Salute To America
Jul. 4th, 2011 11:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amanda_loddenMotoko asked on Facebook if anyone would like to go to the Salute To America at Greenfield Village on July 3rd. I'd never been and actually never heard of it, but since most "Let's go see the fireworks!" invites are for the Saturday of the weekend and we're always busy with our party, I was already interested in a Sunday invite. Plus, Motoko has been my friend since I was four but I hadn't seen her in years. It all added up to "Hell yes, we're in."
And it was lovely. It was quite a bit bigger than I expected, both in terms of people (omg crowds) and scope. I knew there was a DSO concert involved, but prior to the DSO there was a Fife and Drum Corp and a ragtime band, and in between the concerts and during the intermission, Greenfield Village people wandered around in costume, including the barbershop quartet and ... whatever the female version of a barbershop quartet is called, especially if it only has three women instead of four. People rode by on old-timey bicycles, the ones with the huge front wheels.
We ended up under a tree, which was fine for the concerts but made the fireworks awkward. At intermission, the guy sitting in front of us asked us what our "expert opinion" was about seeing the fireworks through the tree, and when we concurred that some of our vision would be blocked, he and his family packed up and wandered off to less-covered pastures. Well... MOST of them did. They had a teenage boy who spent very little of the concert actually with his family (presumably because he was a teenage boy. Family time is kryptonite to them, you know). When the family packed up and left, he wasn't around. His father told us roughly where they were headed, and also gave us permission to point and laugh at the kid before directing him. As it turns out, Dad stuck around down on the path near another crowd, but it was getting dark by then, so Teen didn't see him. He came up to where his family had been sitting, found the big open space, and just stood there for a minute with a look of utter confusion on his face. And then the entire area around him burst out laughing. Teen started asking the people in front of us if they knew where his family went, which was slightly problematic because Dad has told the people kinda behind the family (ie us) but Teen was asking the people kinda in front of the area, and those folks didn't know. Teen had moved to the next group of people to ask if THEY knew when Dad tapped him on the shoulder and clued him in. We got a big laugh out of the whole scene.
All in all, John and I had a great time, and I'm glad that Motoko posted the open invite, and also that her friend Helen picked Sunday instead of Saturday.
And it was lovely. It was quite a bit bigger than I expected, both in terms of people (omg crowds) and scope. I knew there was a DSO concert involved, but prior to the DSO there was a Fife and Drum Corp and a ragtime band, and in between the concerts and during the intermission, Greenfield Village people wandered around in costume, including the barbershop quartet and ... whatever the female version of a barbershop quartet is called, especially if it only has three women instead of four. People rode by on old-timey bicycles, the ones with the huge front wheels.
We ended up under a tree, which was fine for the concerts but made the fireworks awkward. At intermission, the guy sitting in front of us asked us what our "expert opinion" was about seeing the fireworks through the tree, and when we concurred that some of our vision would be blocked, he and his family packed up and wandered off to less-covered pastures. Well... MOST of them did. They had a teenage boy who spent very little of the concert actually with his family (presumably because he was a teenage boy. Family time is kryptonite to them, you know). When the family packed up and left, he wasn't around. His father told us roughly where they were headed, and also gave us permission to point and laugh at the kid before directing him. As it turns out, Dad stuck around down on the path near another crowd, but it was getting dark by then, so Teen didn't see him. He came up to where his family had been sitting, found the big open space, and just stood there for a minute with a look of utter confusion on his face. And then the entire area around him burst out laughing. Teen started asking the people in front of us if they knew where his family went, which was slightly problematic because Dad has told the people kinda behind the family (ie us) but Teen was asking the people kinda in front of the area, and those folks didn't know. Teen had moved to the next group of people to ask if THEY knew when Dad tapped him on the shoulder and clued him in. We got a big laugh out of the whole scene.
All in all, John and I had a great time, and I'm glad that Motoko posted the open invite, and also that her friend Helen picked Sunday instead of Saturday.
