Soon it will be the US national holiday; Independence day; the Fourth of July.
I always fondly remember one very hot 4th of July when I was a kid.
My brother, George, and I slept in a bedroom that was directly under the roof of the house. When it was very hot for several days in a row, that bedroom was like an oven. So George and I often slept in a tent in our yard when it was very hot in the summer.
On this 4th of July, it was very, very hot, but for some reason that I can not remember we decided to sleep in our beds in our bedroom instead of in the tent that night.
My sister, Sue, had a date to go watch the fireworks with the son of a psychologist who worked at the Veterans Hospital. The city of Butler, PA, as well as the surrounding townships, in an effort to reduce the number of injuries suffered by citizens firing thier own fireworks, sponsored a municipal 4th of July fireworks. The city and nearby townships paid a professional company to set off fireworks in a park or in a football stadium. My sister went to the municipal fireworks with a young man whose father worked where my father worked, the VA Hospital.
My father had a habit of checking whether all of his kids were in bed before he retired for the night. On this 4th of July, when my dad looked to see whether all his kids were in bed, my sister Sue was missing! She wasn’t in bed. It was probably midnight and she should have been home already. But she wasn’t.
My father got dressed and drove to the house of the psychologist. He wanted to know where his daughter was and why the psychologist’s son hadn’t brought her home at the agreed time! If I remember correctly, the son was not home and the father didn’t know where he was. This was before cell phones, so the son couldn’t simply be called. My father started driving around, looking for the son of the psychologist. He looked in all the diners and hamburger restaurants that were open all night, but didn’t find his daughter and didn’t find anyone who had seen her.
It just so happened, that on that 4th of July night, someone’s fireworks went astray and started a fire in a nearby lumber yard. The flames were burning high and there were multiple fire trucks at the scene. A crowd of people had gathered to watch the fire or to watch the firemen fight the fire… or both. My father found my sister’s date there, watching the spectacle. But without my sister! He told my dad he had brought my sister home after the municipal fireworks had ended. He had left her at the front door of our house.
My dad drove home and searched the house. No Sue. Where could she be?
My father thought of the tent in the yard. Although he had expected George and me to be sleeping in the tent that night, he had found us in our beds in our bedroom. He hadn’t looked for Sue in that tent! He went outside into the yard and found Sue sleeping like a baby in the tent! Since it was very, very hot, instead of going into the house and upstairs to her bedroom after her date brought her home, she looked in the tent. Since we weren’t sleeping there, she decided to sleep in the tent that night.
After accounting for the whereabouts of all his children, my father went very late to bed.
If I remember correctly, the son of the psychiatrist never asked my sister to go out again.