Fourth of July…Oh I remember some great 4^th’s from my childhood!!!  We spent summers at my aunt & uncle’s farm in southern Oklahoma.  Days upon days of riding horses, herding cattle, collecting eggs from under the hens in the chicken house, walking the milk cows in from the pasture, milking cows and spending long afternoons with my cousins playing cowboys looking for Indians and outlaws.   

The 4^th of July was the mark of the middle of our summer and all the relatives (including my parents) would come for dinner at my grandparents and fireworks at the farm. 

We could not wait for the actual day to come so we spent a good week “testing” the combustibility of many common objects: tin cans, milk jugs, leaves, sticks, logs, and the favor…cow pies!  For you city folks those would be piles of cow manure. 

We found the best explosion was either a very new or very old cow pie but you want to be sure and run really far from the really new ones. 

Come dusk on the 4^th of July the barn lot was full of loud bangs, beautiful displays of fountains and roman candles and shards of cow pies as we loaded them with black cat firecrackers and blew them skyward! 

Makes me smile just to think about it…What’s your favorite Fourth Memory?