Summers Gone By

Mama brings out the last of the casserole dishes, and just like that, the row of flimsy folding tables with cheap red and white plastic table cloths is transformed into an all-you-can-eat-summer buffet. She's wearing the floppy pink sun hat I got her for mother's day this year.

"Supper's on! If ya leave hungry, it's yer own fault!" Mama doesn't need to announce it - everybody is already scrambling to get in line - but I think she does it for tradition. She stands proudly behind the tables in her frilly green apron taking in the moment. She's a heck of a cook and she knows it. We all know it.

Every year, the Fourth of July doubles as our extended family reunion. For this one special day, our little farm in the middle-of-nowhere Wisconsin becomes a summer fairground for water balloon fights, slip n' slides, and squirt guns. This old farmhouse with peeling red paint is filled with folding chairs and laughter as my uncles catch up with each other. We're a large group; mama is one of eight. I have thirty-one cousins. Going through a photo album is an all-day affair with us.

I stuff my pack of smoke bombs into my overalls and race my cousins to the water bucket to put out our sparklers. We rush inside to wash up. The line for the sink is almost as long as the line for the food. I glare impatiently at mama's "Wash your paws" sign above the sink and do a little two-second hand wash. I carelessly swat at the hand towel on my way out of the washroom and head to the food line outside.

I have to be careful, my plate is already heaping with seven-layer salad, green bean casserole, a buttered dinner roll, scalloped potatoes, and a slice of watermelon before I even see what I came here for. My paper Dixie plate threatens to fold in on itself as I try to scrunch some of the potatoes to the side to make more room that isn't really there. Then I see it - my prize - an aluminum pan of brats right from the grill.

Ever since I can remember, brats have been summer on a bun. They're like a hotdog but even better. Brats get boiled in beer before they're grilled; beer! That special drink only the grown-ups and my very-oldest cousins are allowed to have. The brat is good on its own, but the fixins are what really make it more than just a bigger hotdog. Ketchup on one side, mustard on the other, relish and onions too. Dad is impressed with my plate of food as I walk by the adults' table. He always says I'm a 'good eater.' I feel so mature at the kids' table with my brat while all my cousins are eating hot dogs. Plus, I didn't even ask mama to cut it up for me this time.

Mama was still lingering at the buffet line. She won't eat until the last person is seated. She says its important to be a good host when you have company over. I think she likes to watch everybody else get excited about the food. Secretly, I wait for her to sit down and eat before I take my first bite. Waiting is really hard, but I want to be patient like her. I'm almost drooling on myself by the time she finds a seat with her own plate of food.

Finally, I lift up my brat and take a giant bite. Half the toppings fall off onto my plate, but that doesn't matter. They were just to show off my big kid tastes. A wave of contentment crashes over me as I sit there swinging my legs under the table. I have my brat, my favorite cousins, a pocket full of smoke bombs, and a night of fireworks ahead of me. I enjoy each bite with smug satisfaction as I tell myself how adult I must seem to everyone. I push the sauerkraut off to the side of my plate - that stuff was just for show - nobody really enjoys sauerkraut - but Dad took some, so I did too.

I'm nine-and-a-half now, so I am pretty much a grown up if you think about it. Even though I cried forty-five minutes ago when I skinned my knee on the gravel driveway. That doesn't matter now. I'm older and wiser. And I'm one of the only kids allowed to help set off the fireworks with my dad and uncles. My job is to light little fireworks like fountains, whistlers, and those little battle tanks while my uncles are setting up the bigger, boomier things further away. The big bright ones are the best, but sometimes I don't cover my ears in time and it's too loud for me.

While chewing my brat, I start planning out my show. I check my pocket to make sure my smoke bombs are still there. I'm gonna have two tanks facing each other in a pretend battle with red, white, and blue smoke bombs around them; and maybe a whistler if I can get everything lit off fast enough. I look over at Dad and catch his eye. I give him an enthusiastic thumbs up as if he can hear me rehearsing my plan in my head. He smiles and waves back to me. How is he almost done with his food already? I look down at my plate of untouched food except the half-eaten brat.

I've gotta finish my plate or else I can't leave the table, so I pause my planning and start wolfing down the rest of the brat. After that, I start on the watermelon. I poke my cousin, Ryan, and then spit a seed down the driveway in silent challenge. He grins and takes a bite of watermelon, then spits his seed down the driveway. The little black speck soars through the air over where my seed landed and comes to a skittering stop ten feet down the gravel.

"No way!" I shout around a mouthful watermelon, hunting for more seeds with my tongue.

My other cousins look at the distance between the two seeds, and start chomping on their watermelon so they can join in. The adults' table notices our antics and before long, the driveway is flecked with hundreds of small black seeds. I sneak off in the middle of the contest to finish my food.

With my plate cleaned, I take a root beer (the most grown-up of all sodas) from the cooler and head over to the old blacktop where the fireworks will be. Ryan sees me leaving and comes running across the yard. I laugh and pick a watermelon seed out of his hair. We are pretty close because he is only a year younger than me and he lives just a few miles down the road. I tell him about my awesome plan to have the tanks battle. He says its a good plan, except I shouldn't use the whistlers because they hurt his ears. That's a good point, they hurt my ears too.

Mosquitos are starting to bite, that means it's nearly time to begin. Ryan and I find some Off! bug spray and a couple pairs of plastic safety glasses in the tool shed. We take turns spraying each other from head to toe and then put on the glasses. Every year, Grandpa reminds us about fireworks safety and tells us how our uncle shot his eye out with a bottle rocket when he was a kid. We're not allowed to be in the fireworks area without the glasses on. Maybe if he sees us with our safety glasses already on, he will spare us the nasty details this time.

We're just finishing setting the tanks and smoke bombs in the perfect spots for maximum awesomeness when everybody starts coming our way with camping chairs and blankets to get good seats for the show. The cracked blacktop is unrecognizable under the patchwork layer of comfy blankets and sleeping bags of every color. I'm nervous about getting everything set off at the right time, so Ryan excitedly agrees to help light the fuses with me.

We light the tanks and they roll clumsily over the concrete.

A shower of sparks fly out of their cardboard guns onto one another.

"Perfect," I say to myself, "it really looks like they're fighting."

Two red and two white smoke bombs send up thick clouds from behind the mock battle.

Crap! One of the blues is a dud. I huff at the cheap fireworks failing me in my time of need.

Ryan bravely grabs the working blue and puts it in the middle of the reds and whites so it looks like we planned it that way.

We stand proudly to the side. The battle was perfect. The grown-ups clap and cheer for us.

Hssssssssssssss. . .

Ryan and I look at each other; we know what that sound means. We both cover our ears.

Ka-BOOM! The sky flashes with green and silver sparks.

"Oooooh! Aaaaah!" The grown-ups say their rehearsed line jokingly at first, but with each new explosion they get more into it.

Now that my part is over, I can relax. I jog back to the house to get another brat and my favorite blanket. I find mama at the blacktop and sit on her feet. Everything is perfect. And in the dark, nobody can see I'm actually eating a hot dog.