They were all just people!

Whatever you do, don't start researching your family history unless you want to find out that your ancestors were just ordinary humans, with all the ordinary quirks, characteristics, and problems we have today.   It's pretty easy to think of "the good old days" as something better than today.  Lots of people fall into that trap. Longing for the days "before everything went to hell."  You see it all the time on Facebook, people posting things about how wonderful life was when they were kids. How we never had to lock our doors, played outside after dark without supervision, went  barefoot through the cow paddies all summer long, everyone watched Red Skelton and Lawrence Welk and we laid around in the grass watching the summer clouds drift past.   I know you've seen those things a thousand times.  We remember things were "better" in the old days, so if they were better in our own "old days" they must have been perfectly terrific when our great grandparents were kids.

We also have a tendency to put our ancestors on pedestals....thinking of them as somehow heroic and without fault. I've done it myself,  having had a great relationship with my grandparents it is easy to start thinking all the grandparents that came before them must have been equally warm, loving, and successful people just like the ones I remember, but the truth is not all of them were.  Not all of them were heroic, certainly some were, but some were just mean, bad apples without many positive personality traits.   Just look at the odds...there were a lot of them, ancestors I mean.  You double the number for each generation. Two parents, four grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents, and before you know it you are no longer talking about a family tree, but a family forest.  If you go back far enough you eventually come to a number that is larger than what the known population of the whole world was at that given point in time...What? How is that possible? What someone explained to me was that through time lots of siblings and cousins married one another,   and those couples had shared ancestors so you lose numbers in those cases.

But, getting back to how things were better in "the old days". Let me tell you something.   Life 50 years ago, or 150 years ago wasn't really all that different from today.  People had the same hopes, dreams, fears and faults we have today.   Women got pregnant before they got married, married couples got divorces,  people were alcoholics, or suffered from mental illness, some of them couldn't read or write and held menial jobs all their lives and people went to jail. Some declared bankruptcy, or lost their farms to foreclosure. Sometimes people killed one another.   An average family history is full of tragedy..the infant mortality rate was sky high compared to today...few families escaped the loss of at least one infant...and if they survived infancy they still had to make it through the rest of their childhood.    Things that are almost unheard of today...measles, mumps, dysentery, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, malaria, cholera, polio, diphtheria and smallpox took many young lives. Something as simple as ear infection or an infected splinter could kill you.

People don't expect to find out that great grandma's first baby was born 4 months after she was married, or that grandpa had a half brother he never knew about...or if he did he never told you that he knew.  We feel shocked and disappointed when we find out great great grandpa died in prison.  We are aghast to find out great grandpa's cousin murdered his wife and tried to commit suicide and that he spent the last years of his life in and out of mental hospitals or living on the street.

Some family historians take all these surprises with a grain of salt because they understand it's all a part of the big river of  life.  Sometimes they don't really want to discover what they did.  Recently I was working on the family of my great-great grandfather David Cooper.  I had a good list of his siblings and was gathering additional information about those siblings to record on my family tree.  I had started out with a listing of family information someone had made around 1900.  For most of David's siblings there was information about the spouses, and children, including dates of birth and death and where they lived, etc.  When I came to his brother Joseph Cooper the old family papers contained very little information about Joseph or about his family.  I wondered why all the other families of siblings had been so well documented, but not that one.

As I dug through census records, city directories, court records, cemetery records, etc. it didn't take me long to understand why Joseph was practically overlooked in the old family records...he was, without a doubt the black sheep of that family.   He worked at odd jobs when he worked at all, failed to support his family, then abandoned them, he was an abusive drunk to his family and was arrested by local police more than once for public drunkenness.  His children had to go to work as young teens to help support their mother.  His wife Mary finally filed for divorce...but then withdrew the complaint when it became clear that he was dying of stomach cancer.    At Ancestry.com I noticed that a woman who is a descendant of one of Joseph's daughters had a tree at Ancestry but had none of the Cooper family information on her tree beyond Joseph so I offered to help her since my information went two generations farther back in time than she knew.   She was thrilled when I provided the Cooper family information, we exchanged a few emails as I provided her information, but after I provided Joseph's own checkered history she suddenly lost interest and stopped responding to any of the items I sent.   Some folks just don't want to know anything negative about their ancestors.

