July 4th

By: Gary R. Oman, CPA, PFS, MST

When I was a kid, July 4th and the few days around the 4th were always very special. As I grew older, I learned that July 4th was more than just fireworks and hot dogs, however, that conversation can be for another time.

Back in the late ‘50s, my Nana (my mother’s mother) allowed my father to jack up her cottage which stood on a bluff in Hideaway Village on Buttermilk Bay and construct a cement block foundation under it. It was the first two-family cottage, each floor about 600 – 700 sf, and perhaps the only one at the time, two kitchens and two bathrooms, but just a cottage with the bare studs upstairs and painted cement block walls downstairs.

School couldn’t get out soon enough. Come the beginning of July, we were off to Hideaway. Shoes came off, bathing suits put on…summer began with a splash!

On July 4th, we would often have pot luck suppers a couple cottages over from ours. After which the kids would run down the stairs to the beach, as parents constantly reminded us to walk, to catch our last swim of the day then get ready to watch the fireworks.

Chairs would be lined up near the edge of the bluff, sometimes with the smudge pots working overtime to keep the mosquitoes away if there was not much of a breeze. From there we could look across Buttermilk Bay to watch the fireworks display in Buzzards Bay and listen to the “oohs and aahs” from the watchers.

Those were much simpler times, at least it seemed that way then…swimming, boating, digging for quahogs, fishing from a row boat with a drop line and a spreader to catch flounder and fluke and an occasional crab, not the eating kind, going barefoot most of the summer which made putting on your shoes to go back to school very, very difficult (sneakers were not allowed in school then), playing board games or card games, like canasta, on rainy days and of course your “summer friends” that you shared all these activities with.

Well, tomorrow is July 1st, let the summer begin! Although I won’t be going barefoot all summer, the next couple months provide many opportunities to be outside, to go places and do things we have been planning for for a while and to create some more memories.

Take care and best wishes for your best summer ever!

Until next time…

Gary

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