I wish all my readers a very happy Independence Day.  I hope you all enjoy watching sports and fireworks displays and eating a lot of good food.

After all, what is more American than sports, fireworks and cookouts? I vividly remember one particular Independence Day when I was visiting my family in New Jersey that turned out to be enjoyable, and eventually a little scary.

I was visiting my dear cousins Peggy and Bill Collins in Matawan, New Jersey, six or seven years ago. On a spur of the moment July 4 morning, we decided to visit some friends who had invited us to their Independence Day party at Long Beach on the New Jersey shore.

While I, along with family and friends, sat out in the yard of our friends’ beach home talking about sports and enjoying freshly grilled hot dogs, hamburgers and French fries, the teenagers and younger adults had gotten together a friendly game of volleyball.

A few feet away from where I was sitting on a lawn chair was a little embankment and at the bottom of it was a big table filled with various delicious foods.

Suddenly, one of the legs on the lawn chair that I was sitting on gave way and I fell and started rolling down the embankment toward a table filled with food as my cousins Peggy and Bill and several other guests, who had seen what happened, started running toward me. Thankfully, I was able to stop myself just a few feet away from the table. Everyone picked me up, and I thanked them and proceeded to dust myself off.

Peggy and Bill and several of the other guests helped me back up the embankment, got me comfortably seated in a more sturdy lawn chair, and brought me another hot dog and hamburger.

That night, Peggy, Bill and I went back to Peggy’s apartment and watched the Independence Day fireworks display from New York City on television. Every time my cousins and I have gotten together in recent years we always talk about the Independence Day when I almost wiped out a table of food.