My late Uncle Bob Shearer is another example of someone who felt personally ashamed by what happened to his great grandfather William Shearer (my great great grandfather).  He was so distressed by what he had discovered that he took all paperwork pertaining to that part of William Shearers life, piled it in the alley behind his house in Remington and set fire to it. That information was revealed to my  Uncle Max who had witnessed the mini bonfire and had been sworn to secrecy by his older brother.   (so much for family secret keeping)   Of course there had been rumors in the family for Uncle Bob's entire life...it was apparently not something that was spoken of very often but my mother knew William Shearer had died under some sort of mysterious circumstances.  In a way Uncle Bob was trying to close the door long after the horse had left the barn.

  Well, heck, I'm a curious person, so I started digging around on my own.  As it turned out it wasn't that difficult to figure out what happened to my great great grandfather...he died  in the Indiana Penitentiary at Jeffersonville, Indiana when the prison was hit by a cholera epidemic during the late summer of 1850.  He had been convicted in the early part of 1850.   When my uncle discovered that I knew the "secret" he made a special trip to my home where he practically begged me to forget what I knew and not talk about it to any other family members.   Uncle Bob is gone now and while he lived I didn't make use of what I had learned.  But it still seems like "a heck of a story".

 I would actually like to know a lot more about that whole story than I have been able to learn.  In 1850 it was a big story that got splashed around in a lot of newspapers all over Indiana and even several out of state papers covered the story, one story even gave an account of  his deathbed scene, written by a minister who had visited William Shearer and other prisoners at the Jeffersonville facility.

The conviction was in the Federal District Court in Indianapolis, the crime (robbery of the mail) allegedly occurred in Winchester where William and his family lived. Someone broke into the post office and stole some mail.  Empty envelopes were later found.  It was determined that one of the envelopes had contained a $3.00 bank note.  I went so far as to order copies of the Federal Court docket books covering that case but they gave no information about the crime at all.  No information on who testified, or what they said. Newspaper articles written shortly after his arrest, during his trial, and after his death claimed he was convicted on weak circumstantial evidence, only that the morning after the crime was discovered William had bought some medicine at the local drug store and had paid for it with a $3.00 bank note.    Now, here is the strange thing.  Based on the probate files after his death he was solvent, would not have needed to steal money.  He had been making his living as a teacher, surveyor, and attorney.  He had been elected to the position of County Surveyor.     But the story gets stranger.  After he was initially arrested the case was dropped by the federal prosecutor prior to the trial.  About a year later politics changed and a new federal prosecutor refiled the original charge against William and tried the case.  One has to wonder why the first prosecutor dropped charges....and why the second prosecutor decided to pursue the case anew?  On his deathbed in the prison William met with a minister and even knowing his death to be eminent he maintained he was innocent of the charge. His death due to cholera was one of about a score that died in the prison during that same time period.

A news story of his death reported that a petition was then in circulation throughout eastern Indiana, and had up to that time collected more than 2000 names requesting he be pardoned.  He died before that could be submitted.   I have never been able to come to a solid conclusion as to his guilt or innocence because so much information seems to be missing from the story.  Certainly it appears there was not much evidence against him, at least that which I've been able to dig up besides the fact he used a bank note of the same denomination as one reported stolen.  

I have shared this story with other descendants of William and will put much of this on my family tree at Ancestry.  It's one of those unexpected tragic stories that are part of life and such tragedies are not unique to my family.  I'm of the opinion that leaving this information out of the story of that family short changes those who come after me.  These are the things that show we are all human and all a part of of a larger story.

    

 

Dirty, Rotten Liberals, part 2

We have 8 great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents, and 32 great great great grandparents.  Now that's a big roomful of interesting folks, and all with unique individual stories.     Those of us who have done much research of our family history have probably developed a fondness for one particular ancestor over the others at least that's been the case with me.   If there was any one ancestor I'd like to be able to go back in time and spend a day with it would be one of my great great great grandfathers, William Walter Robinson.  Bill Robinson was one of those dirty, rotten liberals I spoke of in my prior post.

William W. and Matilda Robinson circa 1847

He and his younger brother John Robinson were willing to take a stand against slavery during a time in our history when men (and women) like them were considered "radical".  Both men came to Tippecanoe County among the very earliest settlers.  William was born in eastern Pennsylvania in 1794, but came west as an infant with his family, first to Kentucky and then to Ohio where he grew up.  John was born in Clark County Ohio in 1806.

William was the oldest son in a family of six sons, and eight daughters.   He left Clark County within a year of his 1818 marriage in Clark County for the wilds of central Indiana. He moved into the area even before the government had finished surveying the land in preparation for sale.   He had begun his own family while still living in Clark County and by 1820 he had purchased government land in what later became Johnson County Indiana.  There he cleared his land, farmed, and became involved in local politics, being elected as one of the first members of the county Board of Justices.  The duties of the Boards of Justice were a sort of blend of what today would be the County Commissioners and a Justice of the Peace.   By 1830 he had moved his family north and west of the Wabash River into what was then the brand new Tippecanoe County where he settled down for the remainder of his life.  

Younger brother John married in Clark County Ohio in 1829 and soon joined his older brother in Tippecanoe County where he purchased farm land about a half mile from his brother's farm.  Several other siblings of William and John also arrived in Tippecanoe County around 1830, but within a decade they had all moved on...farther west and northwest. Youngest brother Lemuel eventually made it all the way to California.     The Robinson's were active in the early days of the Methodist Episcopal Church.  William and his wife were among the members of the first Methodist Church in Johnson County and William was one of the first Trustees of a Methodist congregation founded in their Tippecanoe County neighborhood in the 1840's.

In 1835 John was licensed to become a "local preacher" of the M. E. Church, a position he held for about eight years.   John left the M. E. Church and joined the Wesleyan Methodist soon after that group was formed in 1843 because the M. E. Church failed to take a strong stand against slavery. In addition to Anti-slavery, the early Wesleyan Methodists championed the rights of women.  In 1848 they hosted the first women's rights convention and later passed a resolution favoring the right of women to vote.  Both  anti-slavery and women's rights were far outside conventional (conservative) views at the time.

William never left the Methodist Episcopal fold, but was none-the-less involved in the anti-slavery movement, and was a champion of women's rights, and in particular a champion of education for his children, including his daughters.  

During the 1830's, abolitionists were often characterized as misfits and crackpots. Few took them seriously. Mobs, sometimes led by "gentlemen of property and standing" in the community, inflicted abuse and injury on abolitionists across the north. The violence culminated in Alton, IL in Noveber 1837 when abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy was shot and killed while defending his press from an unruly crowd. He was killed at the height of anti abolitionist sentiment and from that time forward there was a sharp drop in the number and intensity of mob violence, though it never entirely disappeared. Even in Lafayette mob violence was noted against known abolitionists. In 1845 a mob threatened to burn the house of Dr. Elizur Deming who was then a candidate for Governor on the Liberty Party Ticket and also that of Lewis Falley Sr. who was known to harbor runaway slaves in his home on South 5th Street. The mob was diverted from both of those places by the Sheriff and local militia but did burn the homes of several free blacks who lived near the river on the south side of town.

 In short, during the thirty years leading up to the Civil War, it was dangerous to be an abolitionist. William Robinson a friend of Dr. Deming was also a member of the Liberty Party of Indiana and his name appears in several local news items covering local Liberty Party events. It is not known if John was involved in Liberty Party politics but his pulpit gave him opportunity to preach against the sin of slavery. He was also remembered in his obituary as having been a participant in the Underground Railroad, helping runaway slaves escape to Canada. It is unknown if the two brothers worked together in those efforts but since their farms were side by side it seems likely that there was at least some mutual cooperation. Lewis Falley junior was interviewed in about 1900 and remembered  John Robinson often came to his father's home in Lafayette and picked up runaways hiding at the Falley home then taking them north to the county line. A map published in 1898 by Wilber Siebert in his history of the Underground Railroad was one that was sketched by Lewis Falley Senior and clearly shows the Robinson Farm as the first stop north of Lafayette.  

While being an abolitionist, or being a member of the Liberty Party were not against the law, assisting or hiding runaway slaves were certainly against the law, and could result in either criminal charges or civil suits brought by the "owners" of the fugitive slaves.  Many people, even among abolitionists, refused to help fugitive slaves because they either did not want to be law breakers, or they didn't see the Underground Railroad as a viable solution to the problem.  Clearly William and John Robinson were not afraid of upsetting the apple cart, they valued freedom, not just for themselves, but for all.  

William and Matilda were progressives who valued education for all of their children, not just their sons.   At a time when education beyond the very basic for women was not believed necessary they sent both daughters and sons away for higher education.  Two of their sons graduated from Indiana Asbury College, and became Methodist ministers and one became a college president.  At least one of their daughters graduated from Fort Wayne College where she was later a teacher but several of the other girls also attended Fort Wayne College for at least one term.   

Today William might be referred to as a liberal statist...  unlike Ronald Reagan, William W. Robinson didn't see the government as the problem, but instead as a way to solve problems. He saw government simply as neighbors working together toward a common goal.    He was active in community affairs, holding public office as a young man in Johnson County and working with local government officials in Tippecanoe County to build the new community. He signed petitions for improvements to roads and bridges, petitions against selling alcohol in his township, worked with his neighbors building and improving the local roads, paid taxes, paid his debts, raised a large family and worked his larger than average farm.  He sought to eliminate slavery through political action.   Liberty and individual freedom are our birthright, but truly wise men, such as William and John Robinson, know that along with liberty we also need a sense of community to thrive.  William and John Robinson would have found the philosophy of Ayn Rand describing selfishness is a virtue and her rejection of altruism to be quite foreign. 

John and William W. Robinson understood what Ayn Rand failed so miserably to understand.   While she believed that the pursuit of one's own rational self-interest is  life's moral purpose, the true fact is that man evolved as a communal creature, with bonds to family and community tightly tied to health, happiness, longevity and pretty much everything that makes life pleasurable. 

Bringing a load of hay from the farm to town along the old plank road.  John Robinson used these trips into Lafayette as cover when picking up fugitive slaves for transport north toward Jasper County where they would be handed off to yet another "conductor" along the Underground Railroad.  

Dirty Rotten Liberals!

I lament the loss of perfectly good words, but the truth is that language evolves. The word liberal has ancient Latin and Greek roots and has changed meanings more than once. In the 12th century it referred to noble, gracious, munificent, and generous but by the 15th century there was also a connotation of free, unrestrained, unimpeded, libertine or licentious. Through the 16th and 17th centuries it was used to describe someone free from restraint in speech or action and was a word of reproach. By around 1776 the word was revived in a positive sense during the Enlightenment taking on the meaning of one free of prejudice and tolerant.

Today the word can be a noun or an adjective and has retained the more positive aspects it came to represent during the Enlightenment. Tolerant, broad-minded, generous, favoring reform and progress, not bound by tradition. It can also mean big or large as in a liberal helping of dessert, or someone who was liberal (generous) in their donation to charity. If you're from southwestern Kansas Liberal could be the name of the town where you live. If you are a Tea Party Congressman it's a handy expletive for everything that's gone wrong with the country.

A while back Galanty Miller posted a humor column at the Huffington Post describing a long list of differences between conservatives and liberals. Some of them were pretty funny. Funny enough that I'll risk using a few of them without his express written permission.

Liberals are concerned about economic inequality. Conservatives are confident that one day they will be rich.
Conservatives don't want to hear liberal Hollywood celebrities talk about politics. Liberals also don't want to hear liberal Hollywood celebrities talk about politics.

Liberals support good teachers. Conservatives support eliminating bad teachers.

Conservatives support free speech. Liberals support free speech unless it's politically incorrect.

Liberals love having sex. Conservatives hate when other people have sex.

Conservatives support issues that help their families. Liberals support issues that help families.

Liberals are full of crap because they don't really believe what they say. Conservatives are full of crap because they truly believe what they say.

I suppose this is a good time to bring up the purpose of this edition. I have finally been able to admit it, it took a while, but I'm coming out, Yes, I'm a liberal. I'm not sure how long I've been a liberal, maybe longer than I know. I started out voting for Republicans. I guess it was sort of expected of me.  For more than 30 years I was pretty faithful to the GOP. I was raised in a middle class family, my parents were Republicans, my grandparents were Republicans. I was a police officer, a profession where most of my colleagues were Republicans...even those few who always supported the local Democrats were conservative. I first thought of myself as "moderate". I really didn't want to be called a liberal. Geez, after all a liberal is practically a communist.

But a funny thing happened...the Republican Party moved to the right. I shuffled along with them for a while but by the time George W. Bush came along I felt pretty out of place and by the end of his first term I knew. I was a liberal. Holy Crap! A dirty, rotten liberal. Me? What would my family think? It took me a while to become comfortable wearing that label. So why am I now happy to say I'm a Liberal?
I think I have both specific policy reasons and general philosophic reasons for my political views and I think it's a good idea to be able to state what those are...if you can't then you shouldn't be voting.

