A little boy and his sister raced each other for fireflies in a small landscaped flower garden. “The boy just caught another,” I told my wife, Rita, sitting next to me on the front step at Park National Bank on Route 14 in Crystal Lake. This was the night of the fireworks show at Lippold Park, about three miles from the bank, but already two people were not very interested in a sky show, they were wrapped up in their own “natural” light show.
The kids weren’t free of adult supervision for more than it took the bank’s parking lot to fill with cars; about 30 minutes from the time the first car showed to the last in the lot. Then drivers started parking along the cornfield that abuts the bank and by the outdoor teller windows. I think the children’s mother grew concerned that heavy traffic in the small lot might get in the way of her kids talent for entomology, so she rushed over to warn them not to trample the yellow flowers. I could see they weren’t damaging the landscape, they were merely snatching fireflies, and putting those “lightning bugs” in their pockets. The light show these children provided seemed an apropos side show to the main event, the “Annual Fireworks Display.”
This year the fireworks switched from its extremely popular spot at Main Beach in Crystal Lake to Lippold Park in accordance with the Crystal Lake Gala at Lippold off of Route 176. Our nation’s Fourth of July celebration would give us the usual tingle, but a day later, on July 5 at the biggest park in Crystal Lake. Before Rita and I found ourselves parked at the bank, we planned on leaving our car at Crystal Lake South High School and boarding a shuttle bus to Lippold. The planners of the Independence celebration had this great idea of shuttling as many people as possible from either CL. South or McHenry County College or the Holiday Inn in CL to Lippold. Since we’re close to South, we thought the idea of parking the car there and taking the shuttle was great. However, my two sons, wife and I arrived after 7 in the evening; kind of a late start because we weren’t sure which blankets, pillows, flashlights, and drinks to bring. We walked to the back of this very long line on the sidewalk near the entrance to South, but strangely, we moved up, first by a step or two as some people in line left. They couldn’t wait any longer for the bus. That’s okay, I said because we’re moving up….and in a few minutes, we were close to the front of the line, which on the surface was ideal, but I had to face the possibility, we’d join those leaving if the bus didn’t arrive within the next 15-minutes, because we’d been there 20-minutes already. Finally, someone shouted, “the bus is here!!!!”….and we grabbed stuff we had set on the ground and we watched as this yellow district 47/155 school bus rolled past us to the very back of the line where the latest arriving had been there for no more than five minutes. I think the initial reaction was shock from those in line the longest. But in a moment, dozens of people from the front of the line with their chairs held tight stampeded…and I thought that type of reaction was only possible if the bus driver had shouted “I’ve got your economic stimulus check here.”
My sons made it onto the bus, Brenden yelled for Rita and I to get on…push if you have to….but get on, he implied. No, we were not pushing or panicking, just facing the reality of separation from our kids on one of the most important events of the year. The people like us, “failures to board”, got into our cars and drove off. On the way to Lippold, we found our journey blocked at the intersection of Routes 14 and 176, a Crystal Lake Police squad car stopped any traffic from using the road to enter Lippold. Traffic was already backed up more than on a Saturday in town. So we began our journey north on Route 14, seeing dozens of people parked at strip malls and other people walking along the busy Route 14, even people walking across a farmer’s fields to reach Lippold. We reached McHenry County College, another site for the shuttle, but we couldn’t find any SHUTTLE HERE sign. Didn’t realize the shuttle was for the other side of MCC….but then again, we did see people camped out in the MCC parking lot and talked to a few that hoped to catch a glimpse at least of the fireworks from this fairly great distance. They’d probably only see a small portion of the fireworks. We worked our way in the car to the back side of the college and then on Ridgefield Road and over into the parking lot of Park National Bank. The bank’s lot was fairly well lit, good for keeping police patrols with a clear picture of any trouble, but not so good for the fireworks challenged because the bugs were celebrating too; each bite on my arm or my wife’s leg, or the other guy nearby with the red, white and blue shirt. Brenden called from Lippold, “where are you dad?” I thought I’d tell him that maybe we’d ventured into Twilight Zone, but then, he couldn’t possibly know our fireworks fate or even understand the reference. So I said, “it is a bit buggy here, but the light show has my full attention.” I left it at that. The boy and his sister got a few more lightning bugs before they went home.
Molly J
