Fourth of July

Picnic and Stock Car Race – 1950’s Peoria

It’s the Fourth of July, early in the morning – only 5 o’clock. I wake to noises from the kitchen – mama is up already, bustling around downstairs. I can hear the pots rattling and can smell the frying chicken. I run down the stairs two at a time – “can I help, can I help?” I’m so eager because I know how good the food will be – and I want to get as early a start as we can. We won’t be able to leave much before noon because daddy won’t get up until around 10 and will want his breakfast and to read the Journal Star with his coffee and cigar before we go.

It’s a big day around the Sones’ household – first a picnic at the muddy bottomed lake that’s just been created, dug out by a meander of the Illinois River in Manito, near Pekin. Then in the early evening, stock car races at the Peoria Speedway as long as it’s light out. And if we get home before it’s too late or we’ve fallen asleep in the panel truck, my sister and I can light the sparklers we’ve hoarded so carefully for this special day and run around catching fireflies in a Mason jar. I’m 11 years old, not too grown up to enjoy these pastimes, and my sister is eight and a half, still a child. I’m surprised she’s still asleep, she’s been excited about our picnic for days.

Mama is cutting potatoes in quarters and dropping them into the water boiling in her dented aluminum pot, the biggest one we own, on the back burner on the big old yellow and green Nesco stove. She’s wearing jeans, which she only wears for picnics, and a white nylon blouse covered by a colorful cobbler’s apron. “Shaah, Dolly. Quiet. Yes,” she says, “you can help. Cut up the rest of these potatoes and be careful, don’t wake daddy or Lanie, let them sleep as long as they can. Then you can peel the eggs.”  Mama is being nice, but also practical, once they’re up, she’ll have to give daddy her full attention and the cooking will get short shrift.

We have only a few sharp knives. Mama is using the best one to cut up the chickens – she dips the parts in beaten eggs, dredges them in flour, salt and pepper liberally, and places them carefully in the iron frying pan. We only have one big one, so it’s a chore that must be done over and over again if we’re going to feed our family and the Adlers too – it Ethel and Mike, and Mike’s young sister Ahleen, just a few years older than their daughter Linda, who has come from New York to live with them. (I don’t find out until years later their New York accent has made Arlene into Ahleen.) “Got to get this potato salad going,” mama says, “it has to be cold before we can take it with us, we’ll pack it on ice. And I have yet to bake a cake.” Oh, a cake too – my very favorite meal of all, fried chicken, potato salad and chocolate cake.

Mama’s had to get up so early because she was out late last night at the Corn Stalk Theater, getting the actors and the costumes and the props ready for the next musical, and after a full day’s work at the store, too. But she’s only 34, so young and full of life, late nights and early morning cooking are not too much of a drain on her energy.

By ten o’clock, we’ve fried four chickens and made pounds and pounds of potato salad, and a big chocolate cake is waiting on the kitchen table to be frosted. I’ve had my own breakfast, mama’s served me scrambled eggs, oranges, and toast, and daddy’s place is set at the dining room table – a huge mixing bowl next to a big box of Corn Flakes and milk is ready for him. He’ll eat that and then the rest of the breakfast too. Mama’s had time to sit and rest, smoke a couple of cigarettes and have a couple of cups of coffee– before daddy comes down in his boxers and undershirt, big and bowlegged and hairy except for his head – he’s had his annual baldy sour – and it hasn’t even begun to grow out yet. A miracle – today, daddy’s behavior is mild and his laugh isn’t too scary.  He’s looking forward to the day too!

By noon, we’re ready – the food’s gotten cold in the fridge and now mama’s quickly packed everything in ice in the huge tin baskets decorated with fruit decals. The chocolate cake with chocolate frosting is packed in her new Tupperware round cake taker with the plastic carolier handles. And we’re off to get the Adlers – they’re big city dwellers and don’t have a clue how to get to Spring Lake. They’ll follow our delivery truck in their new Caddy, it’s not big enough to fit the four of us and the four of them and all the food too. Both Ethel and Mike are tall and huge, Mike must weigh 350 pounds, and Ethel at least 275 if not more. But their girls are normal sized. At least then they were. 

