Sunday, June 28, 2009

Jamestown Colorado Fourth of July


Since it is almost the Fourth of July, I'm going to republish an excerpt from my great unpublished novel, "It must be the altitude". Yesterday I found an actual movie of the anvil ritual on the web which I will share. It's a smaller event than I remember. Either the explosion has been toned down or my recollection was far huger than the actual event. Such is life.



Jamestown Fourth of July always did its fireworks in a big way. I was inside the family house eating spare ribs when I heard a loud crack in the air that made me think the whole town had been attacked by terrorists. A giant boom, an earth shaking sonic boom. Louder than anything I had ever heard at that point in my short sweet life. A great, astounding tremulation that sent every rodent in town up into the high country.
Yes, it was the great, stupendous, annual BIG BOOM of Jamestown. An annual ritual, with origins dating back to the last century, when miners had lots of dynamite on hand, together with bellies full of whiskey and patriotic fever. For this great thundering event, the locals would assemble one hundred pounds of dynamite and place them over a two hundred pound lead anvil. On top of that was more dynamite, and another lead anvil, about the size of a Bronco. This would all be assembled behind second base in the baseball field. Someone would light the fuse and KABOOOOOOM the top anvil would hurl two hundred feet up into the air. The bottom anvil just went vertically about one hundred feet, towards the stands. Now that was the Fourth of July. "Oh, they're doing that again, Aunt Melray remarked." I was impressed.
The other thing I remember about the Fourth of July in Jamestown was the raucous party and bar-b-ques. One year I was invited to shoot rifles into the air to celebrate America's independence. There's nothing like the wild West.

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