1. I believe in science.
2. I believe corporations are businesses, not people.
3. I believe our sexual orientation is something we are born with, not something we choose.
4. I believe in global warming and that humans have had a hand in it (see number one above)
5. I believe women deserve equal rights and equal pay.
6. I don't believe 47% of Americans are looking for a government handout.
7. I don't believe God uses weather to punish sin. (see number one again)
8. I don't believe we are "entitled" to social security and Medicare, we paid for these programs.
9. I believe demand creates jobs, not tax cuts.
10. I believe our constitution doesn't only protect the rights I agree with...sometimes it also protects the rights       I don't agree with.
11. I believe we should protect the weakest among us, not the richest.
12. I believe we should put people before profits.
13. I'm a liberal because I believe in a Constitution that is meant to evolve, grow, and progress.
14. I believe in a free market, with rules.

Speaking of Social security here are what a lot of Republicans in Congress were saying while FDR was trying to get it passed.

“Never in the history of the world has any measure been so insidiously designed as to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers, and to prevent any possibility of the employers providing work for the people.”
“…Invites the entrance into the political field of a power so vast, so powerful as…to pull the pillars of the temple down upon the head of our descendants.”
“…Sooner or later will bring the abandonment of private capitalism.”

Of course none of those things happened but it's always the same story from those who most loudly belittle liberal ideas and fight any and all progressive change...."it will ruin the country", "the sky is falling", "death panels", "squawk, squawk, squawk!"

Even with all the name calling between the right and the left in America today,  it remains clear that all of us really want the same things for our family, for ourselves, and for our country.  What we can't agree on is the best way to get there, nor can we agree even on how we got here.   While my own political beliefs would seem to have sprung from some very conservative ground I can point to at least one ancestor who would, by all known standards, have been thought of as radically liberal in his day.  So radical that he and his brother might have gone to jail had the full nature of their activities been known.

Mom's Purse

Did you ever notice how you can sometimes get a whiff of something in the air and right away it reminds you of something or someone, or someplace?  A lot of my childhood memories seem to be tied to my olfactory senses.    Usually when I have one of those olfactory moments it's quick and intense with a vision flashing through my head and then quickly fading again.  Memories of visiting my grandmother's home, how her kitchen smelled in the winter as she was cooking grandpa's breakfast or making herself a cup of tea.  Visions of my dad shaving in front of the bathroom mirror which he always finished with a splash of Old Spice, or memories of my mother taking a tissue from her purse, spitting on it and wiping dirt off my face.

Mom's purse had a unique odor which I can't describe.  I suppose it was a mix of make up, lipstick, those used tissues, a pack of wintergreen chewing gum and lord knows what else.  Even though I can't put the scent into words, I'd know it if I ever smelled it again...and I have a few times.   I think the inside of her purse was a lot like my grandma's, but my grandma's always had a sort of overriding aroma of peppermint from the roll of Tums she usually had in it.    Mostly, the contents of a woman's purse remain a mystery to me...even after 66 years of life and 45 years of marriage.

Having your face wiped with a spitty Kleenex sounds pretty gross, and I suppose it is (and was), but at the time it was just something my sisters and I endured.  Most often that impromptu clean up  happened in the car.  Hmmm?  I wonder if that is where the phrase "spit bath" originated?

The vision of mom reaching over the top of the front seat in the car and making last minute corrections to our hair  or making sure our faces were clear of any "spots" was just something that happened...it wasn't a surprise, it was expected and had we objected there wasn't any way to get away from her anyhow.  For such a short woman she seemed to have an infinitely long arms when it came to reaching into the back seat, whether she were reaching back to tidy us up before we got out, or needed to swat one of us.

When I learned to talk my grandmother Robinson was Meme to me and she retained that title through all of the following 23 grandkids.   Meme's house was special and always full of smells and those odors still bring back memories of being there.  There was a winter smell, and a summer smell...they were similar, but not quite the same.  Meme didn't need scented candles that smell like baked cookies, or fruit...she got the effect naturally.  Baking cookies and making jam.   Besides all the good food aromas that went through the house there was something else, not sure what....maybe just a "lived in" smell.

Winter was something different.  There were still all those food smells but the old oil furnace in the basement added a sort of earthy undertone.  When I was still a small child there was one big heat register in the floor that sent warm air up into the living room, where it spread out from there.   It was nice to lay on the floor next to that big register in the floor and soak up some heat on a cold day.   Sometime later they had a blower attached to the furnace and some ducts put in and closed off that giant register...maybe they put in a new furnace, I'm not really sure.  For humidity in the winter Meme set an ice cube tray full of water in front of a couple of the registers and refilled regularly.   They had really hard water so the trays were always covered with heavy lime deposits after a few weeks of use.

