Clanning

It’s Independence Day. Happy Fourth of July!! The Fourth of July brings back how strange living in my family was. My mom was Canadian as was my next oldest brother, Ross and it’s not that we did not celebrate the 4th as much as we tended to endure the 4th—and that is not fair either. Being raised LDS the July holiday we tended to really celebrate was the 24th of July, or Pioneer Day as the holiday is referenced in Utah. Never mind that the 4th was a national holiday, meaning my dad was free to stay home and work on the farm versus working on someone’s air conditioner for his job.

I say “endure” because we tended to have to work, especially when dad was home, and that was the case on weekends and national holidays. Dad was able to supervise, working on the house, shingling, or bringing in then hay, irrigating or what ever, depending when the holiday fell—in those days when a holiday was celebrated on the day it fell no matter what. But I do have to admit there was also a fair amount of joy to the day as the Fourth of July was also a day of “clanning” as meager as our clan tended tobe. In Boise the ‘clan’ consisted of the Smiths ,Bassets and some times Walls. Every once in a while there were the Haroldsons but basically it was Smiths and Bassets.

I believe my mom was the driving force so such an event, thinking back. There was a time when we would actually commandeer a number of picnic tables at Julie Davis Park and congregate for an entire afternoon. Hot dogs, hamburgers, Clover Club potato chips and water melons, cold from being housed the Boise River for hours before their cutting. There were tons of cousins in those days and chaos was everywhere but good chaos. Following the meal and the melon the kids disappeared to the playground of the park and the adults settled down to chatting and sleeping for a couple of hours. The event was over by five o clock, cows needed to be milked. If we had sparklers we let them off but I don’t remember any fire works of danger, ever. We may have gone to the fireworks usually at the Bronco Stadium once. But that is something we just did not do was stay up late with milking cows in the early morning or with dad having to work---we rarely went even the 24th we stayed home…sigh. I understand now, being an ‘old guy’ but I missed the event then.