Alright, I had been sooo looking forward to a long weekend for quite some time. I had been really wanting to go back to Montana for the 4th for several months. There is this big softball tourney in the town I grew up in and a lot of my old friends were going to be there. One of my friends is in a band and his band was going to be playing at one of the local clubs (ok, there are no clubs in Montana… it was a bar, but it would still have been cool to see him play). My wife’s sister, however, has been begging us to go to North Platte, NE for a couple of years now. There is a Christian camp that puts on this big 4th of July extravaganza every year and it’s supposed to be fun for the whole family. Well, listening to my friend wail some good old rock n’ roll in a bar sounds fun to me, but the family friendly fun of Maranatha Camp wins out and it’s off to North Platte we go.
We drive the 3-plus hours to North Platte. The kids don’t even fight the entire way and I’m thinking this may have been the better choice for our July 4th activities. We arrive at the in-laws. We are bringing in our stuff and unpacking our weekend bags when my sister-in-law gets a phone call from some dude at the camp. Her kids are counselors at camp so she has an “in”. The dude on the phone tells her they are cancelling the 4th celebration at the camp because of an outbreak of swine flu. Hold on, wait a second, it’s July 3rd and I just drove over 3 hours to North Platte, Nebraska for the sole purpose of going to a July 4th celebration that’s no longer going to happen? Well hoodeedoodeedoo… at least I’m in North Platte. North Platte is known for… there is a lot to do… at least in North Platte there is a… oh, who am I kidding, North Platte is just like crappy Scottsbluff but is a 3 hour drive away.
Ok, I’m not quite ready to put on my complaining hat yet (no… I have no idea what a “complaining hat” is and I know it sounds stupid… but it is what popped into my head and I’m going with it) and am ready to give this weekend in North Platte a try. So, me and my family and the in-laws put our heads together and try to come up with a plan. We decide we’re going to have our own little celebration. We’re going to buy our own fireworks. We’re going to buy our own food. We’re going to have the best darn 4th of July celebration that money can buy. So we head into town and quickly realize that in order for the phrase “that money can buy” to mean anything, you actually have to possess large sums of money, which we didn’t. CRAP!
You see, in Scottsbluff, we have a few crappy little roadside fireworks vendors, but we also have a couple of dudes that have actual warehouses they set up chock full o’ goodies and they sell the crap at a decent discounted price. Oh sure, it’s still WAY too expensive for little bits of gunpowder that take a few seconds to blow up in a multitude of colors, but it’s way cheaper than the little roadside guys. In North Platte, all they have is the little roadside guys.
Was it really that long ago that, on the 4th of July, grocery stores would have really good pop sales? You know, like four 12-packs for $10.00? Now they run specials like “Hot Sale – two 12-packs of Pepsi for $10.00… with a stupid club card”. Seriously, like twice as expensive for stuff as it was just a few years ago… and I guarantee you I ain’t making twice as much money as I did a few years ago. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work: the price of stuff rises over time, but so do wages? I see the price of stuff still going up, but my wages remain unchanged. I thought Obama the Holy One was supposed to fix this crap? C’mon, he’s had half-a-year already; that’s more than enough time to fix the economy, right? Stupid politicians… and stupid pop manufacturers (I mean, how much can a stupid can of soda with some carbonated water and some high fructose corn syrup really cost)… and stupid overcharging roadside fireworks vendors! Soooo, the outcome of our 4th of July was some of those stupid little snappers you throw at the ground (they were only like 25 cents per box), ramen noodles to eat and all the hose water we could drink! Stinking 4th of July in stinking North Platte!
Ok… actually it wasn’t so bad. The in-laws felt horrible about us driving all that way from crap-hole Nebraska to expensive-fireworks-crap-hole, Nebraska, so they pitched-in more than their fair-share for the meal and the fireworks. We had a decent little display and a feast of bratwursts, pork ribs, macaroni salads, coleslaw and sweet corn. It was yummy. The camp even let the niece and nephew come home from camp to celebrate with us (all of the kids were supposed to be quarantined whether they were sick or not… apparently this swine flu thingie is really contagious.)
So, all things considered, we had a pretty decent 4th of July. Good food, good fireworks, good family. With the odds against us, we had a good time. The overpriced pop vendors, the outrageously overpriced roadside fireworks stands, and the stinking lame swine-flu infested camp we drove over 3 hours to go to but didn’t get to go to didn’t ruin the 4th of July for the family of Adventurer Rich!
You know what’s weird, though? Ever since we returned home, I’ve felt a little feverish and have had an intense desire to roll in the mud…