You were often engulfed in the aroma of frying bacon waking up in the morning at Meme's.  Toast was always a breakfast staple at their house...toast with butter and some of her jam...and those jams were always a sort of mystery...she used fruit that was available and often combined them. Things like Strawberry-rhubarb,  or Mulberry and rhubarb.  It was at Meme's house that I first tasted sassafras tea and it was made from roots she dug herself under a small sassafras tree that grew in a fence row south of the house. A small spade and an old butcher knife was all she needed.  I suppose I could still walk to the spot where that little tree grew, but sadly, that fence row is long gone.  In fact most fence rows in the Midwest are gone, victims of industrialized farming. Fence rows use space that is more valuable for crops, and removing them makes use of giant equipment easier.

My grand kids won't even understand the concept of a fence row or realize what has been lost.  Fence rows contained such a variety of wild plants... wild grapes, the occasional tree, grass of course, milkweed and other wild flowers of every variety, poison ivy and they sheltered lots of wildlife of the smaller variety.  Rabbits, quail, pheasants, song birds, field mice.  In the winter they caught the blowing snow which piled into great drifts along the fence rows.    There were a lot of fence rows then,  an 80 acre plot might have been broken down in as many as 3, 4, or even 5 separate fields, some connected by small grass covered lanes...today that same 80 acre plot is often combined with another 80 acre plot to make one large field with no fence rows to be seen anywhere around.

 



 

I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy!

Today is July 3rd and the 59th birthday of my cousin, Jeff Robinson.  I've got more than 30 first cousins and his is the only one I usually remember.   That's because his mom, my Aunt Jo, started having parties for him when he was about 3 and always invited all the cousins.  He was 6 years younger than me but his brother was closer to my age and as cousins go he and I were probably closer during childhood than any of the other cousins.  Being the oldest cousin on that side of the family had a certain amount of "cousin prestige", but on the other hand there were a lot of younger kids and thus fewer that I wanted to play with.     The parties were memorable.  Weather permitting we always had a cookout and it was always hot dogs and then she usually took us to the pool at Columbian Park in Lafayette.  What a great pool that was.  His birthday was sort of the opening act of our Independence Day celebrations, at least for us kids.  Happy Birthday Jeff.  

Since my dad and his brothers farmed together they didn't necessarily get a "day off".  There are not really any "holidays" on the farm. The work gets done when it needs to be done, regardless of the day.    However I do remember the first time and place I ever saw fireworks on the 4th of July and that was in the front pasture in front of my grandparent's home.   Uncle Kean had been somewhere out of state and brought a carload of big rockets back home.  In those days fireworks were not legal to be sold in Indiana but you could get them in Tennessee and Missouri and possibly some other nearby states.

A bunch of us cousins were set down on blankets in the front yard and waited anxiously for the show to begin and of course we were forbidden to leave the yard, or even get too close to the fence that divided the yard and front pasture.  I've seen lots of fireworks shows since then, and most of them were much more elaborate and consisted of many more shells, but I don't suppose any matched the anticipation and excitement of those 4th's in my grandparent's front yard. It was dark enough to set off the fireworks when the lightning bugs could be seen.   I don't remember how many years we had those shows...I don't think it was very many.   We lived about 12 miles north of Lafayette, the nearest town that always had big fireworks displays.  Monticello and Wolcott also have a long history of fireworks shows but we couldn't see them from our house...but the ones in Lafayette we could see from our house.  Not well, and we often climbed up on the barn roof for a better view, but we could see the larger bursts.  Sometimes dad loaded us all in the car and drove somewhere where we could get a better view...not close, but better than from 12 miles away.

The most memorable fireworks show I've seen as an adult was the one we took our three kids to on the Mall in Washington DC.  We sat on the grass not far from the Washington Monument which put us pretty close to the action, although we were too far from any of the music venues to enjoy that part of the program. It's hard to forget the experience, especially the experience of exiting the Mall with about a million other people after the show.

Here in Lafayette we have a good fireworks show at least a couple of times a year.  On the 4th, and usually at least one of the downtown festivals ends with fireworks.  My most enjoyable local shows have always been the Lafayette Symphony program when they held the 4th of July concert on Slater Hill at Purdue.  Their final number was always the 1812 Overture featuring real canon fire and ended with the Fireworks.  That one always made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.