Independance day always brings me back...
My dad used to sell fireworks out of his trunk and our garage. Whatever was leftover he'd set off in the neighborhood. We never had to go anywhere to see them, the show was always in front of our house.
Actually, scratch that, he didn't set them off himself. He used to give them to asshole kids on the block for them to set them off. I guess he didn't want to get burned, thought it better for kids to...good man.
My dad was always obsessed with making money "off the books." He always had side jobs, fixing cars, selling pot, creating a little store in our garage filled with things that "fell off the back of a truck."
Come Christmas, people would shop in our basement for Yankee Candles, Nine West Leather Jackets, Baby Phat sweat suits...yeah...even those.
I thought nothing of this.
He was also Mr. Fix It...you know, jack of all trades, master of none. Whatever he "fixed" would be broken again in no time at all. We once had a hole in our ceiling for a year. Tile that was missing in the kitchen...a toilet that had to be "flushed a certain way" - OR ELSE.
Termites ate through our floor once and he tried to fill in the gaps with CAULK.
His whole deal was he went to Aviation High school...he wanted to be a pilot, or work on planes, or whatever. When he got out of high school, everyone came back from the war and took all the "air plane jobs" WAH WAH WAH ...so he settled for being a mechanic.
He was good at that, but for some reason my mom's car always ran like shit. So we'd be all on the side of the road, stuck, with mom crying in hysterics trying to pull someone over to help us...and my sister and I, catching crickets in the grass. After a while I learned how to add water (poor man's antifreeze) to the car so we could be on our merry way.
These are the sweet memories I've been blessed with.
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