Mom & Donna are coming down to visit this weekend, and bringing Dean. I'm still not sure what we're going to do, especially for the Fourth. I know were we're not going. Taste of Chicago is vastly overrated -- too hot, and too crowded. Grant Park can't adequately contain the sprawl that Taste has become.



Most of my Fourth of July memories as a kid are a mishmash of going to a park (or better yet, a drive-in) to watch fireworks, and running around trying to find out who's selling firecrackers and bottle rockets. My most memorable Fourth was in 1990, when I spent a summer driving an ice-cream truck. My usual route was the northern half of Plymouth, MN, but on the Fourth everyone got an event to cover. I got a beach in Excelsior, maybe 20 miles west of the Twin Cities on Lake Minnetonka. So everyone got an extra temporary freezer in their trucks, filled with dry ice and extra goodies. I shlepped out to the park at maybe 11 a.m., and sat. And sat. And sat some more. Listened to some musical acts playing at the nearby bandshell, did some reading. But starting at about 8 p.m., still light out, people began to come to my truck, and continued until I had a huge mob waiting for Dove Bars just after the fireworks. I had maybe made $10 in the past nine hours, and suddenly I was making at least a week's income in three hours. I began to run out of change, and had to start rounding prices. It was crazy. Then I got lost on the way home, trying to navigate the windy roads out there in the sticls.

But the most memorable part of this capitalist orgy? One of the bandshell acts was a polka band, which was okay, nothing special, until their last song: Purple Rain! Yes, polka-ized Prince.