Celebrate "Four Chuly"

July 4, 2011.  Today, in Malaga, north central Washington state, shotgun blasts are going off constantly,  randomly, but never more than six seconds apart. It could be an Independence Day celebration, but it's actually more practical than that.  The cherry crop is coming in. It's late this year, but should be ready for harvest within the next three days.  The blasts are intended to scare birds out of the fields until the crop can be picked.  It's a sign of the times that the orchardists are supposed to be federally licensed and regulated before using such explosives, but it's also the reality that even the feds acknowledge that this particular law is observed more in the breach than in the observance.
     For the Sampson clan, Independence Day was probably the next biggest family holiday after Christmas; at least it ran as a strong contender against Thanksgiving. It was called "Four Chuly," after Pappy Eli's pronunciation with his Finnish accent.  It meant a day off from work for the hard-working Sampsons--Gene, the beer distributor, Johnnie the hardware store merchant, and Vake the plumber.
     The holiday meant at least a picnic, maybe even camping out. Jon and Dean could show off their water-skiing skills from Johnnie's dock on Woahink Lake:  As the ski rope drew taut, they'd yell "Hit it!" and leap from the dock with one small ski and one slalom ski on their feet. They'd drop the little ski seconds later, and ski up and down the lake, whipping across the wake of the ski boat.  At the end of the run, they'd glide up onto the sandy beach and jump off the ski, run to shore, and never even get wet.
     For the littler kids, the holiday meant playing with fire:  roasting hotdogs and marshmallows over open coals. Patty and I came home with a great new recipe from Girl Scout camp:  We would make "Some-mores," sandwiches of graham cracker, a square from a bar of Hershey's milk chocolate, and a hot marshmallow.
     At sundown, there were fireworks, but in Oregon, only the "Safe and Sane" type, like sparklers.
     After dark, there had to be ghost stories. Once, when our camping was limited to the heavy canvas tent pitched in the front yard, I cut the silhouette of a devil head with horns and put it in the mesh window of the tent. Mark was just a little guy then, but when he saw it, he went screaming into the house, and I got a stern talking to about not traumatizing the younger children.
      My  kids are scattered too far away for us to picnic together today, but at least we have a reunion coming up. Tonight, Jerry and I will celebrate the holiday with grilled hamburgers,  and we'll watch fireworks over Wenatchee, from the ease of our living room. In the meantime,we'll be inadvertently counting the intervals between those blasts in the orchard, every six seconds.