Going Fourth!

I often opine on Independence Day as an inspiring holiday for our nation, but today I found myself thinking about it as the thing itself and how it's been in my life. Like Christmas -- we all know the difference between the story of Christmas (awesome) and the actual celebration with loved ones (dicey). Every holiday has that kind of dichotomy -- the thing for what it celebrates and the thing for how it is. 

And I have to tell you, my Fourths of July have been a mixed bag. 

Never works out exactly as I would like.

I don't remember doing much at all when I was a kid. When I was little more than a toddler, I think I was at a parade, a big town deal with floats and stuff, but it was so far back I can barely remember anything. Later my family really didn't do anything. No parades, no fireworks. We visited relatives because it was a day off and Mom could go see her family. Then, as adults do, they sat around and talked. BORING! 

Later on there were some winners. I went to a Mets game one year, and while I don't even remember if they won the game (I think they won), the fireworks show at Shea afterward was spectacular. In 2002, my wife and I went to the local kaboomery show and it was great -- the patriotism was still thick on the ground here in the lower Hudson Valley, where many locals had been lost on 9/11. 

One July 4, after my first year in junior high, my family spent the day with a family that had enough fireworks to invade Canada. I shot off more bottle rockets in one evening than I have the entire rest of my life. Almost burned down their house, but not quite (a bottle tipped backward after I lit the fuse). In fact, it was a miracle that with alcohol-consuming adults and explosive-armed children there were no major disasters. 

For a few years the Fourth was spent at a relative's cabin in the country, something I would enjoy much, much more now than I did as a kid. Very quiet.

One year, as the Fourth loomed, I convinced a friend to get a party going at his house -- and then my parents informed me that we were going out of town for the holiday. I have never lived that down. But my friends all got even a year or so later, when I threw a party in my parents' backyard and all the guys decided to bug out because they wanted to play basketball in the park. So my parents were looking at me like Don't you have any friends anymore? It was humiliating. The guys returned later out of pity, or hunger.

More recent years have found our family unit with dogs, and we usually spend the holiday making sure no canine freaks out and goes running wild. Usually it's okay, but about five years back the idiots up the street were blowing up enough stuff to -- well, invade Canada. Poor Nipper took it hard. And it sparked an argument between my wife and Mrs. "Deuce" Baggio nearby, which my wife decidedly, comprehensively won. I could have warned the Baggios not to argue with my wife, especially when she's defending one of our dogs. 

There were other summer parties that were eventful, and even near terrible, but I think they did not land on the Fourth, so I'll leave them for another time, if at all. This year I just want to make some decent food and distract the dog when the bombs go off. I love you, America, but your birthday is not always my favorite day. 

Kaboom!

Sorry I have not been around. When I say everything blew up at once workwise, I'm not kidding. While overcommitting to other things, I agreed to a rush job for extra pay that turned out to have some hidden issues. I felt like a cartoon antagonist (say, Wile E. Coyote) whose tunnel got diverted to a fireworks warehouse by the hero (one Bugs Bunny, perhaps); rising from the tunnel in the darkness, I struck a match, then realized I was surrounded by gunpowder-laden rockets, their fuses lolling my way; shocked, I dropped the match, but before it went out, it caught a fuse and -- 

You've seen that cartoon before. 

As a coworker once told me on a particularly annoying afternoon, "If it was fun they'd call it play." 

Well, nothing for it but to shove everything aside that was shoveable and get the thing done. Which I did, yesterday, and was ready for a nap afterward, at which time of course I got a phone call from someone who almost never calls me. I will leave my phone on in case my wife needs me, thinketh I, because the only other person who might call is Claymore, and he never calls at this time because he's at work, and of course Claymore had taken the day off. 

Nice to be popular, but please, my public, let a guy rest! 

Meanwhile, here's a couple of other thoughts that have popped up for you:

ROOSTERS 

Chicken and eggs are good to eat, but sadly, roosters are part of the deal. When we moved from the city to the exurbs, there was someone in the area who kept a few, and I'd hear the idiot chicken known as the rooster scream from time to time. They don't just crow at dawn, as in the movies; they keep it up all the livelong day. 

