y'all come on back now, ya hear!...

So, Dave and I finally succombed to peer pressure and went to Cleveland for the 24th of July firework show. No, not Cleveland, Ohio... they don't care about our Pioneer Days...Cleveland, Utah. The little blip off highway 10 between Elmo and miles of nothing. According to Wikipedia, Cleveland has a population of 508 and I'm pretty sure they included livestock in this figure.

It turns out, these country folk know how to party. People lined up rows of blankets along a grassy hillside next to a county building of some kind. A good band was playing, food was eaten, strangers blankets were trampled and desecrated by my children, and a fun time was had by all. Eventually, the fireworks started and I have to admit, it was impressive! The show was put on by a group of firefighters just across the road from the hillside, so it literally felt and looked like the fireworks were going off right above our heads. This thought was later confirmed by the warm, spent, cardboard firework casing I found my six month old sucking on. During the show, my kids yelled "Wow" and "Ohhhh" a lot. I heard people around us saying ..."This is so much better than the one in Price" (well done), a few "Yee-haws!" and surprisingly only one "Hell Yeah!". At the end of the show, a sign lit up with a tractor and the caption reading "I love this town", and the band struck up the John Mellencamp classic "Small Town...". The firefighters did a Rockettes-inspired grapevine across the firework field before one firefighter broke out into a spin, ending in some version of the splits. The "crowd" went wild! It was fun, I got a little teary thinking about how proud the Clevelanders were of thier show. And then my mind wandered to how in the world they pay for it...speeding tickets on Highway 10, is all I could come up with. As we walked to our car, a few groups of straggeling fireworks went off, that apparently weren't lit during the "show". These were the cherry on top of a fun night, and distracted my boys long enough to trick them into their seatbelts, so all the more appreciated.