LOCAL ANGLES: HOLIDAY MUSINGS, NOT FAMILY TIES, FADE IN TIME

Independence Day has always been one of my favorite holidays. In my small home town in Jo Daviess County, Ill., the Fourth of July was the event of the year, as Stockton's population would swell from 1,800 to as many as 5,000 people, particularly for the acclaimed fireworks display. But there was much more to the event than fireworks.

As a child, I awoke early July 4, to dash out of the house, leap on my bicycle and race the mile or so to the park. There were carnival-type games for children and booths brimming with crafts and trinkets. Other booths sold cotton candy, hand-dipped ice cream, or bratwurst.

My friends and I would break out our contraband fireworks -- mostly Moon Traveler bottle rockets and Black Cat firecrackers. But someone always had at least a few M-80s. "They've got the gunpowder equivalent of a quarter-stick of dynamite," we'd say, assuring each other that these were indeed serious fireworks.

July 4 also was glory day for the local Little League baseball teams. The Cards was a powerhouse team and went undefeated my last year in Little League. But we could just as well have been winless on July 4. On that special day, all records were irrelevant.

Why I so eagerly anticipated squatting behind home plate bedecked in sweaty mask, and chest and leg guards in 95-degree midday heat, I can't say. Maybe it was the crowd, because the stands were packed. And it wasn't only parents of players who saw me stroke that long ball to the softball diamond on the other end of the park. Out-of-town folks were in the stands as the Cards thumped the Giants in a game shortened by the 10-run rule.

About 500 feet from the ball diamond was the Stockton TWP Pool, where crowds lined the fence to watch the annual swimming carnival. Events included the spoon and egg race (swimming, mind you), the underwater tricycle race, and the belly flop contest off the 15-foot high dive (my specialty). But the big event was the open crawl. This was plain old power swimming across the pool and back. Two competitors, my brother Jeff and Steve Vanderheyden, each year would outdistance all other swimmers by no less than four lengths only to finish in a virtual dead-heat.

Later in the afternoon, the park would fill with the smoky scents of massive barbecue bits covered with grilling chicken halves. The local Lion's Club would serve a helping of baked beans and slaw on the side. Although the chicken, coated with barbecue sauce, looked as if it were burned, you could barely get the bird to your mouth without the tender meat falling off the bone.

The day, of course, would end with fireworks. I would lie on a blanket and try to imagine whether the battlefields of our nation's struggle for independence resembled at all those colorful bombs exploding overhead, with the smell of sulfur thick in the air. The fireworks always ended with a "Shop Stockton" ground display and the American flag erected in blazing flares on the side of the football field's crow's nest.

These were just a few of my sentimental musings recently as I planned a trip home in July. But times change. No longer a wide-eyed youngster easily excited by holidays, what formerly were delightful July 4 amusements now are distractions.

It doesn't even feel right to say I'm going home for the holiday. Home is in Jackson, Mo., with my wife and three children. And by July, my parents already will have moved back to southern Wisconsin, closer to six of their 11 grandchildren and the land of their youth. So even though I'll drive through Stockton on my way to Platteville, Wis., I won't be staying there.

The important thing is I'll be spending a few days with family -- Mom and Dad, Dani and Jeff, and Jake, Carrie and Emmi, Jeff and Cora Jean and Matthew, Andrew and Joshua, Grandma Lillie, aunts, uncles and innumerable cousins. These are the ties that bind, not memories of youthful pleasure -- even shared memories. Those days are past, forever.

It's not so much that a piece of my life has been snatched away. It has only decayed with age until it floated gently away on the winds of change.

Those winds blow eternally, and some day, if it pleases God, I'll be a grandfather eagerly awaiting the next holiday, not for the cards and gifts or fireworks and barbecued chicken, but because my children and my children's children will gather from far away for a visit at grandpa's house. On that day, I will have come full circle, watching eager youngsters mesmerized by the sites and sounds of Americana, and the faded memory of grandpa, now restored in glorious detail, will join in the fun.