Fourth of July 2017 brought back a special memory for yours truly.
It goes back 22 years to our very first Independence Day celebration in the Texas Panhandle. It involves lots of fireworks — as in Roman candles and assorted ordnance that went “boom!” in the night — and a display brought to us by good ol’ Mama Nature herself.
I had come to work for the Amarillo Globe-News in January 1995 and was informed that the newspaper played host to an annual fireworks show. It was a big deal for the company. The publisher of the G-N, Garet von Netzer, told me how the paper would have a company picnic at Ross Rogers Municipal Golf Club; the G-N took over the site for the evening. We had barbecue, played games, and were entitled to bring guests to enjoy the festivities.
The neighborhoods around Ross Rogers and adjoining Thompson Park would fill with thousands of spectators who came from miles away to witness the annual tradition.
That’s what we did on July 4, 1995. It would be a blast, man … no pun intended.
As the sun lowered itself in the western sky that evening, thunderheads began to form over Bushland. Then around 9:45 p.m. or so, they lit the fireworks and the show began.
Boy howdy, did it ever! The sky then lit up with lightning strikes and the sound of enormous thunderclaps. The fireworks launched into the sky were backlit by, shall we say, the real thing.
It was an astonishing display of Mama Nature’s mighty power juxtaposed with humankind’s meager efforts at replicating it.
It was our great luck that the storm we witnessed to our west stayed away that evening. We saw it from a bit of a distance, but we were close enough to hear it, to feel it — and to marvel in its splendor.
I thought about that wonderful evening last night as I stood on my front porch watching the lightning fire up the sky while listening in the distance to fireworks that were being ignited by some brave souls seeking to celebrate the 241st year of our national independence.
I walked into the publisher’s office the next morning, by the way, still in awe at what my wife and I had witnessed the previous evening 22 years ago. “Hey, Garet,” I asked, “is there any chance you can order up that kind of display every Fourth of July?”
His answer? “That’s the power of the press for you.”
A slightly different Globe News 4th of July…In 1980 or 1981. I was Development Director at the GN and I was responsible for the annual fireworks at Dick Bivins Stadium. As usual, I met the OK fireworks company at the stadium that morning to watch them set up, etc. By early afternoon the sky was clouding over with strong wind blowing. The fireworks people became very concerned. They had a 20 plus year record of providing this event for us but they felt it was too risky this year. After checking again with the weather people, I made the decision to cancel. We notified the Amarillo news outlets, and were then flooded with complaints from very angry people who felt we had denied their “right” to have a free fireworks show. I learned that night and the next few days how angry people can be when a freebie is taken away!
I’d be angry, too. Thanks for sharing that one.