And the Rains Came

So we are in firework season right now. All of the strip malls have a temporary store selling things that go boom. They always have sales (buy 1, get 5 free) but they keep coming back so I assume they make money. Selling the stuff is legal here and there are prescribed dates and times when you are supposed to shoot them off.

And all of the towns have fireworks. Given that the 4th falls on a Tuesday this year, it leads to an extended weekend and many places did their shows last night.

We have our tradition which is to go see the symphony at an outdoor venue where they always close with fireworks. It can be a zoo to get out of after the show but, to me, it is more relaxing than trying to find a spot downtown to watch. You can bring chairs and food and just sit back and listen the music and then watch the fireworks.

The show doesn’t really change from year to year but that’s OK. I’m not going to be upset that we get to hear howitzers going off to the 1812 overture. That’s always cool. Last year, because of the whole Russia/Ukraine thing, they did something else but still found a way to fire off the guns. Guess that outrage only lasted a year since they were back to the 1812 overture. To me, it was silly. Tchaikovsky has no connection to current Russia so just reflexively banning all things Russian made no sense.

Now they do concerts every weekend and we used to go multiple times over the summer. Over the years, they’ve changed the mix and the symphony only plays at a few shows and they’ve ditched the classical music for a bunch of what are essentially cover bands. Most of them are music from my youth because I guess they figure that’s what people my age want to hear. But we aren’t that interested so we just bought tickets for Friday and Monday to get two shots at the fireworks.

The cover band thing started with the Beatles which I guess I could understand. This summer they have “tribute” bands for Billy Joel/Elton John, Whitney Houston, Fleetwood Mac, U2, Queen, Aerosmith, Def Leppard and Journey. Really? Yeah, I’ve got CDs from many of these bands but I’d rather just play Pyromania and hear the real thing rather than people pretending.

Anyway, that’s getting off topic but I do tend to ramble. This is why I need my keyboard to do posts. Trying to do this on a phone would be painful.

We had the double H day (hot and humid) but got there early enough to find a spot with some shade. Once the sun goes down, it isn’t bad. The crowd was sparse. Could be because it was the first show and still far from the 4th. (It was still June) Could be people still dealing with the many power outages. Either way, it was nice to not have people showing up late and encroaching on your territory.

All went well until near the end of the 1812 Overture when the fireworks started to go off. The orchestra finished the performance, complete with the howitzers and then the conductor told us they were leaving because there were thunderstorms in the area. Typically, they would play Sousa marches while the fireworks go off.

Then, we got an official to tell us we all needed to vacate the premises. Pretty sure they didn’t want people in an open field during a lightning storm. So we are packing up and trying to watch the fireworks which kept going off. I’m guessing there was no way to cover them up so they just figured it would be better to give us a good send off.

Good thing the crowd was down because it would have been a zoo otherwise. We got to the car just as the rain started although it didn’t really start to pour until we were on the road home. After losing power the day before, we were a little antsy about what might await us but the storms weren’t powerful enough to do any additional damage and the lights were still on.

Not quite the way we wanted things to end but makes it a good thing that we have tickets tomorrow night as our backup. If the weather people are right, it should be much cooler and no rain in sight. Guess we’ll see how it turns out.