As the town demographics have changed, it seems that keeping chickens is now more of a thing to do. These seem to be more hyperactive, possible meth-addicted roosters, who don't wait for sunup at 7 but start around 5:30. When one goes off to the east, another, miles away in the west, says to himself, "I'm not going to stand for that!" and blurts out his cheery tune. None of them have the nice, clear "cock-a-doodle-doo!" cry, but rather sound like kazoo-based kaiju being strangled. They used to say that children should be seen and not heard, but I think that better applies to chickens. 

WINTER

A haiku for you:

Chapped lips, chapped hands, feet

Where can I go to buy a

Full-body ChapStick?

See you tomorrow, unless more stuff blows up, or I get arrested for first-degree rooster assault. 

Sicklied o'er.

Yesterday the whole town got cloudy, and it had nothing to do with rain, except for the lack thereof. 

I've seen smoke from wildfires around here, in the southern Hudson Valley, but I'd never seen the sky turn a pale, sickly yellow like this. 

Weirder still, this was coming from Canada's wildfires, three hundred miles and more to the north. 

We're under an air quality alert, of course. Everything smells like smoke. People in a local online community were saying they could taste it. I thought it smelled nice, as woodsmoke does, but it bothered some people. One woman posted that her daughter said, "This is what the end of the world looks like." That surprised her dad, who posted "Really?" Well, kids are dramatic. The girl is too young to remember 9/11.

But it is weird. 

I'd like to make a quip about how Canada, which hates smoking so much that they're printing warnings right on the cigarettes, sure is blowing smoke in our faces, and should keep their pollution to themselves. 

Okay, I guess I just did. 

But I'm pulling for the guys who have to go out and try to fight these blazes. It's been super dry here -- "dry as popcorn farts" as one friend unartfully but vividly put it -- and there's no rain in the forecast until at least Monday. It's made the days very comfortable and the nights perfect for sleeping with a window open, but this is the cost. 

Naturally, while all this is going on I heard some idiots nearby practicing with firecrackers, because the Fourth of July is only a month away and they have to get ready. 

So, let's pray this ordeal ends soon, and if you know a good rain dance, pass it along. That sky sure looks sick, and some people with breathing trouble will also.  

Ta ra ra boom.

This has been a challenging week. And I say challenging because we've all known really bad weeks, and people who fought for America in hellholes all over the world know what really really bad weeks are like. I'll run it down quickly so as to not belabor the point. We start last

MONDAY: Guys come to install the "fenceless fence" system to keep dogs on our property. Installation is no big deal; training section gets off on the wrong foot and remains there. Our big hairy dogs have to have patches on their neck shaved off so that the connections (prongs) on the collar (at choking tightness) would make contact (poke) the skin to issue corrections (zaps) when the dogs ignore the warning (beeps) and go into the danger zone (near the wire). They do not like that correction. Tralfaz shakes his fuzzy head like he just can't believe what his life has come to. Nipper rears up like Silver with the Lone Ranger really digging in the spurs. Training at this stage largely consists of tapping little perimeter flags and yelling NO. This is embarrassing. Plus, a big job I was told to expect from a big publisher fails to arrive.

TUESDAY: My old supervisor at my oldest freelance client packs in the job at the end of June, so I meet with him and the staff at his place by phone to try to figure out what will be going on as we move forward. I make jokes to fill the silence like a soft-headed idiot. No one laughs. Is this a business meeting or an oil painting? I think these new people figure I am a mercy hire, despite working for them for eight years. Dog training held up by my wife's insane schedule as her job blows up. I do training in a sheer downpour, standing by the sidewalk, tapping flags, yelling NO, feeling like I really am a soft-headed idiot. That night we find red skin and scabbing on Tralfaz's neck where the patch was shaved.

WEDNESDAY: Tralfaz's grooming appointment, made last April. We can bathe him but we can't clip him, and he only gets groomed every three months. He is a tangled mess. I would have taken him in today if I were coughing my spleen out from Chinese Death Virus. Also had other business that took me across the border to Pennsylvania, where every New Yorker was loading up on fireworks but me. By the time we get home, Fazzy is so tired that he is essentially a great-smelling hairy 130-pound paperweight. Nipper is losing the desire to do anything outside, because he keeps getting shocked.

