Sunday, July 4, 2010

Bicentennial Celebration - Flashback

This morning, I was reading an article in the Opinion section of the Oregonian newspaper about how July 4th is really a man's holiday. The writer made some valid points.

As I was reading though, I remembered a July 4th Celebration that I hadn't thought of for a long time. Days away from celebrating my 9th birthday, my family helped celebrate the Bicentennial in Wiesbaden, Germany at the Lindsay Air Force Base. I think the celebration was in conjunction with either the Girl Scouts or the Boy Scouts or both (my parents were involved in Boy Scouts, but my sister and I were in Girl Scouts). I remember it pretty clearly - we were set up in the field where they normally had softball. Everyone wore colonial garb - my dress was blue and long. I LOVED IT! And I loved the elastic cap (I will have to look up what they called it).  I hadn't really had many costumes in my life (Bambi's mother and some Halloween costumes, I think) and I wore them until they fell apart. I'm pretty sure that this was no exception.

The one thing I remember most, aside from the costume and some of the visuals that flash in my head is that we made butter in baby food jars.  As a kid who was born in the city and who moved around according to the orders of the Air Force, I don't think it had ever occurred to me that butter was something that was MADE. I'm pretty sure I just thought it came that way...in a stick.  So when we had to shake those teeny baby food jars for what seemed like hours, I was pretty skeptical. When it started to turn to butter, that was pretty excited. Then, when we finally tasted it on some homemade, fresh-baked bread - HEAVEN. I'm pretty sure that I haven't tasted butter that good to this day.

Anyway, Happy Fourth of July!  I hope everyone has a safe, fun and FREE holiday.

[image from www.importcostumes.com]

No comments:

Post a Comment

LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin