Small Town Americana at its Best

Was it my imagination, or was this year's Independence Day celebration in Oriental the best one yet?

A day full of friends

And crowds of happy neighbors!

Hi, Linda!! I see you!!

They lined the streets and cheered, and we sang patriotic songs from our float and tossed candy to children. "This land is your land, this land is my land...."

 And flags -- so many flying flags! We do have a pretty flag in the U.S.A.

The Croakerfest theme this year was "coral." 

People were amazingly creative in integrating coral into their parade floats.

These patriotic folks used pool noodles, cut them into swirlies to look like coral, and mounted them on their golf cart. Great!

THIS ... was sheer genius. They took an umbrella ...

 ... and put shimmery layers of silver/clear stuff on it, and cut lots of strips that slither and wave slowly in the wind. And they opened and shut the umbrella as they walked the parade route ...
so it looked just a giant jellyfish, strolling along the road.

 This little girl got her colors on! She was dancin' away.

 We sat on Kip's porch, listening to the bands play a stone's throw away. Occasionally we'd wander over and grab a bit to eat. I had a home-made fish sandwich sold by the Pierce Creek AME church folks. Quite yummy!

 And we four silly girls (are we too old to call ourselves girls?) got our photo taken. Because life is short and you'd better have a laugh with your friends while you still can!

That night Adam and I drove to the little marina outside of town, loaded the little sailboat with cushions and sails and life jackets and all the things that haven't been on board for a year and a half, and we took her out into the middle of the creek to watch Oriental's stunning fireworks show. Iv'e heard it's one of the very best (and longest) in eastern N.C. Here are some photos of our little date adventure -- the first time we've ever taken our sailboat out at night and brought her back into the slip in the dark.

The sun was just setting when we picked a spot and lowered our anchor into the river's muddy bottom.

We were early. Many boats moored here for the show, and we heard the chatter and laughter of people from other boats, from houses on the shore, and from the crowds mobbed all along the bridge.

Since we had some extra time and a bit of daylight, we put the mainsail back on the mast/boom. There's lots of little jobs like this still to be done on the boat.

Now I'll share photos of the fireworks. Of course, photos on a blog just do NOT do them justice. But I like to keep this memory. It was a lovely, perfect evening: cool, bug-free, beautiful. A night when you try to put away the worries of life and hug these happy moments close.

 I enjoy the reflection of the fireworks on the water all around us, and the booming reverberation along the creeks.

 They were massive and filled the sky over our heads. I lay on the cushion in the cockpit and watched the lights fall. All of them extinguished themselves before they reached the water.

 A black sky of stars:

 The shimmery, faint reflection:

From our experience of various fireworks shows in different states/towns, Oriental's is quite impressive and quite long -- about 20-25 minutes of huge ones. What fun to have this in our own village! The town is packed with people from all over who come for it, and business is brisk all evening. Poor Anna did not return from her table-waiting job until 11:45.

I hope your July 4th celebration was just as fun as ours!