On the 4th of July in 1960 I was just out of the 6th grade. The 4th of July was one of the best times of the year in our little town. Right after we were released from school, some of the kids in town had two jobs ahead of them in the month of June to get ready for the 4th.
The first job was for the youth group at the church. We would start making homemade ice cream for the 4th of July celebration. We borrowed every crank freezer in town and met every Saturday at the church to make ice cream all day.
The recipe we used for the ice cream used 7 eggs and real thick cream and was never cooked. It is hard for people today to believe that no one ever got sick from eating uncooked eggs, but we didn’t.
When the ice cream was mixed we put it into the metal canister and it was dropped into the large wooden ice cream maker. Then ice was packed around and over the top of the canister, and rock salt poured on top of the ice. Once the crank was put into position on top we folded a throw rug and threw it over the top to keep the cold in.
One kid, usually a girl, would sit down on the freezer and a boy would start to turn the crank. When your partner got tired, you traded places and you cranked for a while. Sometimes it seemed to take forever to get it to freeze, but it was worth all the effort when the 4th came around.
Once it was frozen the ice cream was taken out of the canister and placed into Tupperware containers and put into the freezer at the church. Then the whole process started all over again. We did this every Saturday for the whole month of June.
Most of the ice cream was stored at the church in the large freezer, but when it was full we would take the containers and place them in prearranged home freezers all over town.
A couple of days before the 4th of July our mothers started to make a chocolate cake for the ice cream social and dance. Each mother had to make 6 cakes because people came into town from a 4 county radius for the festivities. The population would triple for the evening.
The second job that began the first of June was the fireworks stand the Job’s Daughters ran. It was their only money-maker for the year, and they made enough money in that one-month to do all their projects for the year. The firework stand was open from 9:00 am until at least 10:00 pm every day.
The stand was set up on Main Street right under the water tower, so they had shade in the afternoon. The water tower was in front of the tennis courts at the school where the ice cream social would be held on the 4th. It was a prime location.
An added bonus for the location……. the stand was across the street from the open lot where all the custom cutters parked their trailers when they were in town. The custom cutters were the best customers the girls had when they were not working. The guys probably didn’t have any money when they moved on to the next town, because they sure loved to shoot fireworks.
They would buy the largest packages of firecrackers that were available. Then they would light the whole package at one time in the middle of Main Street. There were some local boys that did the same thing during the day, and I wonder how the adults could stand a whole month of the noise and the smell of gunpowder.
The 4th of July celebration started early afternoon with a parade on Main Street, which was only 6 blocks long, and then a raffle. Every business in town gave something for the raffle. We all crowded around with our tickets to see if we would be lucky and win something.
Then at 6:00 PM the hamburger fry began on the school tennis courts, and after the hamburger fry, it was time for the wonderful homemade ice cream and cake. The youth group served the ice cream for 50 cents a bowl and a large piece of cake for 50 cents.
Most of the servers took advantage of the chance to eat some of the great ice cream we had worked so hard to make. There was nothing better than a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream and a piece of chocolate cake. Especially since the youth group could have some at no charge.
The dance started at 7:00 PM on the tennis courts and would continue until it was dark enough for the fireworks. It was usually country music. But the band would usually play one or two rock and roll songs for the teenagers.
The Booster club always provided the fireworks for the show and it would last about 30 minutes. We didn’t have music with it then, but we were still in awe of the fireworks. I remember my dad saying that the fireworks that year cost $500 and I thought that was a real fortune.
The fireworks were set off on the football field, which sat just behind the tennis courts. People would sit in the stands to watch, and some even drove their cars in and parked all around the football field.
Just to the west of the football field was a wheat field. If the farmer was lucky he had harvested it and only stubble was left. The fire department always had their truck sitting at the edge of the wheat field. They were needed, almost every year, to put out a fire when one of the fireworks landed in the field.
My dad was the one who was usually elected to light the fireworks. I remember they were almost as big around as a coffee can and twice as tall. The fuse was about 6 inches long. Dad was the one elected to light them, I think because he could run the fastest and he could get far enough away from it before it went off.
The 4th of July in 1960 was a lot of fun and one of the best days of the year for the teenagers in Mullinville. To contact Sandy: [email protected]
