Ah, the 4th of July. A time to spend with family, celebrating our country's independence. If you're from my family, you celebrate by getting up at 9 am, putting on an outfit of red, white and blue and driving to your Great-Grandmother's house in Niles, Illinois to watch the annual Niles Fourth of July Parade from her front lawn and then enjoy a classy afternoon of Boston Market catering and Bud Light. Here's Michael J. ("the J is for Jackson") Pierski setting up the obligatory red, white and blue lawn chairs for the parade.
The parade approaches...it always includes the marching bands, the clowns, the elected officials in shiny convertibles, the Shriners in their funny hats and bicycles, parade floats, and free candy and mini-American flags. We're Polish, so we love anything cheesy, like the parade, and anything free, like the candy and handouts.
My cousins are, by now, experts at this yearly parade stuff. They're saving their enthusiasm for the good stuff, the parade floats that throw out candy and cheap toys. If you look closely enough, you'll see that just about everyone's wearing the red, white and blue, and two of the girls are even sporting red-and-blue eyeshadow.
Everyone loves a parade...except if you're two years old, like my cousin Madelynn. She mostly preferred to check out the bugs in the grass.
Here it is, kids...the end of the line. As I leave you to your adventures, and me to mine, I just want to say thanks for coming along for the ride with me. For my last parting thoughts, here are a few good pictures that I took a long time ago, and felt like sharing.
