With the 4th July Weekend drawing to a close, I can't say that it had been a thrill a minute for me and my husband. The long weekend usually heralds the start of summer and evokes the image of sweaty celebrations in outdoor settings; a sea of flip flops and sunburned faces consuming inappropriate volumes of cocktails and charred meat. Though not this year.
I should explain. Davo, the husband, came home from work early on Friday with a cold so we had to forgo the cheery invites to Brooklyn backyards and ignore the siren call of friends with Long Island homes. Instead, we nominated to stay home and watch a whole season, back to back, of the Showtime masterpiece 'The Tutors!' Yes, you heard it correctly. On the American holiday to celebrate the independence of the USA from Britain, we stayed home to watch nine hours of the rise and fall of one of England's most powerful and morally corrupt Kings, Henry VIII. How's that for perverse?
But we didn't just stay home. No, while languishing indoors watching hours of television, we also played marathon games of Scrabble. In retrospect only an uneventful childhood in 1960's suburban Australia, could have suitably prepared me for such tedium! :) Convalescence, interrupted only once, by a short trip to our building's crowded rooftop to watch the fireworks.
Our neighbors made much of the fact that the Macy fireworks were being set off this year on the Hudson River, instead of the East River! Over the last 15 years, the fireworks display on the Hudson river, which separates Brooklyn from Manhattan, offered our building a spectacular view. There were at least 3 or 4 distinct parties being staged at different corners of the dark roof: a large scrappy tartop littered with cigarette butts, a few rickety picnic tables, circled by cyclone fence. The night air was laced with the sharp smell of lighter fluid and meat BBQing on small portable grills, bought from the local 'Liberty Dollar Stores'. Abruptly someone in the building starting releasing their own firework display in a cordoned off section of the roof. They were big, for local fireworks. It's hard not to smile when you watch fireworks, especially when you are up so close! So while the viewing deck itself is a modest vantage point, every July 4th afforded us a world class view.
Though it isn't to everyone's taste. My aging parents, on a July visit a few years ago, couldn't see what all the fuss was about. "Big Deal" was my dad's audible assessment mid-spectacular before turning to the upturned faces of other onlookers to say, "Did you ever see the Opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympics? Now that was a show."
