TALKING TRASH: I LOVE A PARADE ON THE FOURTH, OR ANYTIME

With only two more days until the Fourth of July, you still have time to gather supplies from your recycleables to create the most fantastically fun family affair imaginable! A few necessary ingredients need to be in place even before you do this. As in any of our most worthy endeavors, time and energy are needed. Please don't stop reading just because of these two over-worked words. The third necessity may be just what you need to hear to get you involved -- the willingness to create a memory or start a family tradition. My mother was big on doing both, and being the "steel-willed" lover of family celebrations, she passed the baton to me.

As a child I used to "make up" holidays, just to have celebrations! Tea parties with my dolls any time of the year, bicycle rodeos in the summer, sledding parties in the winte, and the Fourth of July were all occasions. Since there were no other little girls in the neighborhood, I created several imaginary friends. I indulged in the most delightful conversations with dolls, kittens, Suzy, Kathy and Jane. I could be a parade of one that made as much noise as an entire band. I dressed up, decorated, climbed trees and built tree houses, baked mud pies and panned for gold in our back yard. As far as toys go, I owned a doll house, dolls and one set of brick-like blocks. We had no TV until I was 9. When I got lonesome or bored, I created a party! Oh yes -- I neglected to mention my younger cousin Bobby, the very best kind of friend to have! He had an equally vivid imagination, often allowing me to boss him around. When we'd get together we created memories that we're still laughing about.

Our bigger family parades happened however as my own four children were growing up. With coffee cans and oatmeal boxes as drums and cardboard tubes as horns, we'd don our newspaper hats and march around the house. If a John Phillip Sousa march was playing, we'd sing and march 'til we dropped (I dropped usually). I think the kids are still marching -- just to the beat of different drummers!

People -- a picnic -- a parade -- why not? With a rat-a-tat tat, let's make a hat! Lay out a double spread sheet of newspaper, fold in half length-wise, then fold in half from top to bottom. Take the upper left-hand corner, folding toward the center; repeat with the upper right-hand comer. Taking the upper half of the bottom edges, turn them up and crease the fold; flip the whole hat over and turn up the remaining bottom edges and crease. Tape or staple the ends to hold the hat together better. With crayons, water color markers, decorate. Add crepe paper streamers to the top point and stars, buttons and glitter if you wish. If messy projects just aren't your thing, take the project outside on the driveway or sidewalk -- or spread an old sheet on the grass under a shade tree.

Decorate cardboard cylinders with crayons or markers. These make great horns to toot through. Make vibrating kazoos by adding wax paper to the ends, secured with rubber bands. Wrap coffee cans with plastic lids or oatmeal boxes with red, white and blue construction paper -- glue on, tape or again use rubber bands. Those one- or two-liter plastic bottles that we added rocks (etc.) to a few weeks ago make excellent noise makers and can be decorated nicely with patriotic colors. Don't forget aluminum pie plates or pan lids for clashing cymbals! Baton twirlers can use a real baton if one is handy, otherwise one can be created with long gift wrap cylinders.

There. You have it! A splash of color, the blare of trumpets, clashing cymbals, beating drums, rocky rattles, and marching feet to a 1 - 2 - 3 -4 marching beat. Happy parading! Happy family tradition-making! Happy Fourth of July! And please pass the aspirin, huh?!

Care to share an idea with us? Just send it in to "Ms. Kaye," Southeast Missourian, P.O. Box 699, Cape Girardeau, Mo., 63701.