...continued see the small children...

See after the parade was over when the nighttime came around we all went to the fireworks. Most of us went with our parents and sometimes all the families would meet up together and sit out on the lawn chairs just coolin off from the heat of the July day, listing to the crickets and watching the colorful, crackling explosion in the sky.

So this one Fourth of July Jimmy had it in his head he wanted to ask Emily Ann to his house for barbecue and then they could go to the fireworks together; but Emily Anne, well her mother was one of the teachers that ran the dancin school and she thought it would be nice to invite Herman Miller's family back to their house for barbecue, because Herman's little sister took dancin classes at the school, and sometimes other years after the big parade was over, she would invite the parents and the kids of the classes back for a burger and a dog.

So just as the the big float got to the end of the parade and Jimmy was just waitin with a big grin on his face, white teeth sparklin, blue eyes dancin, all dressed up in a clean tshirt for Emily Anne to get off you could hear Emily Anne's mother yellin Emily Ann ask Herman if he and his family want to come back to the house. Well it seemed this was the chance Emily Ann was waitin for, cause it finally gave her an excuse to look at Herman rather than at the ground where she was usually lookin when she was trying to look at him. So when the float stopped, she looked directly at Herman and well he ran faster than a jack rabbit to help her off that float; and Jimmy, well he ducked between the neighborhood folks, scurried out the back of the crowd, ran around the back of the church and that was the last we saw of him that Fourth of July. He never came to the fireworks, never ate any barbecue, and none of us kids knew where he went that night.

It was shortly after this that strange things started happening both at the baseball field and down by the creek. ...to be continued ...