The trip to Spring Lake takes no time at all. We tumble out of the car and the truck at the lake – mama sets up the big quilt on the grass and puts a flowered table cloth on the picnic table. The Adlers bring cookies and cole slaw and olives and pickles and deli sandwiches and potato chips and pretzels and soft drinks – nothing that has to be cooked. Ethel brags she never cooks, and she never does, they have a cook and a housekeeper, and a gardener, and whatever else they need. Mike is a junk yard owner, and has plenty of money. We’ve all got our bathing suits on beneath our shorts and t-shirts and we hurry and take off our clothes and jump in the lake, we’re so hot from the drive. We’re the only ones at the lake right then. The lake bottom is muddy and we have to be careful not to drag mud onto the quilt. Mama shows us how to sit on the driest grassy spot on the edge of the lake, a couple of feet above the water, and dip our feet into the lake to wash off the mud. Everyone is happy, and Mike and daddy are swimming far into the lake, while Linda and Ahleen and Lanie and I jump into the lake over and over again, swim a little and splash a lot, shout and scream and take running leaps into the water yelling “bombs away.” And we slap at mosquitoes.

We don’t ever want to get out of the water, but finally, hunger drives us to the picnic table where mama and Ethel have been smoking and eating and drinking soda. Lanie, as usual, is blue and shriveled and shaking with cold and protests about coming out, but finally, she does. Mama hastens to cover her with her towel – mama’s made bathing suit cover ups by cutting a slit for our heads in the middle of a thick terry towel and binding the edges and sewing the sides down under the armholes, a blue one for me, a pink one for Lanie. She rubs Lanie all over until her shivering stops. We can’t go back into the water for an hour after we’ve eaten, we could get a cramp and drown. It’s hot on the grass and mama tells us to eat quickly before the food gets warm. The chicken is delicious. “The best we’ve ever had,” we tell her, and she grins, because we say this each time we eat her chicken. And the potato salad is still cold and it too is “the best we’ve ever had.” And so is the chocolate cake. I don’t want to be unpolite, so I take some chips and some pastrami but I’m really too full to eat anymore. I lie down on the quilt, and soon, I’m asleep despite the noise and heat and talking and shouting and more people coming to picnic at the lake.

Now mama is shaking me awake, daddy and Mike are dressed, and so are the other girls. Everything is packed up. “Get dressed now,” she says, and holds the quilt around me so no one will see me taking off my nearly dry bathing suit and putting on my panties, shorts, and tee shirt. My feet are brown, stained from the mud. “Hurry up. We’re off to the coupe races,” daddy shouts. I’m amazed, I never see him having fun, but he is having fun today.

So it’s back in the truck to the Peoria Speedway – the Adlers are skipping the stock car races. We park near the rear of the lot, we’ve come a little late. We can’t find a space in the bleachers where the four of us can sit together, so mama sits with Lanie, who is falling asleep on her shoulder, and I sit with daddy a few rows back. I love this daddy, so happy from the day, as he says, “replete with food,” and not too loud and frightening and not angry with me for some infraction of mama’s rules. He lights up a cigar, I know it is one I got him for Father’s Day a month earlier. He tells me about the drivers and the cars, how they soup them up, how the good drivers are really smart and know how to maneuver by banging into other coupes and “killing” them or by weaving in and out, the finer points of the race. I can hardly believe my luck, time alone with daddy and he’s happy and content, and treating me as if I understand what he’s telling me. And I do!

Then an hour or so of coupe races go by and we go home, it’s dark and the fireflies are out. Lanie is awake. She and I get to stay up and catch some lightening bugs in a jar. We carefully knock some holes in the lid – daddy even brings the nails and hammer for us to use and shows us how! We put some grass in the bottom. We catch some and kill them and take them apart and put the luminescence on our arms and run around some more with our bracelets of light. We slap at mosquitoes.

We light our sparklers with the punk daddy has lit and we run around waving our sparklers until the last one has sputtered out, singing “God Bless America” and “I Yam A Yankee Doodle Dandy” with mama until we are too tired to run or sing or wave anymore and then we lie down in the grass in the front yard and listen to the fireworks from the riverfront, we can’t see them because of all the trees. Mama sits on the porch with daddy and they smoke and watch us. We all slap at the mosquitoes. “Time for bed,” mama finally says, and we don’t protest. We don’t even change into our pajamas, just trudge upstairs half falling asleep, put our brown feet under the sheet and fall asleep in our shorts. We are replete.