The fourth of July
Ó Aug 9.2003
By Shalagh Knight
Living could be quite dull in Butte, Montana so you had to rely on your good fortune to be entertained. It was this girl’s good fortune that the whole town was made up of drunks. The best time to be drunk in Butte was during the fourth of July celebration, which went from roughly June 28th to July 7th.
I remember going to watch the fourth of July parade and my mother putting beer in the baby’s bottle. Not for the baby, no, but to spray the parade procession as they walked by. The parade was a big to-do with floats and marching bands. All of us kids would storm the floats for candy, which there was plenty of, and the adults would storm the beer wagon. By high noon the kids were high on candy and the adult high on alcohol.
The party would then move to the City Park where you could buy buckets of beer for three dollars. Musicians would come to the park and play while walking around, gathering coins. As fun as the traveling band was, nothing could beat old man Luigie and his one-man band. Luigie owned a local bar in town and was famous for his one-man band get up. You know the kind. All sorts of instruments attached together and strapped to his back. He could play by kicking, swatting, strumming and blowing. When Luigie showed up, it was a party indeed.
I remember one very drunk Luigie doing his thing and my mom jumping up to dance with him. It was a beautiful thing, both of them laughing and spinning, Luigie playing his little heart out. Until, that is, they spun into the baby buggy, lost their balance, and ending up falling head over heels in a big pile right in front of my fathers, very sober and very straight secretary. My mother peeked up from underneath Luigie, and what was left of his instruments strewn all around them and asked very seriously, do you want a turn now Eleanor?
As the adults got deeper into their cups, or buckets, we kids got more and more freedom. We would wander the park and play with all the other kids. We would invent some imaginative game that usually had the common thread of either pestering the snot out of the drunken parents or trying to get our hands on their beers. We could entertain ourselves for a very long time with the sea of drunks we had at the park. We were safe in doing so because no matter how mad they got, even the littlest of us (me) could out run them. If we had been mean kids we could have made a fortune rolling the lushes at about six o’clock. We never did participate however, we merely observed.
One game my sisters and I loved was lawn darts. But lawn darts in those days weren’t the cheap plastics they have now. They were real. The wings were made of hard plastic and the tips were made of honest to God steel. It was a true weapon and we loved to play them. One day I remember a man stumbling into our game and we almost killed him. The dart was thrown very high and came down right next to him. By right next to him, I mean it actually touched him all the way down his left side. He was too drunk to know though and just stood there with a stupid drunken grin. We girls were taking no chances and we ran like hell. God forbid he sober up and realize he had a long slice taken out of his left side, and who was the cause of it.
After the adults had a belly full of beer and barbecue they would pull out the fireworks. They said we would have to wait for the big show, and make do with home bought fireworks for now, but I never quite agree with that. No big money show can hold a candle to drunk adults, ½ drunk kids, and explosives. Adults think it is funny to play practical jokes on one another with various things lit of fire and that alone is worth twice the price of admission.
While the adults did their things, we girl’s would try to get our hands on some fireworks so we could sneak away and set off some of our own. We were happy even with sparklers. Fireworks were so different in those days. Now they just fizzle and sometimes you can’t get them lit if you held them into a bon fire.. Back in those days, a spark could light one up and the fire that shot from a sparkler is something to behold. Usually you would have holes burned in your clothes and sometimes various things on your person would ignite. If we girl’s were caught smoking in those days, it was usually because we just quit flaming.
It was like that all day on the forth. Several days actually. Wonderful Barbecues, happy drunken adults, we kids snatching sips out of any buckets we could find and running wondrously wild through the park. We kids ate too much candy, the adults drank to much beer and we had the times of our lives.
The Fourth of July celebration just aren’t the same anymore so I usually just let them pass. I live in Oregon now and they don’t celebrate the fourth with the passion and intensity as Butte, Montana did. It just doesn’t hold the same magic for me anymore. There are no beer by the buckets, no city park full of drunk and happy people, and mostly, there is no Luigie and his one-man band. So now I will just sit in my own back yard, getting a little deep in my own cup and think back to a place that knew how to celebrate independence day with pizzazz- Butte, Montana.
