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It was late June in the last year of the last century of the second millenium. It was not quite the end of the second age of man. Oh, wait that's some TV series. Really, we're not sure about much. But, it was the Middle of the Rest of the Story |
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Hopefully, you've already figured out, or knew that this happened in Lodi, California, but good jouurnalistic practice –or maybe the need for an opening line– makes me put that here. Anyway, We arrived sometime after 9am and most of the family was already there. Of course, they had a two-time zone advantage on us.
Big John drifted between the grill and less important things. Baste, batter, grill, slave, slave, slave for hours and hours and hours. And we skipped the thanks and went straight to stuffing ourselves silly on two tables of this, that and the other, plus the grill. So silly, almost no one had room for the cake. I hope somebody remembered to take it home. It looked great.
The high quantities of calories ingested required just a little recovery. Which meant we all sat around, breathed carefully and watched those with less aches squirt each other. Which became a running brush war between the teen-agers, some other teen-agers and the almost-teen-agers, with sides shifting faster than they could refill with water from the –brr– ice chests.
While, the nice ones kept each other cool, there was the question of what to do with the more rambunctious ones. These were the dangerous ones, the ones who wouldn't stand for bordom, the ones grown too sophisticated to say what's that and why? had to be controlled some how. Since the all mighty opiate of the massess –video games– just didn't help without a very long extension cord, another solution had to be found. Fortunately, the secret incantation was found. Cindy mixed equal parts arm waving and magic wands with very healthy dollups of palmolive and left these short but dangerous creatures casting mysterious globular spells on each other and the park's folliage.
By this point, those of us who weren't wrestling down the rabid bubble-blowers, were looking for other distractions. The heavy iron was left hidden safely away, but the more dangerous kind with a lens sprouted all over the place. There were so many cameras, sometimes all we had to shoot was each other.
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