Hey all! I wish everyone a great 4th of July!

My most memorial 4th of July happened when I was about 8 or 9. My grandma has been cleaning out her attic, with the help of some of my older cousins and uncles. My grandma is a bit of a pack rat, and I believe my grandfather also was one. I guess they found an old home-made fire cracker, made from old glass milk bottles and some kind of explosives. Somebody decided since it was just about the 4th he should set the thing off rather than disposing of it properly (or maybe he thought he was disposing of it properly=).

This particular year instead of having a big BBQ at my grandma's house one of the uncles got a camping site out at Cheney Lake, which is a big reservoir near Wichita, KS. We spent all day out there swimming and boating and fishing. I can remember being hyped up on way to much sugar and having a nice sunburn.

It's pitch black out, just the moon and stars reflecting off the water and scattered fires lighting the distance. I remember I was running around on the beach watching the occasional roman candle going off in the distance. Suddenly there is the huge boom and the world shakes and I land flat on my bottom. It feels like the whole world is going up and down. I look out across the lake and it seems like the horizon is bobbling back and forth. I look up and there is a single white light flying across the sky slowly dissipating.

I suddenly realize that my ears are ringing and I'm also pretty scared. I run back to the fire, where one of my aunts is yelling at my uncle and a couple of cousins. Turns out they dug a hole in the sand, put the bottle in it, buried it to stabilize it, and lit it. The resulting hole was about a foot and a half across.

So have fun and be safe!

Rachel