by Michael Allen McCormick

Created on: June 18, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

In the Grand Finalle of my mind, there are six Independence days that stand out in my memory as unforgettable.

*1968*
This Independence day, I was only six years old. So the memory isn't as vivid as the more recent past, but I remember it because it was a sad day for my family.

After returning from a day of hollering and cheering and carousing at the biggest rootin tootin rip snortin rodeo in Oregon, the Mollalla Buckaroo, my Mom was greeted at the front door by a relative telling her the news that her father (my grandpa Arthur) had just past away from peritonitis. (A complication that set in after his surgery for ulcers)

That put a damper on an otherwise fun filled and exciting day. Lighting the sparklers and firecrackers we had just didn't have the zing we had planned for.

Mom was pregnant with my baby sister, who my grandfather would never get to see, and her brother (my uncle Norman) was terminally ill with cancer.

We turned from excitement to a somber mood, and to this date, my mother has not celebrated on the 4th of July. Though she loves her country and is indeed patriotic, Independence day is just not as happy memory for her.

*1972*

Another bittersweet but none the less unforgettable fourth of July was the year my Uncle Steve (Dad's brother) came over, and we went to the beach to watch the fireworks display the city of Santa Monica was having.

We were on the Santa Monica Pier when darkness came upon us and as the fireworks show began, my uncle totally freaked out. When the pyrotechnics began bursting in air above us, uncle Steve started having a Viet Nam flashback.

He screamed hit the deck! We just looked at him like he was being silly, but then he grabbed me and threw me under a wooden table, and he jumped on top of me trying to protect my head from grenade shrapnel or something.

I got bruised up and cut from my uncle trying to save me from this imagined attack. I was too young to really understand how his experience in Nam could have affected him this way. But this was only to be a precursor to events that led to my uncle's untimely death the following year.

When I think back on my Uncles' tragic life, this Independence Day stands out above some of the others as an unforgettable one.

*1973*

We were on a 38-state cross country vacation in our metallic blue 1961 Cadillac convertible
and the fourth of July was spent in Florida with my Mom's high school friend Lenora. Lenora's kids had home-made fireworks, and I didn't have sense enough to treat the sparklers with extra

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