West Siiiiiiide

I live on the West Side of town, also known as the Hilltop USA (literally, that is what the sign says as you enter the neighborhood, "welcome to the Hilltop U.S.A.). Folks on the Hilltop are really into the holidays. So when Christmas comes, most houses are decked out in full cheesy christmas regalia, complete with inflatable Santa and reindeer on the roof. I've really never seen anything like it.

Summer comes with full on backyard fireworks displays that begin around the first week that school is out. They build up and up and up until the fourth comes, and then the whole neighborhood is covered in a thick fog of firework smoke. The houses on the Hilltop are densly packed together, and date from around the 1930s, so: lots of wood. Dangerous you say? Pshaw! Illegal you say? Hasn't stopped anyone yet. And besides, the cops over here don't seem overly concerned about the law. The breaks on my boyfriend's van went out the other day, and as he was careening down the street with his head stuck out the window yelling for people to watch out, he pulled up onto the boulevard between the houses, right in front of a cop, and the guy didn't even blink. He didn't even check to see if my boyfriend was ok, or drunk, or trying to kill someone. He just sat there!



Anyways, back to the fireworks. So the 3rd of July rolls around, and a real fireworks war starts to happen between my neighbor across the street, the neighbor two doors down from them, and the house that is kitty corner to the back of my house. At first, as we were sitting inside, we were annoyed because they were SO LOUD that car alarms were going off constantly around the block. This went on for a couple of hours before I stepped outside and actually bothered to look at them. WOW! They were amazing. Full scale fireworks, like those you would see at your local park on the 4th. These people must have saved up all year long to buy these fireworks. And they dueled with them all night long. One person would set off a bunch, and then another house would respond with their display. It went on until 1:00 AM. I tried to capture some if it on my little digital camera that takes mini films, but it was hard, I ended up spinning around trying to catch all of them, but by the time I had swung around, that firework had already gone off. I never did get any video of really good ones, these are all kind of whimpy ones.