Small Town 4th of July

I love small towns. That's why I moved to Benson. One of the best part of small towns is that they go all out for their 4th of July celebrations. Unlike Tucson. Now Tucson did have their fireworks show, but only because the private sector stepped up and funded it. Sorry I digress.
Benson, true to small town form, had a great day planned to celebrate our great nation's birthday.

The parade started at 9:00 AM. The youth from our church had a "Southwestern Mardi Gras" float. "What is a Southwestern Mardi Gras float" you may ask? Well a Mardi Gras float throws beads, candy, doubloons, etc... to the crowd. Our float threw buckets of water on the parade goers. We threw a little candy too. We filled Shane Smith's side-dump trailer with water and the youth and I climbed in the thigh-deep water.

This is not a shot of Shane's but you get an idea of its size. I actually don't have an pics of our float. Anyway, we drove through the parade route and chucked water out of the back of the trailer like we were fighting a wild fire. It was too much fun. I think I had more fun than the youth did. A couple of the girls' leader were sitting on top of the cab (not the hood, on top of the cab) and threw the candy. The candy would draw the little kids into the street and then we would trounce them with water. After we finished the parade, we drove, still in the trailer with about a foot and a half of water, over to Lyons park. Now that we were no longer in the parade, Gary Weber, the driver of the rig, drove a bit faster and the water sloshed all around. The kids started riding the waves as they sloshed around.

After the parade, the festivities move to Lyons Park where the water fight begins. Here is a youtube video of the water fight from a few (or many) years back.

The local fire departments and districts have a "Push of War" with an empty barrel attached to a cable by a pulley. The water goes everywhere. For added measure, the Benson Fire Department had their 75 foot boom ladder with its 500 gallon/minutes spout parked on the side. Between heats and to beat the heat they open the valve and soak the crowd. They kids had a blast, but unfortunately our Mescal Fire District didn't fare so well in the tournament.

Later that night we went to Kartchner's Ponds for a barbecue and the kids went for a swim in the pond. This was the same place where we had the party after Bella's baptism. Then we went back to Lyons Park for the evening's fireworks display. They were on par with Sierra Vista's fireworks and we didn't have to drive over an hour to get home.

We had Lesley's whole family with us for the day and it was great to spend the day with family.