How Ronee' spent her Fourth of July holiday (complete with a durecho, or severe thunderstorm packing high winds, heavy rain, and hail). She was at the annual Fourth of July Blast! Festival with her family when the storm hit.
My last Fourth of July story for this year. Hope you have enjoyed my series on the Fourth of July!
I hope you had a good Fourth of July holiday. I did, and so did my family. Maman and daddy were both off from work all weekend (but maman will have to work Christmas this year; she alternates every year at her job: one year she works on Christmas and is off the Fourth of July, and the next, she is off Christmas and works on July Fourth), and it was nice having them both home for once. We kids enjoyed it too because we are off from school; we are in the middle of our vacation until school starts back up in September, and we had fun at the festival. We went to our city's annual Fourth of July celebration, held in downtown Nashville, and as predicted, there were huge crowds, much in the way of entertainment (both on the local and on the national level), carnival rides, games and contests galore, and of course, the fireworks, with the biggest (and best) display reserved for July Fourth.
I got to perform several times during the festival (my band "Cajun Spice" and myself), but on July 4th, I was forced to cancel when unexpected bad weather moved in. A severe thunderstorm, or a durecho, was coming, and it was scheduled to roll in at about the time my band and myself were scheduled to go onstage; so we had to cancel, and we couldn't perform. I was upset about it, but I was also realistic: I didn't want to be singing on stage, holding an amplified accordion in my hands, during a thunderstorm. I would have probably gotten electrocuted, or at least be doing the "Electric Shuffle", Cajun style; so I had to wait until later on. I performed during the patriotic set, with Sara Evans, the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Lee Greenwood, and others; and I sang "God Bless America". But that was the only time I got to sing.
Of course, because of the heavy weather, the activities scheduled were put on hold until everything settled down or dried out, and we also had to find shelter from the wind and the rain. I was NOT amused; the sky really got black and ugly, and I thought for a minute that we were going to have a tornado come because the sirens went off, and we were told to find shelter until the storm had passed.
While we waited out the storm and then waited for the grounds to dry out and things to start up again, we sat around and talked; and we were worried that the fireworks display would be canceled altogther. The fireworks display that was scheduled for Sunday night was said to be the biggest display ever for Nashville, and it would go on for at least a half hour to forty five minutes. It would be shot over the Cumberland River, and it cost well over a million dollars, I know it did. But maman and daddy both reassured all us kids that the fireworks display would go on as scheduled; only it would be delayed until everything had dried out from the storm.
It seemed like a million years, but it was only a few hours or so until things started going again: the rides, the contests, and the music, but it was after six when things started going again, and the poor festival officials were busy, trying to scramble around and cram many different activities into a span of four hours, from six until ten, which was when the fireworks were scheduled to go off. I didn't get to go on stage until 8:30, and I had been scheduled at 6:30, two hours earlier.
Yet, despite the heavy weather that had come through our city, everyone was still in good spirits, especially when they found out that the fireworks would still go on at ten, ten thirty. And the acts scheduled would still perform, but they were limited to the number of songs they could sing until the Nashville Symphony Orchestra took to the stage. They were the only ones who came on in time for their set, and during their set, Sara Evans, Lee Greenwood, and others performed. I sang my song at 8:30, and I then rejoined my family and we watched the other performers and waited eagerly for the fireworks. (During the fireworks, the orhestra would perform "The 1812 Overture", as well as a medley of patriotic favorites.)
The fireworks started at ten, right on the dot, and when they did, everyone was excited. They really had some pretty colors, and they had fireworks we had never seen before, like some in the shapes of stars or smiley faces when they exploded, and some that looked like golden waterfalls when they went off. They were nothing short of spectacular, and at the end, everyone cheered and applauded. It was one of the best (if not THE biggest!) fireworks displays I had ever seen in my LIFE! It was COOL!
That is how I spent MY Fourth of July. I would have liked it a LOT more had that STUPID storm hadn't moved in and nearly snuffed out the fireworks display, but the fireworks DID go on as scheduled, so it made up for my having to miss MY set on stage! At least nobody was hurt, and there was not much damage (other than some windblown tents and debris from different displays that had to be cleaned up), so that was a blessing in disguise! It could have been a WHOLE lot worse!
~Luv, Ronee' Le-Anne Reaux, aged 11 1/2. (Written on Tuesday, July 6, 2004, at 11:14 a.m., C.S.T.)
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I hope you had a good Fourth of July holiday. I did, and so did my family. Maman and daddy were both off from work all weekend (but maman will have to work Christmas this year; she alternates every year at her job: one year she works on Christmas and is off the Fourth of July, and the next, she is off Christmas and works on July Fourth), and it was nice having them both home for once. We kids enjoyed it too because we are off from school; we are in the middle of our vacation until school starts back up in September, and we had fun at the festival. We went to our city's annual Fourth of July celebration, held in downtown Nashville, and as predicted, there were huge crowds, much in the way of entertainment (both on the local and on the national level), carnival rides, games and contests galore, and of course, the fireworks, with the biggest (and best) display reserved for July Fourth.