Places Nipper may go
Places Nipper wants to go

THURSDAY: Wife's job continues to blow up. Training still going poorly, although it's hard to tell. Did not use the correction collar on Tralfaz because he is still all scabbed up. Still expecting big freelance job but it does not arrive. Nipper seems to be reconsidering the long-held theory that peeing on the carpet is bad.

FRIDAY: Start the day by emptying the dishwasher. Put Corningware bowl and lid in closet on other Corningware bowl, which in a jealous rage throws the other bowl to the closet floor. Shattered Corningware bursts into approximately one bazillion tiny sharp bits. Having cleaned that up, I continue my winning streak by going out to run some errands, spurred on by the need for a new relief valve for the water heater. EVERYBODY IN TOWN IS OUT THERE. Absolutely crazy everywhere I go. I actually abandon a shopping cart in one store, something I never do. (There were no cold or frozen foods in it, though, if that makes me look better.) I will remember this for next July 3: Do not shop on July 3. Nipper seems to have lost the will to live.

SATURDAY: Saturday is okay, except for the blood. Tralfaz scratches himself real good with hind paw, as dogs do, and tears the scabbing on his neck. Now his nice clean fuzz has bloodstains; it hurts him to lie down, and he has completely broken training, roaming around with no collar at all. Nipper is retaining pee like it's his life's ambition to have a UTI. Aaaaand here come the fireworks. There are usually about a dozen fireworks shows in the county on or around the Fourth, and especially if it falls on a Saturday. This year there is one. But that's okay; our neighbors have all bought illegal fireworks and deploy them in stages between five p.m. and two the next morning. Ta ra ra boom de ay, and I do mean boom. If the Spanish had this kind of ordnance in Cuba ca.1898, they'd have won the Battle of San Juan Hill, and American history and the presidency would be very different. Nipper has discovered that he does not want to die, because he thinks he is going to lose his life any second. I try to remind him how the dogs of Gettysburg suffered for three days with cannons going off all the time, but he is not comforted. Fazzy may have lost too much blood to care, although we're keeping his injury clean and sterile as best we can. Everyone goes to bed really late.

ooh. aah.

SUNDAY: I finally get to put in a new valve on the water heater, which promptly begins leaking much worse than the old valve. Well, that's a revoltin' development. Being unable to control the situation, I turn off the water and call a plumber. The wife, stressed out by a terrible week at work, wakes up to no hot water and considers joining the French Foreign Legion because everything sucks anyway. Plumber comes, thank God. I pretend I did not just change the valve; he changes the valve again, but also gets a gallon of black sediment out of the heater by applying pressure in some secret plumber means. Hot water restored; he will be back to install an expansion tank later in the week. Money I did not expect to spend, but cheaper than a new water heater. With all this, we miss Mass on TV. Soup blows up in the microwave. We bandage Tralfaz's neck, which is not his new favorite thing. I fall in a heap on a chair and write this, as I look forward to seeing my ear doctor at eight a.m. tomorrow. By Sunday night, the big job I was expecting the previous Monday has still not arrived.

Two notes:

1) There is a very funny bit in Woody Allen's play (later movie) Don't Drink the Water. Walter, a caterer stuck in a foreign country, hears from his partner by phone that a catering event went poorly because some guests got food poisoning. Walter's wife says, "Be thankful nobody died." Walter responds, "Yes, Marion -- we're thinking of making that our slogan." On weeks like this I want to make that our family slogan.

2) If, like me, you feel like the song "Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay" just came out of the ether, has always been around, and evolved organically without creators. Wikipedia tells us that "The song's first known public performance was in Henry J. Sayers' 1891 revue Tuxedo, which was performed in Boston, Massachusetts. The song became widely known in the version sung by Lottie Collins in London music halls in 1892. The melody was later used in various contexts, including as the theme song to the television show Howdy Doody." You can find out more here, but not who wrote it. Maybe it did spring out of the ether after all.

July 5th.

PSA from the dog #7.

Hello, friends. It is I once again. The dog. As in the past, I ask for just a moment of your time, your consideration, and maybe cheese.

