My Favorite Holiday

As a family, holidays didn't mean too much as we didn't do much besides work. However, on this particular Fourth of July, we were going on a picnic. Some good friends were going with us. Since it was the Fourth of July, we had some penny firecrackers to take along. These were only about an inch long, and as a rule, they were the only ones we got. We also took our new swimming suits. For this picnic, our mother had specially ordered seven swimming suits from the Sears Roebuck catalog. They were made of 100% cotton and were all a size too big, so they would fit us for awhile.

The thing I remember about our lunch, was the home-made root beer. It was a real treat for us, but we never got to drink it. On the way, the brakes on our Model T Ford got hot and were smoking, so our dad opened the root beer and poured it on the brakes to cool them. So at the picnic we had nothing to drink. We sure were sorry to see all that good root beer go to waste.

We had our picnic, went swimming (or wading) at the Pine River Dells. We had plenty of fun splashing in the water with our new swimming suits. After our time was up in the water, we had our picture taken. We were a sorry-looking lot in those cotton suits that stretched when wet so they came way below our knees. We have this picture and have to laugh about it each time we see it.

When it was almost time to go home, we shot off our firecrackers. When they were gone, I told my friend to light the string they were wrapped with. I had often done this, and it just burned slowly and sparkled, because this was filled with powder too. So she lit it and it just went "whoosh", burning much faster than it ever had for me. Since she was holding it in her hand, she ended up with a nasty burn. That ended the picnic that was to be a "fun" time, but ended in tragedy for me, since it was my idea that caused her to get burned.