The Wages Of Being A Dork

 I love fireworks.  I mean I LOVE fireworks. Any and all fireworks, from paper poppers (not a party cracker  but a little tissue paper thingie that you can throw at people to be annoying, and when it hits them there is a tiny little explosion) to military grade reports and everything in between.  Hell, give me a sparkler to run around with and I am a happy bunny ffs.

This is pretty much me right here.

Yesterday was Sumas Community Day, which kicks off a couple of months of rodeos, horse shows, baseball tournaments, greased pig scrambles and mutton busting.  It all begins with a car Show and Shine, and a little community parade which is, frankly, adorable, and consists of decorated tractors and fire engines, vintage farm equipment, people in convertibles and people dressed up as Heaven knows what, or just whole families wandering along waving, come one, come all. 

 Most of the drivers carry huge bags of candy and shower the audience with the stuff if the little kids make that "toot toot" gesture that looks like a power salute.  The drivers will blow their horns, run the sirens, rev the engine, and the kids get bonked in the head with lollipops and everyone loves it.  Fun fact:  more farm equipment than you'd expect have horns!  Like harvesters!  I guess...there are places in the world where this kind of thing is necessary.  And that old steam powered farm equipment will take the shingles off the roof when they cut loose with the steam whistles, man.

In the evening around 10:30 there is a fireworks display in the sports arena.  We here at Rancho FirstNations have the best seat in the house right from our front porch, and I have a nice old park bench set up for sittin' and sippin', and we just 'lax back and watch.

Well, the Biker does.  I stand up and scream like a madwoman after every particularly impressive burst.

I will also shout "SET SOMETHING ON FIRE" when there is too long a lag between displays, and other helpful advice, like "PULL YOUR THUMB OUT!" and my personal favorite "COME ON YA CHEAP BASTARDS, IS THAT IT??"

Now I am not the only person in town by a damn stretch who is doing this, so I don't feel like the Lone Idiot.  This year there were people standing on their roofs, and lots of kids out running around town with sparklers and bottle rockets, and they all had something to say, loudly, as did their parents.  And you can hear the crowd at the sports grounds cheering like Romans watching an elephant eat a Christian.  It's a fantastic time, and yeah, you do feel like a community after all that.  We're still small enough for that, thank God.

This morning I am croaking like a toad.  My voice is shot.  I pride myself on my 'Sustained Yee-Oo! Of Approval', a sound that comes right up from my toes and impresses everyone who hears it with how cool I am and how much they want to be just like me when they grow up.  You can literally hear it all over town, I've been told.  This makes me very proud.  It also makes me talk funny the next day.

This year the City display did not last for the usual 45 minutes.  We had to set up fireworks display donation sites in all the stores, and between that and Covid the city could only afford 15 minutes, and it was bought locally in standard 'Big Display' cartons that you purchase on one of the NA reserves nearby and then smuggle out.  Luckily, the farmers just down the road (and just out of city limits) laid down a couple grand and bought five Big Display cartons, along with a couple of big reports and a 'Special', which is that huge, final, rooty-toot firework that just dazzles and amazes you, and so Christmas was saved!   We got our full 45 minutes, and it was really, really cool.

And the best thing?  WE BLOW SHIT UP ALL OVER AGAIN ON THE 4TH OF JULY!!!!

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Our little towns' claims to fame are twofold. 

1. The flavor of our drinking water - this is no lie.  It's actually up on our 'Welcome to Sumas' signs (Voted Best Tasting Water 2000)  although what that standard is and who they're comparing it with, like Flint, Michigan or the bottom of a flooded mine I do not know, but apparently our Mayor thinks this is a big draw.  

2. Our rodeo events and horse shows.  We're part of the amateur rodeo circuit, and so the horse and bull riding is particularly raw.  I've never attended.  The Biker attended once because he knew one of the riders, and he lasted long enough to see the dude get thrown, then split.  Not a big fan of blood sport here at Rancho FirstNations.  Not even the kid events, like mutton busting and greased pig scrambles.  It's just crude amusement at the expense of someone else's (or some animals') discomfort.

I have no idea what the horse events consist of, because I am uninterested in horses.  I am in the minority.  The whole town turns out for them, and people come in from all over the map to compete in, I don't know, dressage or roping or whatever the hell you do.  Maybe they dress them in costumes or something.  Maybe it's a Ponyplay event.  If so, my decision to stay home is particularly sound, because ew.

All during those events the town is inundated with tall, thin old men with serious spinal issues, wearing checkered shirts with pearl snap buttons, belt buckles the size of salad plates, Wranglers, and cowboy hats.  Their wives are either vast, fat things with legs wrapped in ace bandages, or sunburnt twists of pepperoni, and really repping for their 'All country all the time' thing with red-check shirts, red bandanas,  ponytails and high-heeled cowboy boots - it's a thing that's hard to describe to a non-American. Think of it as the highly feminized version of what their husbands are wearing, and add a gold crucifix necklace.  

       Imagine this lady, only she's sixty, super suntanned, and that dress covers her knees.

No matter what they're dressed like, they spend money like crazy, and everyone benefits.  They all stay in immense travel busses on the grounds and they do whatever they do.  

Come nightfall, the ladies all settle in with the Bible, or maybe 50 Shades of Grey, and their husbands come into town and just chuck down the booze at the local (outdoors-mountain-hunting themed) bar like they'll never make booze again.  And those old tore up cowpokes get to partying some hard out in the beer garden, too.  They don't drink no Ketel One or Blue Agave or cinnamon flavored Jack - they drink Man Booze.  The Famous Grouse.  Canadian Club. Johnny Walker. I mean damn, do they drink that shit.  And then they'll walk on back to the grounds, right down the middle of the street, playing up, and that's how it goes for a couple of weeks.  It is a real, 21st century rootin' tootin' sure nuff Old West Town.  No matter the fact it was founded on gold and not cows - it roots, and it toots, and guns are fired, and rotgut is consumed, and the womenfolk hold down the homestead.

And I do garden tours!