4th.
It sounds like a war outside. Shots, bangs, whistles, booms ranging from near enough to be in the parking lot outside the building to far in the distance.
We were told that it can actually be dangerous to be outside this time of year, since hicks have a tendency to shoot their guns into the air.
I'm pretty sure most of what I hear is fireworks. They're legal here. Stands are lined up along the roads. Hence the war-like soundtrack.
The big public fireworks show was last night. I'm not sure exactly where they were being set off from. We drove up to the general area--people were just parking on the grass off the road and setting up lawn chairs next to their trucks--and ended up behind a high school looking towards the show in the distance.
As we walked along the sidewalk, we went through the path of a guy who was sitting in the back of his pickup truck, shooting bottle rockets from a beer bottle. He tossed us a package of bottle rockets, yelling "happy 4th!" We said thanks. The guys told us it was because we were girls.
The fireworks show was, well, a fireworks show. They shot off red rockets during that one line in the national anthem. That was classy.
Afterwards, we heard sirens and discovered that there was a car on fire in the parking lot. There were big flames, and the whole area was full of smoke.
We set the bottle rockets off in the parking lot behind the apartment building using the top half of a milk bottle. I guess we've done our patriotic duty.
