Published in the July 20 – Aug. 2, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
I celebrated Independence Day with my mom and dad and my auntie, Sharron Daniel. We went downtown to see the parade and I saw my little friends Lily, 5, and Evie, 9, on the Patriotic Sing float. They were with other children singing Fourth of July songs in a chorus. The music made me feel happy and proud to be an American.
Brian Bueno
America is our country and the Fourth of July is its birthda
y party. Last year on July 4, my mom and I made a birthday cake. It had three layers of red, white and blue inside. Those are the colors on the American flag. The cake cracked, so we called it the California cake because it had an “earthquake faultline” in it.
At the parade, we sat in the VIP (very important people) seating on Second Street looking at Monterey Road. Sometimes it was a little boring and also sometimes it was a little exciting.
What I liked a lot about the parade was the Chinese dragons that danced in front of everyone to the beat of the loud drums that accompanied them. They weren’t really dragons. They were people inside the costumes who moved around and made the heads and the tails bob around as if they were alive.
During the parade, I also liked seeing the horses that did a special little step-dance to entertain the people watching the parade. The riders, called “charros,” were dressed in old California Mexican-style costumes with big sombreros on their heads. I also liked the little ponies dressed in red, white and blue ribbons on their tails.
I also saw students and teachers from my karate school, the United Academy of Martial Arts, performing a little bit of their moves such as up-blocks and lunge punches and down-blocks.
We went to the fireworks show at the Outdoor Sports Center that evening. As the sun set, we played games and had a pizza picnic on the grass. There were a lot of people there and we all enjoyed the music from a band performing on a stage. I had fun in a jumpy house where I bounced a lot and slid down a slide.
About 9:30 p.m., it got really dark and the fireworks show started. They launched fast into the night and you could hear them go “ka-boom!” and there was like an explosion of colors — blue on the top, white in the middle, and red on the bottom. One of the fireworks spelled out the initials “U.S.A.”Another created a smiley face that made me feel happy. The loud noises shook the ground! The sparkles were falling like stars coming down toward us! Ahhh! I felt scared, oh yeah. But looking back, I enjoyed it because no one got hurt.
Celebrating the Fourth of July this year is something I’ll long remember. I’m proud of my country because in America, I’m free to be me.
Brian Bueno, age 6, will be a first-grader at Charter School of Morgan Hill this August. With the help of publisher Marty Cheek, he wrote this column for Morgan Hill Life.