As we know, today is July the Fourth, easily remembered because it is one day after July the Third. It is also an important American holiday, even to those of us in the Canine-American community. We enjoy the jolly get-togethers, the barbecues and picnics with dropped food, the many games that dogs can join in on, like that one where people stand around in a diamond and go crazy when a doggie playfully steals the little white ball. So much fun!

But there is one thing about this holiday that we dogs do not like, and that is your insistence on blowing things up. That is bad! Why would you do something that is bad? Don't you know that the exploding things frighten dogs? It's true!

When the things are blowing up you look kind of scared too, you know, like you don't want to be hit with them. I'll bet that would hurt! Maybe you should stop with that stuff!

Remember, the pain you save may be your own. Look at this famous clip. The poor doggie is not trying to hurt anyone; he just wanted to play with the stick. But then all the people run around like chickens as it fires at their feet. Not so fun when the shoot is on the other foot!

Even when you are blowing things up way in the sky, where it is not quite as dangerous, we doggies cannot understand the appeal. So there's a bunch of gray lights. Big deal. It's not like the stuff smells good. And the sound is awful! I cannot tell you just how loud that noise is to our sensitive ears. It is terrifying! It is like thunder times ten! That sensitive hearing that helps us find Timmy in the well or hear Sweet Polly Purebred call for help is the same sensitive hearing that gets us all scared and upset. Can't you find another way to celebrate this big holiday? Something less explosive? Maybe something more cheese-oriented? I hear you have a lot of cheese just lying around.

To sum up, we dogs ask is that you bear in mind this simple thought:

Before you start to blow things up
Remember that it makes your pup
Scared. 

This has been a public service announcement from the dog.

Boom, boom, ain't it great?

We thought we might be lucky twice, but it was not to be.

Tralfaz, three and a half years old, has never been bothered by thunderstorms, carpet cleaners, or fireworks. He gets a little annoyed by one loud floor cleaner, but it hardly rises to the level of fear. The local Fourth of July kabooms are so much ambient noise to Fazzy.

With the second dog? No so easy.

😨

He turned in around nine, as he usually does, but that's when dusk falls at this time of year. We heard the explosives in the next town over -- pop, pop, popopopopop, POW -- but no sound from the puppy. Then, WOOF!

Every dog has his own way of dealing with being scared. As we saw on Friday, Nipper is scared of garbage cans, and reacts to them on the sidewalk by shying away as hard as he can, even to the point of trying to run into the street. For a frightening sound with no obvious source, his technique is to walk around the house barking at random.

(Fazzy never made a peep through this whole situation. He saves his fear for important things, like the cellar stairs.)

There are a lot of ways you can try to calm your dog during storms or fireworks. Dog-training legend Cesar Millan offers several, like trying to acclimate him to the sound in advance through recordings, giving him a quiet place to retreat to (many go under beds or into closets), and using sedation if necessary. He and many other experts note that you should not be seen making a big deal out of the noise or his reaction to it, as dogs get their cues from their owners, and that was what we did. We just carried on as we normally would at home at that hour, advising him to be quiet when he barked a lot, and by ten the show was over.

It would be worse in an apartment or condo or even a duplex, where your neighbors might get upset about your dog getting upset. But then, ambient fireworks shows are not audible in most city apartments.

The challenge now is that, with Independence Day falling on Tuesday, we essentially have a four-day weekend of black powder fun. Here in the Hudson Valley every town and village seems to have its own fireworks night. Near as I can tell, tonight's will be too far from us for the dogs to hear anything. Our own town will be blowing the joint up on Monday, though, and maybe someplace else close by will do it Tuesday. So we may have freaking dog for a couple more nights yet.

On the other hand, if there's a series of fireworks nights he may get used to the sound and start to think it's no big deal. My wife even suggested taking the boys out to the fireworks show on Monday so they'd be in a fun setting (around people, which they love) and maybe associate the sound with good times. My main concern is that parking is hard down at the town center that night, and if little dog started to go crazy we'd have a hard time getting him out of there.

If you have any thoughts or experience on this, please drop them in the comments or drop me a line at frederick_key AT yahoo dot com. But drop it quietly; we've had enough noise for a while.