{"id":73533,"date":"2014-07-04T14:30:31","date_gmt":"2014-07-04T18:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=73533"},"modified":"2014-07-04T08:25:39","modified_gmt":"2014-07-04T12:25:39","slug":"happy-fourth-of-july-from-the-paris-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/04\/happy-fourth-of-july-from-the-paris-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Fourth of July from <i>The Paris Review<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/plimpton-fireworks.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-73534\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/plimpton-fireworks.jpg\" alt=\"plimpton fireworks\" width=\"600\" height=\"452\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/plimpton-fireworks.jpg 736w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/plimpton-fireworks-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I always thought it was the best day of the year. It was in the middle of the summer, to begin with, and when you got up in the morning someone would almost surely say, as they did in those times, that it was going to be a \u201ctrue Fourth of July scorcher.\u201d School had been out long enough so that one was conditioned for the great day. One\u2019s feet were already leather-hard, so that striding barefoot across a gravel driveway could be done without wincing, and yet not so insensitive as to be unable to feel against one\u2019s soles the luxurious wet wash of a dew-soaked lawn in the early morning. Of course, the best thing about the day was the anticipation of the fireworks\u2014both from the paper bag of one\u2019s own assortment, carefully picked from the catalogs, and then, after a day\u2019s worth of the excitement of setting them off, there was always the tradition of getting in the car with the family and going off to the municipal show, or perhaps a Beach Club\u2019s display \u2026 the barge out in the harbor, a dark hulk as evening fell, and the heart-pounding excitement of seeing the first glow of a flare out there across the water and knowing that the first shell was about to soar up into the sky.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\u2014George Plimpton, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Fireworks-George-Plimpton\/dp\/0385263252\/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;sr=&amp;qid=\" target=\"_blank\">Fireworks<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I always thought it was the best day of the year. It was in the middle of the summer, to begin with, and when you got up in the morning someone would almost surely say, as they did in those times, that it was going to be a \u201ctrue Fourth of July scorcher.\u201d School had [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2353],"tags":[142,8892,11315,14505,14,2722,92],"class_list":["post-73533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nostalgia","tag-america","tag-childhood","tag-fireworks","tag-fourth-of-july","tag-george-plimpton","tag-independence-day","tag-summer"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Happy Fourth of July from The Paris Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Read an excerpt from George Plimpton\u2019s book \u201cFireworks.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/04\/happy-fourth-of-july-from-the-paris-review\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Happy Fourth of July from The Paris Review by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"July 4, 2014 \u2013 I always thought it was the best day of the year. 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