Avocados and Fireworks

Happy 4th of July! It was so noisy around here last night with loud fireworks that I thought I was in a war zone and the cannons were blasting.

In spite of the fact that all the really cool fireworks from when I was a kid are now illegal, like sparklers and snaps and snakes, someone still manages to get their hands on those outlawed M16's and Cherry Bombs! Before they blow their hands off, I mean.

Sparklers have somehow mutated into glowing punk sticks that you couldn't even use to light an incense stick, and I think snakes were outlawed because they could be stepped on.

Snakes were my favorite. I loved to light those and watch them slither out in a black charred curly line on the sidewalk. Probably toxic as heck, but then these were the days of following really closely behind the DDT truck as it sprayed for mosquitoes because it was fun to hide in the fog.

And we wonder why my generation is slow if not downright brain dead.

I got up at the crack of dawn as I always do, and had the fun satisfaction of getting to the store and buying up all the avocados before the hoarders got them. Not that avocados are a traditional 4th of July food. I don't think guacamole was invented until about 1979. I remember my cousin BillyJayne bringing the fixin's for guacamole to my apartment and whipping up a batch for me to try. The avocados, this being about February in Indiana, were hard as rocks and to this day I cannot abide an unripe avocado salad! I want mine green, ripe and creamy-smooshy.

At the store, there were fat men in yesterday's t-shirts lined up at the check-out with industrial sized tubs of deli potato and macaroni salads. Those things are highly unedible and yet what choice do these men have? They are obviously on their way to a barbeque circuit and have been told to bring a dish. Most men just opt for bringing the chips, although I do remember how proud cousin Rollie was one year when it dawned on him he could bring the lime jello with cottage cheese. It was like a light had burst in his head, or maybe it was just the final embolism that sent him over the edge into a permanent dysfunctional pot-smokers haze, when he grokked the fact that the grocery story sold TUBS of lime jello, already pre-made with the cottage cheese in it.

Nobody actually EATS that stuff, but it is obligatory to have on the table at picnics.

My best friend George Forman and I will be grilling chicken breasts today, with a side of grilled onions and some very ripe, fresh guacamole! It is LOVELY to be independant on Independance Day!