Monday, December 31, 2007

Belated Feliz Ano

To all in the opposition in Venezuela, Feliz Ano!!!

I remember the Ano Viejo (I need to figure out accents and the ~ of the n). I remember people stringing up rope across the street and pulling it up in front of cars to get moey from people to 'contribute' to their Viejo for fireworks. And of course, at midnight the town went off in a bang as everyone lit off their Viejo.

There was the one time that the fireworks store above Rubio in the state of Tachira went up in smoke. It looked like a bomb went off.

I used to have to sit in watchnight services and listen the hermanas and hermanos in their multiple posesias and skits. I just wanted to be out with my friends lighting fireworks!!!! The service would start at about 7pm and go to 12am. I thought it would never end.

I do remember one time when I was around to light off fireworks and Joey Pinch had a boat load of bottle rockets. He got something to shoot them off in, and lit the first one. Shoom... off it went. The shoom... shoom shoom shoom.... Off went the other ones he had. The sparks from the first one lit all the rest that he had. I didn't know what was funnier, all the bottle rockets going off at once or watching him dance to miss them all!!!!!!

We had such GREAT fireworks in Venezuela: morteros, trikitrackis, whistlers, and of course tumba ranchos. Morteros were basically Roman candles but without the sparkles on the end. You had to have a tube to shoot them from with a solid bsse. There was an initial explosion to shoot the next stage in the air, and then a big boom in the sky. Rubio would be full of those on New Years.

So now I eat black eyed peas and hope for a great 2008. Not quite the same tradtion, but you do what can where you are at. Maybe next year we'll build a Viejo and show the neighborhood how to celebrate.

So to all my hermanos and hermanas in the opposition in Venezuela, Feliz Ano, and may 2008 be better than 2007. May that include the downfall of El Burro.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Can you believe it, this interface is all localized in Chinese! But anyway, the best fireworks I ever lit was when Richard and I camped on top of the triangle shaped mt in the middle of the Caripe valley opposite Las Delicias and shot off rockets in between July 4 and 5--unfortunately not a big time for fireworks in V, unlike the US. It was great and we could see our families picnicking with a bonfire across the valley, but the next morning when we went down and asked someone if they'd heard the fireworks, they thought it was just somebody hunting with a shotgun :-)