The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

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July 3, 2009

Mike Pound: It's time for the annual blowout

It’s July Fourth.

A time when we celebrate the fact that on this date in 1776, one of our founding fathers (I want to say it was that Franklin guy, but it could have been one of the Roosevelts) decided to honor America by having a “Huge Blowout Everything Must Go Fourth of July Sale.”

Oh, and there was also something about some sort of declaration, and there might have been some dust up with the British on that date in history. But I didn’t have time to “do a Google.”

Today we chose to honor America in much different ways than our founding fathers did. Sure, we still have “Huge Blowout Everything Must Go Fourth of July” sales but now we also blow things up. We also let grown men gather around a large vat of boiling oil and eventually set fire to themselves and everyone and everything around them.

Seriously (and I don’t mean to get off track here), who thought allowing grown men access to a turkey fryer on a national holiday was a good idea? Grown men shouldn’t be allowed access to a turkey fryer on a normal day, let alone on a national holiday. Every Thanksgiving and every Fourth of July, you always read about some guy who managed to burn his entire house down while attempting to fix something in a turkey fryer.

“Well, we fried up the turkey, then we decided, ‘What the heck, let’s toss the cat in there and see what happens.’ Maybe we should have set that fryer outside, but we’d been drinking.”

I should point out that I am not in any way suggesting that you throw a cat into a turkey fryer. One of those little dogs spoiled celebrities carry in their purses, maybe. But not a cat.

At our house, we celebrate the Fourth of July by fixing an exotic array of hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. I like the way we celebrate the Fourth of July. Mainly because I get to drink beer while I am fixing an exotic array of hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. I should point out that I don’t drink too much beer when I’m fixing an exotic array of hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. I don’t drink too much beer because after we eat the exotic array of hamburgers and hot dogs, we blow some things up.

We don’t blow a lot of things up mainly because I don’t like the idea of spending money on something that I’m going to blow up. Really, if you think about it, there isn’t much difference between spending 50 bucks on a bunch of fireworks and just lighting 50 bucks on fire.

But still, I don’t drink too much beer before I blow something up because I don’t want to be one of those guys that we all read about every Fourth of July.

“Well, after Earl blew up a whole package of M-80s, he thought it would be cool to blow up two whole packages of M-80s while I was filling up my car over at the convenience store. That’s when the whole thing went up. See, we had been drinking.”

After we blow a few things up, we’ll go join a bunch of other people and watch someone the city hired to blow a bunch more stuff up. I like watching someone else blow stuff up, but I hate it when everyone says the same thing when the stuff gets blown up. Everyone says “Ooooh” or “Ahhhhhh” when stuff gets blown up.

Last year, we were all at my Uncle Jim’s house at the Lake of the Ozarks watching a fireworks display on the water. Every time a firework blew up, my Aunt Ev would either say “Oooooooh, that’s pretty” or “Awwwwww, that’s pretty.” After about 10 minutes of listening to that, my Uncle Jim finally said, “Ev, if you see one you don’t like, would you let us know?”

It was the funniest thing I had heard in a long time.

Of course, we’d been drinking.

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