Ka-Boom Again
230 years. And it was Earnest’s 24th birthday and Mr. Christmas’ birthday. Firecrackers could already be heard going off before 9:00 in the morning. And as it turned out, the night before, while OLeif was working till the wee hours, Collette hiked along with the rest of the family (minus Carrie) to the St. Charles fireworks display, where Denae, Curly, and Izzy were working the Boy Scout parking lot for their shift. The display was rather short, but included a number of bursts, a little shy of being dubbed “earth shakers”. Lightening cracked through the skies behind them throughout the show, but nothing ever came of it.
Collette recalled the good old days when they trekked out to St. Albans with Uncle Clarence, Aunt Julia, and the boys to see their fantastic fireworks display, sitting on the high green hills. When millionaires decided to put on a fireworks show, they put on a good one, and they were never disappointed. With the way the works echoed off the hills, they produced, by far, the best earth shakers for which one could ever ask.
It was also the place where Rose had saved everyone from the attack of a baby water moccasin. No one believed her that she had seen one, until she showed it to them after capturing it in her bug barn.
So… the Hungarians hated gypsies. It was a simple, well-known fact. Although many of their own people were gypsies themselves. However, there was one aspect about the gypsies that Collette and Linnea and the rest of their team members had not considered. It was July 4th. No one but that ragtag group of Americans on their third day of VBS really were prepared to celebrate. Hungary’s day of Independence had been June 29th, from what they had gathered. And so, as there were no celebrations commencing in America’s honor, Jennifer from Columbia had brought with her bunches of red bandannas to pass around. The girls tied them up in their hair, for a little nationalistic color. Everything seemed to be fine for awhile. The bandannas worked all through the market, VBS, visiting a blind Romanian couple and their daughter, and lunch. But Collette had noticed that they were receiving some rather ugly stares from people on the streets. It wasn’t until later that afternoon that they heard from Jennifer and Bethany that they had been offending the locals.
Wearing one’s bandanna tied around the head gypsy-style, well, was enough to make one think that one were a gypsy. And so, even though the Hungarians knew that they were American, the fact that they wore their bandannas in such a way, was grossly offensive to them. And so they rolled them up and tied them like headbands. Another lesson in culture.
And back at the apartment after OLeif had returned at four in the morning, and woken up at 11:30 the next morning, they headed out to Florissant, meeting Mom, Dad, and the kids and Grandma at the Combs, as Aunt Petunia was feeling quite back to normal. There was fried chicken, and like the year before, the skies were beginning to fill with gray clouds. Unlike last year, there was no drive-by the famous house of Earnest.