Late afternoon on July 3rd and the riot police are still not needed here at our beachfront vacation paradise. Maybe the horror stories of Independence Day celebrations were exaggerated. It’s even surprising that the number of people either around here, or out on the beach has been unimpressive. I’ve seen larger crowds on non-holiday weekends. Where I have seen big crowds is at the library, in Publix supermarket and on the local streets, behind the wheel of cars. The library crowd is explained by the fact that they will not be open tomorrow, as they usually are on Sunday, and the supermarket crush is not uncommon on Saturday afternoons in this beach town, because it’s turnover day for condo rentals. New people just arrived, stocking up for the week. The traffic is obviously holiday traffic, and the first time I’ve ever had to drive here in bumper to bumper lines of cars. May not be especially connected to the holiday, but eight out of ten people driving past me were on the phone, half of them lane-hopping, nervous of losing a minute.
At 6:00 there was barely a dozen people in the pool, with maybe eight or nine sitting or hanging around talking. Not what I imagined. I’ve seen some trash casually dropped, a few more cigarette butts tossed on the grass, or walkway, but it looks to this eye like the trash cans are catching most of it. Here again, not what I expected.
Last night, between 9:30 and 11:30 there were a whole lot of fireworks crackling, booming and lighting up the beach in bursts of color, sparkling, fizzling showers of red, white and blue. I expect more of that tonight despite the warnings of both the beach patrol and members of the Volusia County Turtle Watch that setting off fireworks on the beach is strictly illegal. On the 4th of July? That's like telling people diving is not allowed in the pool.
The situation around here today leads me to believe that the stories I heard were blown up because people love to talk about how bad things are going to get, and don’t mind adding a little more to the picture.
But who knows? Maybe the crowds and the rowdy behavior will ignite a full explosion tomorrow. For the time being, it all has the look of no big deal.
Is it raining there? We're socked in over here so don't expect much in the way of celebrations. But there are alway a few fools who'll set off the fireworks anyway.
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