One of my fondest memories is the smell throughout the whole city of Sheboygan on the 4th of July. The whole city smells like a Brat.

I will never forget the July 4th where my dad had "inside information" from a co-worker on how to get "ahead of the crowd" for an "up close" view of the city fireworks. It was a moonless night and got dark really, really, fast. The "secret" path for this alleged amazing view had us (mom & dad and we three young kids) parking on the other side of a cement plant and cutting through their inventory lot. The lot was a maze of fully cast concrete pillars, culverts, cement ornaments, etc. and it took us quite a while to work our way through to the field where the fireworks were to be shown. By the time we'd clambered to this spot you could barely see more than a few feet in the dark. My mom asked dad why the crowd (which had passed easily through the gate from the other direction) was so far away and dad just proudly said something like we were going to have "the best seats" of anyone and would be "right where all the fireworks would be." The whole hike had taken so long that it was literally moments before the Fireworks were to start. Suddenly, a man came running out of the dark and nearly screams at us, "What are you doing here?!" My dad starts to explain about how he'd learned about this "great place to see the fireworks close up." when the man cuts him off. "LOOK UP! Do you see those wires?" Turns out dad's co-worker's "hot tip" on the seating had brought us DIRECTLY UNDER the wires of a fireworks set-up with hundreds of flares & assorted twirling fire type display. It was only a few feet above our heads in the darkness and the man had been doing a last-minute safety check of the area because the display was scheduled to be the opening fireworks display of the night -which was to start in about 3 minutes! We ended up sitting (safely) way at the back of the crowd. I think the biggest "fireworks" of the night was when mom lit into dad about "endangering her children", LOL.