Around here February seems to be going out with a bang--or a bunch of bangs, alternating with pops, shrieks, and fizzles. Why would anybody set off fireworks on a cold, dark February Thursday in the middle of nowhere?
Well, it's complicated. The story starts with a tractor that needs some serious maintenance, plus a son-in-law whose idea of a fun way to spend a day off is to fix things. He arrived here with our grandson in tow this afternoon, and then the men bundled up and went down to the garage to see if they could get the tractor going again. It was a three-person job, with the two-year-old patiently holding the flashlight while my husband and son-in-law fiddled with air filters and hydraulic lines and various murky fluids.
I went down to check on progress at one point and found that they'd gotten the tractor started (hurrah!) and moved it inside the garage, where my son-in-law was lying on the cold floor so he could reach some essential part under the tractor. In my view, anyone willing to lie on the floor of a damp garage on a cold February day deserves some kind of reward, which is why I had black beans simmering on the stove all afternoon and home-made guacamole in the fridge.
But in the course of moving things around to get the tractor into the garage, the men found another kind of reward: a cache of fireworks, probably dating from our daughter's wedding ten years ago. How long can cheap fireworks survive in a damp garage? There's only one way to find out, so after our grandson settled into bed, the men went down to the meadow to properly dispose of the fireworks in the most celebratory manner possible.
From the sounds of it, most of the fireworks retained their sizzle. I would go down and watch, but I don't want to leave my grandson alone. Besides, it's cold out there. Let the working men blow off some steam, because soon enough they'll be lying on the cold floor trying to make my world run a little more smoothly.
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