome.

Watching this movie was second to one on my top ten list of things to do in Wenona over the Fourth.

What was #1? When the local firemen would descend upon Pine Street and set up shop right in front of Harry and Helen Ellis' house. I don't know what this game was called, but they would compete against the firemen from neighboring towns-fire hoses at the ready-by spraying a small bucket on a cable, horizontally suspended approximately 30-40 feet above the street. The team to get the bucket across the opposing team's home-line won. It was the most extravagant waste of water I ever witnessed, and I loved it.

My cousin, my brothers, and me - watching the firemen do their thing

In an attempt to recreate my own past and thrust it on my children (as I do with every other holiday of the year) Chris and I took the girls to visit Wenona. We were staying with my Grandma Bastion just a few miles away in the equally awesome town of Toluca (where, it must be noted, nothing apparent was done to celebrate this beloved holiday. We drove 25 minutes away to the little town of Henry, on the Illinois river, to watch 20 minutes of fireworks. But that's another story).

We visited Pomeranke's Sweet Shop (which changed hands in the early years of the new century and has now become "Kim's Sweet Shop") where we enjoyed vanilla cokes with marshmallow cream topping. We also took the girls to the city park, and while they swung and spun on playground equipment that predates ME, I walked through the old red pavilion where my first crush blossomed (Sean Connery) and where the fourth of July became forever and inexplicably intertwined with little green men who speak with Irish accents. 

The Pavilion

Gone are the days of the Wenona fourth of July celebrations. Gone are the craft fairs where I bought clothes for my cabbage patch dolls. Gone are Darby and Death and the Leprechauns. There weren't even any people walking around town that day that we visited, a fourth of July thirty years distant from the ones that so marked my childhood. But we had a nice time. And in the moments I wasn't choking on the nostalgia, I appreciated the profound connection to my past that I witnessed as my children went round and round on the merry-go-round I used to push my little brother on.