What The Fourth Of July Means To Me

The Fourth of July has always been a time to celebrate being together for me and my family.

It didn't start off that way though, usually we had a bunch of work to get done first. We did laundry, dishes, and lawn mowing when it's cool. There was always that trip to Walmart for the hot dogs, chips, potato salad, cantaloupe, watermelon, beer, plastic plates, sunscreen, bug repellent, sun glasses, hats, and ice.

As a kid growing up on an Air Force base on the Fourth of July we had a baseball diamond that was designated the one place on the base where we could launch off fireworks. Have you ever seen close to a thousand people at one ball diamond all launching rockets and roman candles. What a sight. I remember seeing my sister getting hit in her long red hair with a bottle rocket. She was yelling and screaming and patting her head. I'm sure it was not fun for my sister, but from my perspective that was really funny!

This Is What Independence Means To Me

We lived in a house off the base with a high back porch. One year it was really dry outside. My sister and I decided to light some Jumping Jacks. Now if you don't know about Jumping Jacks, when you light them you never know which way they are going to go. Sometimes you have to run and duck. My sister was lighting one and it took flight and flew over to the neighbors yard where it caught the dry grass on fire. We sprinted over with the hose and put it out. I'm sure the neighbors knew why there was a big black hole in their lawn for weeks.

When I was in  high school on the Fourth of July, we did what any mischievous kids would do.

We bought as many fireworks as we could because we were going to blow something up! I remember I had a black cat firework I was lighting and it went off in my hand. Ouch! That really does hurt!

My friends and I used to have bottle rocket wars. We would each have a gross of bottle rockets. We lived in a large trailer park, notice I said trailer park and not manufactured home community because that's what it was. There used to be a playground in the middle of the park with slides and jungle jims and we used to launch the rockets off the slide across the park and try and hit each other. We never said we were the sharpest tools in the shed.

As I got older I joined the Army. One of the best fireworks displays I ever saw was at the University of South Carolina football stadium. All the guys from the military base came to the stadium dressed in uniforms along with the civilians. Lee Greenwood was singing in the middle. They shot the fireworks off, with the loud music booming then the Blue Angels flew over the stadium rocking the walls it was AWESOME!

One time I drove to the Oregon coast and we camped on the beach, when it was legal with a bonfire. I had some Flower Blossoms. When you light them they spin around and change colors. So I thought hey lets throw them in the ocean. Wow! As the waves would roll in, they would change colors! Way cool!

After getting an Article 15 in the Army for having fireworks in my wall locker, the charm of lighting the fireworks off was gone. So I was relegated to watching the displays around towns. I must admit, some of them are pitiful.

Now being an adult with kids of my own, I don't want to deprive them of lighting off fireworks, but the restrictions have become huge. We used to go to my brothers house because in the town he lived in it was legal to light fireworks. I remember my brother said watch this. He grabbed a PVC pipe and put it in a ditch in front of his house pointed up. He had a huge firework that he lit and dropped into the tube. When it went off, it was so loud that the doors and windows in the neighborhood shook. Someone called the police, but all they could do was drive by us as we smiled at them.

We used to go to see parades in the cool of the morning, but that lost its flavor because the heat of the day. I really don't want to see the horse drawn floats with their smelly excrement heating up in the sun. It was the one time I could actually handle clowns, and that was because they were handing out candy. As a side note, why would anyone become a clown, that is creepy! If you are a clown, I apologize!

Now days we sit at the pool in the heat of the day and splash people! One thing I don't do on the Fourth of July is drive. Even if I haven't had anything to drink, that doesn't mean that the other guy hasn't. More deaths happen on the Fourth of July than any other day of the year, and usually the people that die are the innocent victims.

As much as I want to show my patriotic spirit on the Fourth of July for me it's more about getting to know my family. When I'm old and grey, nobody at the parades or the fireworks display will be changing my diapers, but my family will be there for me. Hopefully they will have brains enough to pay someone else for that task.

Leave a comment and tell me what the Fourth of July means to you, and feel free to click the link below to see some of my other weird life events.

Thanks For Reading

John Prochazka

http://bit.ly/12eNydq

Making Homemade Butter From Solar Power And A Reciprocating Saw

Have you ever made homemade butter with a saw?

Okay this is a little bit out there, but you will definitely get a laugh when you see this couple trying to work together to create homemade butter. Of all things butter.

With the high price of products these days it's important to cut back in every area possible to make your dollar stretch. Electricity keeps going up, so does milk, and gas. Living in a consumer based society can have it's tole on our well being. Keeping up with the Jones isn't always easy. Obviously homemade butter isn't a big expense, but this is fun little project you can do in your garage with your kids or your spouse.

If you bought a commercial butter maker at the store it would cost upwards of one hundred and fifty dollars.

This is a very funny informative video, keep your eyes peeled for the bloopers!

You are going to need a few things in order to make the homemade butter:

1. 18 volt rechargeable cordless drill battery.

2. Solar panels to charge the batteries on a drip charge system throughout the day. (You can cheat and plug them in to the wall charger, but that is cheating)

3. A reciprocating saw with a twelve inch blade that you have filed down till it is dull.

4. A plastic jug (preferably an ice tea container).

5. Some heavy cream from the grocery store

6. Some duct tape.

Optional: Plate, Goggles, Paper Towels, and a Bib.

Don't forget you can add salt as well, but I recommend mixing the salt with the heavy creamer before you make the butter so that the grains won't get in the way.

I hope you got a good laugh out of that!

If we don't change the way we think, how can we make any kind of change in our world. Maybe making homemade butter is a simple thing that can have a big impact.

Have you ever had a carbon report done on your household? Basically they take the amount of stuff you consume, electricity, water, food, materials and they assign a value to it. For most households it would take approximately three to five acres of land growing things to support them. Now picture all the people in the world, with their one house. There are not enough acres in the world to supply the demand that we put on it. Someone is getting short changed.

So it's important that we change the way we think for our future generations. People are just now being forced to accept the fluorescent bulbs in their homes over the incandescent bulbs, but we also have the L.E.D. bulbs that take much less energy.

I'm going to be following this couple as they seem to have some interesting insights into common everyday things with some unorthodox ways of getting results.

Thanks For Reading

John Prochazka

http://bit.ly/1creL28

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