Yesterday. Independence Day. Fourth of July.

An account in deathless prose.

We got up late and took the ribs out of the freezer. That’s right. The flesh of Dead Animals. We set them on the counter to thaw. Not advisable by Scientists Everywhere, but necessary if you want the ribs to thaw by dinnertime.

We proceeded at a leisurely pace to the Salem Fair, where we enjoyed many fairground delights such as peoplewatching and eating foods such as corn dogs and fried dough.

The Marines were there, encouraging burly men to do pullups:

My favorite person was this guy who was breaking it down for about 10 minutes:

The girls he was with abandoned him partway through his performance and we later saw him breaking it down on that carnival ride thingy with the swing and the rolling top. I don’t know what it’s called:

In addition to the fine corn dogs, I enjoyed Fresh Squeezed Lemonade, shaken on the premises with actual sugar. Tasty.

There were Racing Pigs:

And Elephants:

I was sorely disappointed by the fact that you could not take elephant rides until 6 PM.

I am sure this is great for the elephant, but horribly sad for me, since we left around 4:30 to proceed to Marc’s Magic Mountain for a cookout and to watch people burn their faces off with fireworks.

We made the slight tactical error- surely an understandable one- of packing the iced tea in an old Maker’s Mark bottle. People were overjoyed when we turned up at the gathering with what appeared to be a handle of bourbon.

They were disappointed. But that’s life. Sometimes you think someone has brought $50 of bourbon to the party, and in fact it is $.30 of ice tea.

There were ribs. There was banana pudding. There was ice tea and Diet Dr Pepper. There were fireworks and songs.

Parking was generally brainless but after convincing three people to move their cars, we eventually managed to make a seventeen point turn without running over anybody and proceeded home down the Frightening 2 Mile Long Vertical Gravel Driveway, where we collected the dogs and proceeded to watch fireworks from the Virginia Tech Beef Center.

Sadly, they had removed the bleachers which allowed us to watch the Blacksburg, Christiansburg, and Radford fireworks displays all at the same time. So instead we watched Snippet’s head in front of the fireworks.

This time next year, we’ll be watching the fireworks from the patio of our McMansion in the Oakland hills, no doubt.

W00t!

The End.

This has been 4th of July Chillin’ Extravaganza, A production by your Fearless Leader, Kevin Inman