Night Images

Anderson, South Carolina

Once a year my small town puts on a great effort, and a most successful one at that, to create a fine destination event. Anderson has become known as a regional hot-air balloon mecca. 250,000 people will make a pilgrimage to visit us each year. What makes a particular town suitable for annual balloon festivals are several variables –favorable weather, suitable launch facilities, a good road infrastructure for chase vehicles, and a sense of hospitality for the hundreds of thousands of people that show up for such events. Especially important is that the balloonists and their crews feel wanted by the townspeople. Some towns actually don’t want them landing in their pastures, fields, or yards. Here, people will actually let their grass and hay grow up a few days before our annual festival so as to be able to mow smiley faces into it and write ‘Land Here’ below them. We just had eighty-five colorful balloons spend four days drifting over our countryside and dropping in unexpectedly to start parties. Hot air balloons are quite the catalysts for spontaneous happy events.

Most of us that live here have learned to listen carefully for the distinctive sound of a balloon’s propane burner. We are quite willing to drop whatever we are doing and join a party. I can be sitting in my closed-up house and instantly know when a balloon is near by. I also enjoy the happy circumstance of having a commercial balloon pilot living five doors down from me. Many mornings I hear Steve’s burners as I am out riding my bike at first light. Sometimes I call him from my cell phone to see ‘What’s up.’

Each year the last evening of our Labor Day balloon festival is given over to an outdoor sunset concert. We enjoy the distinct sounds of our fine community orchestra. 10,000 happy visitors will convene in our grassed amphitheater to hear a couple hours of inspirational, patriotic, and classical music as they dine. Some will eat out of a fast food paper bag. Others will set up something akin to the elaborate digs of a major tailgating. Either way, all enjoy being in a spontaneous community. I struck a middle ground and brought a Styrofoam cooler and fed a number of good friends around me.

As the sun submerges below the horizon, we listen for the familiar pieces played each year along with the special selections picked for the current year’s theme. This year the theme was Star Wars. All of the kids in Anderson County were in the amphitheater with their light sabers, pretending to be Luke Skywalker. I could only wish my childhood had been seasoned with the joyous and colorful memories that were being created before my eyes.

There is nothing like being surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands, of happy kids enjoying sunset with their friends and families while watching all their favorite images of science fantasy projected with multicolor lasers onto giant scrim sheets and clouds of theater fog. Perhaps the most important images are those of the reality that comes from shared community as the edge of night reveals the spectral wonders of Zambelli fireworks in the ebony of night.

I went home feeling very much a party of life