Janice Williams Loves Austin

I love Independence Day. So many memories have come up today . . .

My nephews when they were so little in a little neighborhood parade on their trikes and bikes wearing red white and blue and so earnestly playing their part.

Blowing up my uncle on July 4 with a bottle rocket when I was grown up and should have known better. I haven’t touched fireworks since.

That same uncle dying just before the Fourth four years ago, making it our saddest holiday. Especially since today is his wife’s (Aunt Dorothy’s) birthday and is always a big celebration for her.

Going to Connor Park in Canyon with my friends in high school and hearing Rich Girl on the radio and chasing each other with water balloons and then laying on the grass watching the fireworks.

My first July 4 with Mark, just a week after we met and staying home with him when he had a migraine instead of going to my radio station’s event somewhere.

Broadcasting from Zilker Park and thinking that I would melt before the day ended. Then broadcasting the next year and it being so foggy, cool, and raining that it felt like we were in Portland or Seattle, not Austin!

Willie’s picnic in Luckenbach where Mark played with the Gary P Nunn band. Meeting Kinky Friedman. Talking to Willie. Seeing Robert Earl Keen up close.

Willie’s picnic at Spicewood where it was muddy and boggy. We were broadcasting from way backstage so it was a trek to go see the stage and the music. I made the trek during a song or two and then the gate I used to get into the audience was suddenly no longer open to me to go back to my broadcast area. I came back huffing and puffing just in time to do my next break. I interviewed Ray Price and Bill Mack and Waylon Payne and Pat Green and lots more that day. And I saw the Grateful Dead, too.

Visiting with the neighbors in our sweet South Austin neighborhood while the little boys shot off some fireworks. And then the police slowly cruising by and reminding us all that that was illegal.

I hope you are having a safe and happy Independence Day and remembering that we are responsible for preserving that freedom— not just from foreign interests that would take it away, but from others within our borders who would also limit the freedoms guaranteed to us all in the name of patriotism.