The following June, when the counselor took us to get our horses the first time, I fell in love with a quiet-looking one that stood a bit shorter than the others. Dusty was a soft gray color with spots of darker gray. Her mane was almost white. The counselor told me she was afraid of cars but even at my young age I thought that was silly. Cars? We were in no-man’s land; miles from civilization. The counselor went on to show me how to get into the saddle, hold the reins, and pull back to get Dusty to stop. She explained the difference between a walk, trot, and gallop. I spent two months at camp that first year and as I recall, we went riding twice a week. Every time, I staked my claim on Dusty. We saw each other so often, I thought we were friends. One day, as we rode single-file down the road, the counselor, at the front of the line, turned and yelled back to remind me that Dusty was “car shy.” I soon learned why as a car gunned its engine coming up the hill. Dusty stood back on her hind legs, her front legs pawing the air, and began to snort. Time after time, I pulled back on her reins and said, “Whoa, girl” until the counselor turned her horse around and came back to help me.

The next time we went riding, the counselor asked if I wanted to take out a different horse but I didn’t want to hurt Dusty’s feelings. Besides, I’d already been through the worst. Or so I thought. That day, we rode toward the lake and the counselor said we’d take it slow on the sand. Once we got close to the water, Dusty decided to lie down on her side and roll over into the water. Shrieking, I held tight to the reins until I had a chance to jump from the saddle. No one could talk me into getting on that horse again. Instead, I walked back to the cabin as the counselor led Dusty in the other direction towards the stable. Even Roy Rogers wouldn’t have sung “happy trails” that day.

You know, I’m not a stick-in-the-mud like it might sound. In my nearly-63 years, I’ve been to lots of Fourth of July celebrations and the best part was always the fireworks. When I was a kid, my father drove to an adjoining state to buy strings of firecrackers and rockets for bottles. Sparklers, too. We couldn’t wait until after dinner when Dad hollered to us that it was time to go out to the driveway. He made all of us back up from the blastoff scene until we were almost inside the garage. Then, one by one, he lit the fuses. Some were duds but still, we all let forth a steady stream of oohs and ahhs. Then, we each got to wave a sparkler around for awhile. There were no loud crashing noises to upset the neighbors and luckily, no burned fingers from the sparkling sticks.

Today’s parents probably want to impress their youngsters with a patriotic display, too. But illegal is illegal and as my mother liked to say, “Right is right, dear.” Mom, who was never excited about Dad’s Independence Day show, had lots of rules about what was right. Etiquette, she called it. Good manners. There were rules about when we could make a phone call — never after nine in the evening and for sure, not before eight in the morning; ten on weekends — and how early we could ring the doorbell of our friends’ homes, too. She didn’t want us to wake up anyone. Being respectful of neighbors was important to my parents. I try to act the same and can tell you for sure, it wasn’t any of my good neighbors who made it impossible to fall asleep last weekend.

Maybe the Rosemount residents who kept the police busy until the wee hours made sure their neighbors wouldn’t complain by inviting them over for beer and burgers before treating them to the pyrotechnic display. Maybe the hosts had so much beer they were unaware the noise would travel out of their backyard and intrude on other people’s sleep. Maybe they could snooze until noon and didn’t realize some people had to get up for work. Well, as my mother was also fond of saying, they should “wake up and smell the coffee.”

Next month, when my friend arrives to help me celebrate my birthday, I’ll ask her if she’s seen the shows and what she thinks of them. Especially the one set in New Jersey, where we met. Even though I returned to Minnesota nearly 35 years ago and she headed for Pennsylvania not long after, our friendship survived. We still talk about how lucky we were to live two houses away from each other on Valley Road in Upper Montclair. Though we were housewives in New Jersey, our lives bore no resemblance to the present day TV stars. There were no mega-mansions or hoity-toity condos for us. We both lived on lower levels of old duplexes and spent most of our time together watching our children play; taking them to the park and library. We cleaned our own houses. Had no funds for a nanny or even a babysitter. Swanky lunches? When we dared to spend money on lunch, our kids sat right next to us at the neighborhood deli where they ate peanut butter sandwiches and our pumpernickel bread was stuffed with egg salad.

But we did have one luxury: a monthly night out for the consciousness-raising meeting where we met. I had been skeptical about the idea at first but another friend thought that since I had only been in town a short time, I’d enjoy meeting some new women. A self-proclaimed feminist and avid reader of Ms. Magazine, in the name of sisterhood, I decided to give it a try. Ten of us were at the first meeting held at the home of a woman I had never met. Questions about what to wear and whether anyone would like me coursed through my mind that day. The doubts feminism was supposed to erase but never did. It didn’t matter. We all clicked. Even the two who dropped out the second month because they didn’t like the suggested topics supplied by the local chapter of NOW, the National Organization of Women. The two should have stayed. We barely followed the guidelines. And I question whether anyone adhered to the rule that when it was our turn to host a meeting, we shouldn’t do anything special like dust or vacuum.

If there had been a reality TV show back in the 70s about our group, the cameras would have caught me cleaning every inch of my home when my turn came to have the get-together. But they never would have caught any of us taking verbal swipes at each other for the benefit of the show. We would have bored audience members who wanted blood and bad words. After all, we were a support group. Not to mention: Would anyone have watched a program called The Real Domestic Engineers of New Jersey?

One he showed every Christmas Eve. The Little Match Girl, from a story by Hans Christian Anderson published in 1845, is the tale of a poor little girl who sells bundles of match sticks on the street. If she returns home without a farthing to show for her work, her father beats her. This particular cold New Year’s Eve night, when people have places to be, they rush past and pay her no mind. She’s lost her mother’s slippers which were too big for her tiny feet and too flimsy, anyway, and finds an alcove where two buildings meet. She crouches in the corner for warmth. We kids knew what was next but still, every year our eyes were fixed on the screen as if was the first time we’d watched.

The girl looks up to the sky and sees a shooting star. She remembers that her dear departed grandmother, the only person who ever cared about her, had said a star falls because someone died and is going to heaven. The girl tries to warm her hands by lighting one of her matches; in the flame she sees a vision of a fancy home where a table is set for a feast. When the match goes out, she lights another and sees the image of her grandmother. She strikes match after match to keep her grandmother in view until her grandmother reaches out for her and carries her to heaven. The next morning, people pass by and find the little girl frozen to death in the corner where the two buildings adjoin.

Year after year, even though the grainy black and white images of the little match girl never failed to make us sad, we never questioned why Dad would show that film to us on Christmas Eve. On a night when the only sounds besides the whirring of the movie projector were those of the dishwasher cleaning the dishes from our recent family feast and the crackling from the burning logs in the fireplace. Hadn’t Dad known the only thoughts we wanted dancing in our heads that night were about what the jolly old man would leave for us under the beautifully decorated tree framed by the front window?