Fourth of July

It's a bummer,
It's the Fourth of July
It's a bummer,
Oh, don't you make your momma cry.
It's the Tower of Pisa,
The Mona Lisa.
It's a bummer,
It's the Fourth of July

This little ditty was made up by one of Tracy Powell's friends in Grove City. She lived on the street perpendicular to Uncle Dave's and Aunt Nome's on Superior Street, at the top of the hill. I forget her name. I'll call her Patty.
The Fourth of 1975, we visited the Grove City Lewis' and I got to hang out with Tracy and her friends. She lived on the other side of State Route 208. We walked all over the neighborhood. While we sat on swings, Patty started making this song up. Funny how it sticks in my mind, that almost forty years later (yikes!), I start singing it around June 30th and woke to it this morning.
The next year, Dad, Mom and I traveled to Wyoming to visit Diane and Herman in married student housing at Laramie University. We took a few days to drive out. The first night, we visited Becky, Dad's cousin, in Aurora, IL. The third of July, we stopped at a beautiful Holiday Inn in Lincoln, Nebraska. The indoor pool was Olympic size. I had a great time swimming. I wore a halter top denim jump suit after swimming to dinner. We didn't leave the motel. I felt very grown up at fifteen.
The next day, the Fourth, we pushed on to Laramie. I had never been this far west before. Nebraska stretched out. Two days before was the last time my mom ever attempted to drive on I-80 in Ohio. Her neck did not move, as she didn't go over 55. My dad, patient as ever, allowed her to try, but he couldn't rest or relax, so he soon took back the wheel.
We arrived at married student housing in mid afternoon. The two room cinder block apartment did not have a walk-in closet. So Herman teased me that I had no place to sleep. Mom and Dad would sleep in the bedroom, while we slept in the living room. We would not spend too many days there; touring Wyoming and Colorado filled the agenda cooked up for us.
We were in the land of cowboys, for real. Watching the young men in their trucks, with cowboy hats on their heads.  For the fireworks display we rode Herman's silver truck, all five of us in the front seat, to a hillside. Some sat on hoods, and some still sat in the trucks. If the locals loved a firework, they honked their truck horns, or hooted and howled. I think they all were in trucks.
The Fourth was not a bummer either year.