When my family first moved to Texas, I was a very antisocial kid. It was a new place, and I just didn't want to meet new kids. I eventually made several new friends through school, mostly through
their sheer determination.
First, there was Julie. She stood exactly 3'9" by the time she started eighth grade. She had red shoes she would wear when she was in a good mood. She called them her "Happy Feet".
Next were Tim and Pat. They were brothers. Odd guys, but funny. Tim, the older of the two, was willing to do anything to get attention, including dropping his pants in the middle of the school cafeteria when Ms. Kennedy, the extremely hot sub, walked through.
But of all the friends I made down there, the best of them was Lance.
Lance's family had lived in Texas for as far back as he could remember. His father, Jimmy, was the most stereotypical Texan-y person I ever met. (This meant that, like most Texans I knew, Jimmy thought of Colorado as little more than a resort for when you wanted to get out of town for a while. He also thought that the height of good manners was to not open his beer bottles with his teeth when his mother - a lovely woman of about eighty-two that made ceramics - was at the table.)
One Fourth of July, Lance called me and invited me to his family's annual barbecue dinner. I, of course, accepted. (His mother's cooking was the best I'd ever had in my life.)
After arriving and being introduced to everyone there, Lance and I went to jump off the house onto his trampoline. This kept us busy for a while, until we got too hot and decided to relax and just talk.
Suddenly, Jimmy stood up from the picnic table and lurched in a pretty wobbly manner over to the corner of the house. (He'd started his celebrating early, and was now about halfway through his first case of Coors.) We watched him as he stood there for a few minutes, occasionally slapping at his arm or his rather large belly.
"What's he doing?" I asked.
"Dunno," Lance said.
We continued to watch until he turned around and made a drunken beeline for the back door of the house. Then we walked over toward the the place he had been standing. As we got closer, we saw what Jimmy had been looking at: a mud wasp nest that stretched from the top of the brickwork to about halfway down the side of the house. Wasps buzzed around the whole thing angrily. I grabbed Lance's arm and quickly retreated to the picnic table. (I have an incredibly irrational fear of bees and the like, and I tend to run away, arms flapping like a frightened child, when I see one even glancing in my direction.)
About five minutes passed. Then the back screen door flew open and Lance's father stumbled through with a shoebox in his hands. He had also put on his cowboy hat -- his way of signifying that he had serious business to tend to.
And so, Jimmy - shirtless, big belly shaking as he walked, cowboy hat perched on his head, belt buckle roughly the size of a '73 Valiant, mysterious box in-hand - tripped toward the nest on the corner of the house.
Upon reaching the nest, he started taking something out of the box and stuffing it into the hole in the wasp nest. Lance and I watched with growing apprehension.
He reached into his pocket. Out came his battered Zippo lighter.
Click.
Click.
Fsssssssssssssssssss......
Jimmy turned around, holding his cowboy hat on his head, and started running toward the other side of the yard, where we were. I think he was screaming "GET DOWN!!!!"
Suddenly, there was an enormous explosion. The wasp nest disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
After the noise died down, Jimmy got up and walked over toward the corner where the nest was. The air was still pretty thick with smoke. Lance and I joined him.
"Sumbitch," he said. "Looky there." He was a man of few words.
We looked. Not only had the nest disappeared; the corner of the house was MIA, as well.
Then the screen door opened, and out came Gladys, Jimmy's mother. She had plaster dust in her hair. She'd been in the living room watching television. "Jimmy," she said, "what happened?"
Lance's dad had the good grace to look a bit embarrassed. Staring down at his cowboy boots, he said, "Well... I saw that wasp nest over there... An' I had all these M-80s... An' I just thought... Well... I just thought I'd get rid of that there nest..."
"Land sakes," she said. "Jimmy, that was the dumbest thing you ever did. I oughta tan your hide! I ain't so old I couldn't! Don't you look at me like that! You get in there and clean up that--I HEARD THAT!"
Jimmy followed Gladys into the house, mumbling to himself the whole time, and started cleaning. Lance and I decided to go jump on the trampoline some more.
The damage to the house ended up costing about $5000 to fix, and Jimmy was never allowed to have explosives in the house again.
As for me, I'll always remember that as the most eventful July 4th I've ever had. Sure, there were ones that might have been more fun, or more eventful - especially after I moved home to Michigan and had kids - but that one will probably stick with me until the day I die.
What about you? What's your funniest Fourth of July story?
DCF