We enjoy our home with its backyard bordering Blackmer Municipal Golf Course. Our back gate looks out on the Number 1 tee. We have enjoyed living here for twenty years now.
Ours a fairly large home for two older people, but it has its advantages. The main one is that when the kids come to see us, which in this busy world doesn’t happen often enough, we have almost enough room.
It’s always fun to discover that your Grandkids like coming to your home. We have a young Granddaughter who lives near Wichita. She and I were driving in the Wichita area one day and I saw a really nice house for sale and I said, “Grandma and I should just buy that house and move up here and we could see you more often.” Thinking that would be a happy thing, I noticed her face looked kind of sad and I asked, “what’s the problem with that?” She said, “Well, we wouldn’t get to go to “Oklahoma” anymore.”
You see. to that young Granddaughter, Oklahoma isn’t a state, it’s Grandma and Grandpa’s home, where there’s a swimming pool if the season is right, there’s a golf cart to drive, there are targets to shoot with real guns out at the Metcalf farm, there are flowers to water, there are fires to build in the chiminea on the morning patio, (always the initial step toward smores) which is more her brother’s thing than hers, and there are places to eat downtown where everybody knows your name.
A time came when I had another discussion with another Granddaughter, one no longer quite as young. She also had come to “Oklahoma” in her younger years, but since she now lives in a faraway land, she hasn’t been able to come for a long while. The older Granddaughter had come from that far away land to spend some time with Grandma and me at “Oklahoma.”
She arrived with a list, probably in her mind more than written, of things she wanted to do while at “Oklahoma.” On her list was celebrating the 4th of July at our house.
Flattered a bit, I thought that was great, but I wasn’t sure why the 4th of July at our house was that big a deal. Why did she need to be at our house for it? You can celebrate the 4th of July in lots of places. Why ours?
Well, there’s always the free hotdog feed at the local park near the pool with the free swimming, but I don’t think that’s it, as she doesn’t even like hot dogs and doesn’t know anyone to visit with at the park, plus we don’t even always go ourselves. So what makes the 4th of July special at “Oklahoma?” Maybe it’s the fireworks? There’s always the fireworks display which is set off by the local volunteer firemen on Blackmer Municipal golf course as the light of day fades to the dark of a summer night. It’s always really nice but I don’t know that it’s special enough to have to be at our house. Myself, I’ve always thought it was really nice because we always open the back gate, drag all our lawn chairs outside the fence and hedge and we have a ringside seat when darkness allows the display to start. Everyone “oohs” and “awes,” looking up to decide which firework is their particular favorite. I just never really thought much about it.
The last couple of years have been difficult for our small town and its fireworks show. COVID canceled the display last year, not sure where the wisdom was in that, but that’s another whole discussion. The show has been canceled when it’s really dry and there’s a burn ban in effect. You don’t want to needlessly start any fires out here on the prairie, especially if you are in the Fire Department!
This year it looked like it would be a go for ‘the fireworks.’ It’s been really damp and cool, the grass is green. and COVID has come and sort of gone. But, no one had counted on a literally last-minute pop-up, afternoon thunderstorm with gale force south winds, and a 20-minute downpour of rain that totally wiped out everyone’s outdoor plans. Thunderstorms remained rumbling in the distance, their presence marked by the sound of thunder and amazing visuals of lightning against the darkening clouds. It was almost as if they were hanging around just to see if their destructive work was done. Oh the joys of life in the Oklahoma Panhandle!
I wanted to be encouraging for this older, newly-arrived Granddaughter who had come from the faraway land to be at “Oklahoma” for the 4th of July. I thought but didn’t say, that firemen are safety-conscious people. I myself was one of them in earlier days, and I couldn’t imagine they would be standing around on the golf course with lightning lighting up the clouds not so far away. I watched for signs of activity on the golf course hoping that would indicate that the show was a go, but there was none and I felt a bit sad for the older Granddaughter.
Then as the evening increasingly darkened and activity on the golf course was no longer visible in the dark, there was the sonic-like boom of a single firework that could not have come from anyone’s fireworks in the street. That sound always signaled the start of the show. The older Granddaughter and I looked at each other and rushed toward the back gate. The show was on!
We stood and watched for a while and then we walked over to sit on the picnic tables on the concrete deck of the clubhouse. No one else was there. It was like our own private show! Well, to be honest, there were other people, but they were some distance away in the parking lot and in their cars. They didn’t have the best seats in the house, the ones the older Granddaughter and I were enjoying.
The older Granddaughter was almost giddy, exclaiming as fireworks erupted all around us, “I don’t know which way to look!” And then, “Oh that’s my very favorite one,” and then saying nearly the same thing about the next explosion of color and light.
There was a pause in the show and, I asked the older Granddaughter, the one who had come from the faraway land, “what’s the big deal with the fireworks?”
And eighteen years old now, this is what she said. “I remember coming here as a little girl. I thought you and Grandma did all this just for us.”
So Moms and Dads, Grandmas and Granddads, be careful what you do. You don’t want to get in the way of a little girl’s memories. They tend to hang on to them.