My younger brother was as angry as I’ve ever seen him. He and his wife decided that their 16 year-old grandson was mature enough to be left alone for an evening while they met some friends for dinner and drinks, but in my brother’s absence his grandson found some beer and wine in the fridge and decided to have “a couple of friends over” for a party.
By the time my brother got home the friends had fled and his grandson was passed out on the floor surrounded by empty beer cans. “What was he thinking?” he fumed. “When we were kids we would have never …” That’s when I stopped him.
“Fourth of July, 1976,” is all I said.
“That was different,” he said, instantly defensive.
“No it wasn’t,” I said.
July 4th, 1976 was our country’s bicentennial and it featured a huge fireworks display on Fort Lauderdale Beach. For that holiday my mother, newly widowed, had gone to Ohio to visit her sisters leaving me, 16, and my 15 year old brother home alone, ostensibly under the supervision of my sisters, aged 24 and 30, and my older brother, 27, who all lived nearby.
The Fourth was sunny and hot. My sisters and my older brother and their respective spouses came by in the early afternoon for a barbecue. My older sister brought the meat. My middle sister brought the potato salad. My older brother brought enough alcohol to serve a minor frat party.
We spent the afternoon hanging out by my Mom’s pool; my sisters drank wine. Their husbands drank beer. My older brother drank Cutty Sark. My younger brother and I, feeling left out, asked if we could each have just one beer too and no one said no. We did not stop at one.
By early evening there was a decided feeling of well-being at our little family gathering. My Mom’s house was close to the beach so we planned on going to the beach around 7:30 for the fireworks , but while we ate dinner we noticed traffic backing up on Bayview Drive: apparently everyone in Fort Lauderdale was heading east and the beach area was gridlocked. That’s when my older brother decided that he was not going to spend the evening stuck in traffic. Then someone, and I’m not sure who, decided that we should all just watch the fireworks from the roof; that’s when I ran to get my father’s rickety extension ladder and soon we were all up on the roof.
The evening breeze was cool and I’m told the fireworks were spectacular, but all I remember is that my older brother had somehow managed to get a cooler of beer up to the roof, and we stayed up there long after the fireworks were over — until the cooler was empty. Then, swaying, we all looked at the flimsy ladder that we needed to descend. Then, and again, I’m not sure whose idea this was, we all walked to the edge of the roof and one by one jumped into the pool, carelessly leaving the beer cans and the cooler behind.
A couple of days later when my mother returned she took one look at the litter on her roof, made one phone call to our nosy neighbor and we were busted. My older siblings bore the brunt of her anger, but I was not spared. “You’re 16,” she said. “You know better. What were you thinking?” And of course I had no answer.
Now, back in my middle-aged present, I asked my younger brother. “What WERE we thinking?’
He smiled. “We weren’t,” he said. “But it sure was fun.,”