In my neck of the world located in the United States of America, every year for the 4th of July Holiday, there is a carnival held at the Community House Fairgrounds as a fundraiser by the Volunteer Firemen from the Firehouse at the end of our street, all of five hundred feet away; the Community House and Fairgrounds fifteen hundred feet away from our home, across the back roads highway.
In the sixteen years, we've been back in the neighborhood full time, most years in the four to five days of Carnival have been high anxiety events. People vacationing from the city and some locals follow the Carnival as it goes from neighborhood to neighborhood, three to five miles apart. Sometimes vehicles are piled with kids and a few adults, sometimes with all adults, and sometimes with college age adults.
Each year there is a lessening of problems as the firemen expand their policing in the surrounding dirt road avenues. They also have contained the Carnival to a smaller area as they expand the adjacent parking lot.
There are fewer obnoxious visitors that believe every blade of grass and each driveway is fair game. Many of us in past years were blocked from entering or exiting our homes and when we stopped complaining to the firemen and went directly to crowd control and cited trespassing resulting in issuing of non-moving vehicle traffic tickets, it gave pause to the ‘anything goes’ driver.
For the past several years, rather than have the drivers dart for a parking space, my neighbors and I have opted to direct them to acceptable places and putting traffic cones to block off our off-limits to the public. This has worked well for the most part, but I found that one errant latecomer crammed into an area where my wildflower bushes are, or maybe was. That will be determined in daylight.
After the overflow crowd that dotted our driveways and byways evaporated to their abodes and the transients to the local bar and grill or dance hall, the finale of the fireworks and house rocking noise commenced at Midnight for the official ushering in of our Independence Day.
The last BOOM still echoes in my ears, the Cock-a-Poo under my chair, but with her furry body hugging my heels, and the rest of the pack that kept intruders at bay with their barking as they lined up on the shelf in the Bay window warning the intruders walking our streets, hold fast their post, but the barking has ceased. Quiet reigns… for now.
Tomorrow we face ‘hung over short tempered heading back to whence we came' disgruntled travelers or their luckier ‘another day to drink and drive’ fellow revelers. The rest of us will be searching for pets that ran scared in the night or already tending to the ones that developed nervous tics including companion humans.
Happy 4th of July!
Tomorrow we face ‘hung over short tempered heading back to whence we came' disgruntled travelers or their luckier ‘another day to drink and drive’ fellow revelers. The rest of us will be searching for pets that ran scared in the night or already tending to the ones that developed nervous tics including companion humans.
Happy 4th of July!
photos courtesy of Angelique Duso