Well, happy fourth of July everyone. Here of course it will be just another day, no fireworks, no parades. At least here the lack of parades on the most patriotic day of the year isn’t underscored by a parade for a silly American football game (cough cough Glenwood….).

Ok… Just going to spend a moment on this, but what self-respecting American town can get away with having parades and fireworks for a football game, but not for the fourth of July??? Not that I’m particularly patriotic or anything, but throughout my time in Glenwood, Iowa, I had even less school spirit. For my readers who have never been to Glenwood, what you need to know is this: every single year there is one football game that is more important than the rest (I’m not entirely sure why, but it is). The day of said game, school children are released four hours early, all the shops temporarily move locations to stands on the square, and there is a massive parade. Since every single class from kindergarten on up has their own float (it’s not required to ride on them of course, but I only opted out once), and I later spent six years in the marching band, I only watched this massive spectacle once. 

After the parade there’s always a party at Jim Hughes’s real estate offices. There are ponies, face paint, clowns making baloons shaped like whatever you like, watermelon, hot dogs, potato chips, soda, dancing, a mini train ride…. 

Everyone spends a few hours wandering about the town, hanging out with friends, and altogether being completely useless. If you’re in the marching band, you have to report to the practice field by five pm with your instrument (alto saxophone in my case), and run through the field marching a few times while Mr. J yells from the sidelines…. This is one of our biggest shows of the year, in some ways bigger than the state competition, because we have massive amounts of alumni who will be sitting in the stands to watch us.

By six pm we are getting dressed in our awesome uniforms to line up and head to the field where we will spend the first half playing pep songs during time outs and then go do our thing during half time. In my opinion, we’re the only thing worth seeing at the whole football game (unless you want to watch 14-18 year old girls dancing around like sluts in the cheerleading squad and dance team). The football team usually loses (though recently they have brought in the very worst teams they can find specifically for the purpose of winning homecoming). Then, win or lose, we have fireworks. As a member of yearbook I loved taking pictures of that part, even if it was overdone. 

Is that all? Of course not, that’s just one day! In Glenwood we have to celebrate our mediocre football team for at LEAST 48 hours. The Saturday after the game we crown the Homecoming Queen and King, and then follows one of the two most important dances of the high-school year. I have actually heard it argued that this Coronation dance is more important than Prom. 

Somewhere in all this mess is also when all of the class reunions happen, plus another dance for the adults. It is THE craziest weekend in Glenwood.

So what happens on the fourth of July? A few people light off small things in the street (though not many, fireworks are illegal in Iowa). Some people have small private barbeques I suppose…. But compared to Homecoming, the Fourth of July is extraordinarily quiet in Glenwood.

Moral of the story: I don’t believe I’ll feel incredibly sad missing Independence day. It’ll be just like the times I spent it in Glenwood.